So I have been living in London for almost 5 years now.
I lived in 4 different places in this time London. There was always a tube station within 10 - 15 mins walk from my home. I could always cycle to office under 40 minutes.
So I never found the need to get a car for daily commute.
But last year I realized having a car is good to explore the more remote parts of UK. Even though UK has a good train infrastructure you cannot really reach everywhere with a train. For example if I want to explore Exmoor I need a car.
Also doing road trips in a car is a different experience than taking a train. I loved driving car in India for road trips.
Having a driving license also allows you to rent a van and it can be helpful when I move houses.
And the last one of all and the one that really drove me to this is I always had this dream to live in a camper van and explore Europe. And driving license was the bare minimum requirement for that.
Once I decided I should do this, I started looking into how to make this happen. I probably thought at that time that I would have the license in a few months once I start the process. Ohh boy was I wrong.
The initial part of driving license process is applying for a provisional license. This is straightforward. You apply online and pay some fees. You will get the provisional license delivered to your house in a few days. You need this to start taking driving lessons in a car.
The next step after provisional license is to book an appointment and pass the theory test. Booking an appointment is easy part.
I kind of went to the theory test under prepared. I only spend a few hours practicing the questions from the theory test app. I thought it was going to be easy because I passed the theory test in India the first time and I barely studied much.
This was a mistake. I failed the theory test. I think I came short of 3 questions. After the theory test I booked another theory test a week or so after that first one. This time I spend a few hours every day for a few days. I passed the test.
Now you might think I am like 50% there right? Not really.
The next step to find a practical driving test appointment is one of the most annoying part of this whole process.
Getting a test appointment is not as straightforward as getting a theory test appointment. The appointments are always sold out. Plus the appointment website bot filtering has a tendency to mark humans as bots so you cannot even access the appointment site.
Anyway after trying a few times I was able to find a random appointment in a place called Hendon which was far from where I lived.
Excited that I got a test appointment finally I started calling instructors near my house which I found through the gov driving instructors directory.
Soon I realized none of the instructors except for one guy was willing to take me to the test center area for the test which was almost an hour from where I live.
And the guy who did agreed seemed to have a higher hourly rate.
I realized taking lessons near my house and having the test away is not going to work. I need to give up on the test slot. So I decided to just cancel that slot and started calling instructors for just lessons locally. The idea was I will eventually find a test center closer to my house.
I found an instructor which seemed to be charging around 35 pounds per hour. Each lesson was 2 hours minimum.
I had a bad experience with the first instructor. He cancelled the lesson a few minutes before the first class citing some issues with car. Anyway I decided to give the guy another chance and arranged for another lesson next week. The next class he came like 20 mins late. Another red flag. I went to the lesson with him anyway. He didn't particularly inspire any confidence in me. He seemed to be a newbie. So I decided to try another instructor before committing.
The next instructor I tried was quite differe. He was always on time and a few minutes early. He was very thorough on the basics. Like he made sure I adjusted the mirrors and seat and all before I drove off. So I liked his methods and did a few classes with him. Though I did notice he was sometimes a bit too mechanical and doesn't adapt much with me. After around 5 classes I had to move houses so I stopped the lessons for a while.
Once I moved houses and settled in I started in search for a new instructor after a few weeks.
I found an instructor who lived next to my house and agreed to start lessons as soon as possible.
This instructor I liked from the get go. He was not mechanical. He only interfered when required and let me do most of the driving. I liked this. After doing some lessons with him I started looking for an appointment for driving test. I couldn't find one anywhere near my house but I did manage to find one in Tottenham which is around 30minutes drive from my house.
My instructor agreed to that test center and he said we can go and take lessons there toward end of the test. Towards the end we started doing 3 hour lessons because just reaching the test center and going back was taking a lot of the time.
We also did 3 mock tests in last 3 lessons. I failed on all of them.
Even though I failed 3 mock tests, the mistakes I made for them was sort of edge cases. And I knew that I can pass the test if things go my way in the actual test.
My test was in morning slot in Tottenham. I reached the test center area around 40 mins before and droe around the area for a bit to get comfortable. My instructor also made me go through a lot of the show me questions during this. These are questions like show me how to turn on the rear screen wiper or adjust the demisitifiers. Then he also made me do an emergency stop. Also made me open the bonnet and go through some questions there as well.
Then we went on to the test center. We arrived around 10 minutes early. The examiner came right on time. He asked a basic question on how can I tell whether the brakes are working. Then he made me read a number plate or a car. After that he asked me to get inside the car and start driving.
Within the test center he asked me to do a front parking on one of the bays.
After that he asked me to follow the sat navigation device that he plugged into the car.
The test itself was mostly fine except two cases in which I thought I might have failed the test. One was when I was passing too close to a parked car in a narrow road and he has to interfere. And the other one was when I was taking too much time waiting for cars to pass by before entering a T junction. He asked me to go and wait in the center of the road.
Anyway I still had a hope that I might still pass the test. Because I was calm and did everything right and I couldn't really find any mistakes.
So when I finished the test after 30 minutes and reached the test center he said I passed the test. I was super excited. I haven't been this excited in a while. The same feeling I used to get when I found out when I scored well in exams. Later on I checked the email and I saw I got 3 minors. Which was pretty good according to me.
In one hand I am glad it's finally over. I also realized how much progress I made over the span of almost an year of this.
When I was about to start I was almost scared about the idea of learning to drive in London and being alone in the car. Driving in UK is very different from India.
I also liked the feeling of getting a reward after spending so much time working on it just like I used to do back in high school and college. Very different from the dopamine you get from Instagram when you open it every time.
The biggest take away from this whole process for me j I should commit to more hard long term goals where I can make progress.