500 Days without a Car in Sweden
Discovering Sweden through public transit and foot, contrasting city life in Delhi and Gothenburg.
Non-Drivers Are People, Too: On the psychology of motordom and its consequences
Reading Addison Del Mastro’s blog about the lack of sovereignty accorded to non-drivers in the US, I found the momentum needed to put my experience down of walking, taking public transit in Sweden for 1.5 years.
When I arrived in Sweden on the monumental day of August 31st (hello Joachim Trier fans; Oslo August 31st) I had little idea I was embarking upon a journey within a journey — one of living without a car. M and I were here on his new job, I was relocating from Delhi and he from Frankfurt. I didn’t realise then that in addition to experiencing life in a small Swedish city, after Delhi, I was also going to go through a new form of shift. A shift of how I commuted. Without a car.
Before this, my stint of living and working in Delhi had lasted about 7+ years where I’d use various modes of commute — Ubers, local taxis, metro (underground), autorickshaws, and walking during Covid years. In these years to make life a little more convenient (at some point I gave up a job that required me to travel 60km to & fro everyday) I’d toyed with the idea of purchasing a car on more than a few occasions. The pollution crisis, my sense of always being transitory in that city and the dire shortage of parking (or even driving) spaces in Delhi kept me at bay.
That said, whenever I was commuting late at night or coming home after a few drinks or when taking my senior citizen parents around, I’d avail of taxi services. On some occasions Uber drivers took unreasonably long routes (to increase cab fare) or deliberately took wrong routes (assuming I didn’t know the ins and out of Dilli) to misguide me. These experiences further sent me banking on the local neighbourood taxi agencies that are still run and driven by legacy Sardar business families.
With this background I moved to Gothenburg and far away from the din of the traffic jungle that Delhi is. The streets of Gothenburg felt awfully quiet. There are far fewer people here: 649,847 (2026) to Delhi’s ~71.5 million (2025). Transport electrification has pre-existed here and has therefore taken firmer roots in Gothenburg, even as the number of EVs in Delhi in 2022 stood at staggering 1.3 million. While there’s a dire need for more Delhiites to use public transport, the shift there has been more and more towards personal cars (some EVS, others not).
In Delhi I was one of the last car-less individuals standing. Friends, family, colleagues and neighbours, everyone have at least one car. And it did often make me socially odd, even out of place. Cut to being in Gothenburg where often in many rooms, M and I were the only ones without a car. That, known, snatching dissonance. It felt strange and while M started taking driving classes soon, we continued our lives using the Swedish public transport system.
In Europe, it’s almost a cheesy cliche to say that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. It’s a phrase I muttered through my teeth when at the end of autumn, I stepped out one Saturday to meet a friend for lunch wearing a parka. The Baltic headwind pierced right through my skin and bones, leaving my toes and finger nails ice cold. On another snowed in weekend, as M and I took walks through a neighbouhood close to our place, we found company amidst other walkers, runners, pram pushers, dog walkers.
As lifelong walkers and pub transport champions (both M and I) we’ve never really had any difficulty in adjusting to public transport ways of life here. And in our 18 months of walking and taking public transport here I seemed to be naturally falling in sync with my own self. We bought walking friendly gear, figured out routes less taken, made time for grocery shopping, gossiping and discovering new places during these outings. In a few months I’d quickly secured some of my favorite walkable cafes, libraries, restaurants, even cemeteries.
It felt easy, almost natural to scour through areas in search of nothing, ambling up and down the rolling, hilly roads in the Gothenburg University area, or walking near the library in the sun or even commuting to the islands in the northern and southern archipelago (that’s a story for a different blog!). Ferries, trams, buses — mostly ferries and trams. Even though the gaps between these became imbricated with the weather, I felt like I was exploring something completely new, almost alien. It was thrilling.
On snowed in weekends, M and I would engage in our seven year old private ritual of walking the neighbourhood for upto 7-10 km one side. At the end of such walks we’d pause at Materia, to sit in the warmth of other people’s company. I made numerous photographs, seated at the windows, staring at frozen snowflakes forming intricate patterns in concert with the lace cup holder. We’d have our coffees, Swedish Bryg kafe (house black coffee; too bitter) and cappuccino, respectively, and dash off out to take in the cold of the area in the company of strangers. Walking past second hand stores, posters of Charli XCX’s performance, empty bars, more cafes, full bars and a neighbourhood taco joint, we’d soon be halfway home.
Often after these walks I tried to identify the feeling evoked in me by the passages we’d just tramped through. The delicate sunshine, a certain timber of light reflecting as the day died. Something akin coming to getting to know the place better. In the winter, I came to associate my walks with voices of people close to the ear, the ratcheting sound made by passing by coasting bikes, the pad of runners’ shoes against the gravel, the silence of electric buses and cars whizzing by. Clammily aware, all this while, that this was a completely other experience. The pertness of the city pressing on me viscerally.
In these 18 months, M has become a professional at timing his train-to-bus dash, waiting for a canceled bus in -12degrees in rain and slush at 730am, or walking the last two stations because the tram was delayed. I’ve become a pro at walking long distances while wearing the heaviest of Everest winter jackets that always take time getting used to. Suffice to say, then that, by the end of December 2025, M and I were giddy with anticipation of finally owning our both’s first car. It felt hard earned, justified and an electric Volvo BEV built upon the excitement, a new form of nerdery.
I’ve tried to write many versions of this essay for the last few months but have come to surrender to the fact that it’ll be a rare achievement to capture the diffuse mix these walks have opened for me, and continue to, about being in Sweden. Even though today's world has the memory of a gnat, I want to press upon the way the city has opened up for me. So, I’m writing this, in this current form, even as I know that what made my experience sparkle will only and always be alive in the room with me.
We’ve had our car for a little over two months and now we split our commute between tram/bus and car, depending on need. In these 18 months, I took not a taxi, rode inside not a personal car and it felt like a kind of leveler in reducing my carbon footprint, and realizing that the best parts of Sweden are the ones you cannot see from the highway.
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