I think “Driving in Delhi” should be a video game! Forget sports cars & the autobahn… Try this on for size:

On any road in India, you’re likely to find the following: semi trucks & trailers stake claim on the exact center of the road, slow streams of rust-bucket buses with people hopping on & off while it’s in motion, speeding cars ranging from SUVs to toy-sized cars all with battle scars, motorcycles with entire families on them with the women in sari’s perched side-saddle daintily, men pulling wooden carts, holy cows standing in the road, elderly shepherds with goats, tractors, flatbed trucks full of workers, green autorickshaws by the thousands who use their bumpers to bump and have no reverse, bicycle rickshaws with drivers who spit, wooden wheeled fruit carts, screaming ambulances, and bicylces. And some unqiue vehicles created out of spare parts & a few wheels that are unidentifiable as any specific kind.

And people trying to cross the roads. Or just standing in them. Or walking in the middle of them trying to sell you books.

Oh, and did I mention that there are no “lanes”, often you could count 3 or 4 cars abreast, with oncoming traffic headed at you? And everyone goes eveywhere? And there’s no yielding, signalling or slowing down. There is only fast, teeth-jarring screeching stops, and then completely immobile traffic.

And everyone honks.

THAT, my freinds, is a game of strategy!

Posted via email from katiemw’s posterous