"Heart in Your Mouth"-Getting Around Indian Style

One of the gifts of travel is it exposes you to all the different ways people do things. Some are surprising, some enlightening, some even scary. Visitors to India discover all three when it comes to transportation. There may be lots of automobiles careening at breakneck speed in the cities, but they are by no means the main mode of travel. The most popular and widely used is the most ancient—your own two feet. The cities are teeming with people walking everywhere—across lawns, on the sidewalks, in the streets, around moving cars. Add to that a traffic system that does not include lanes and hardly any stop signs or stop lights, allows cars to make u-turns whenever and wherever, tolerates rickshaws pulled by bikes OR people in traffic with the cars, as well as lorries pulled by camels and the occasional meandering cow and you get a sense of how easily traveling around becomes an adventure.
Walking is the best way to see life up close, but it requires making eye contact with the driver of the vehicle hurtling towards you as well as the ability to dodge and run. Riding is not much better. I quickly discovered taxis or the 3 wheel mini's called 'tuk tuks' are not for the faint of heart. Horns and hands are used as directional devices, and the driver with the quickest reflexes, strongest nerves rules the road. It is best I soon found, to just not look. The trade off of course, is the delight the drivers take in their expertise and in their never failing offer to provide auxiliary services: to take you shopping, on tours, to restaurants. Opinionated, for the most part, very personable and inventive, interacting with them is an essential part of being in India. I wouldn't have missed those near wrecks or side trips to obscure little lanes for anything. Well, it's easier to say that now that I am home….
To see more inventive forms of transportation, please visit the link to my India Photo Journal.