Isabella Kwai rides along with Besart Bilalli, a 39-year-old father of three, as he attempts to master the Knowledge, a test that requires would-be black cab drivers in London to become their own GPS, learning to navigate thousands of city streets by heart. The scale of the challenge is staggering, and tends to dominate the lives of those who attempt it. In Bilalli, Kwai finds the dogged pursuit of a mastery that most of us are all too happy to offload.
More than 150 years after it was created to train cabmen in horse-drawn carriages, the Knowledge still covers roughly the same area: a six-mile radius of the city surrounding Charing Cross, including some 25,000 streets and 6,000 points of interest.
Aspiring drivers must first pass a multiple-choice exam about those landmarks and 320 set routes. Studying for this can consume two years. Only then do applicants get to arguably the hardest part: a series of oral tests at London’s transport authority office in which they must recite the shortest route between two points. Some students take three years or longer to complete the process.
“The pressure is crazy,” he said. He had slept badly before the test. His wife wakes him to tell him that he has been mumbling directions in his sleep. Their bedroom is cluttered with a large map of the city, books on the Knowledge and scrawled sticky notes on how to get to and from one place to the next. Sometimes, the notes slip behind the bed.
And there is never enough time with his children, who ask him when he leaves home: Is he heading out to drive the streets or to study the streets?
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