Traffic

I sat in traffic for one hour today, traveling a distance that should have only taken 20 minutes.. It's not the worst bout of traffic I've been in, but it made me miss my yoga class, so I thought I'd pay attention to the crazy world around me that was at an irritating standstill. Traffic in India is ordered chaos, to say the very least. In the big cities like Bombay and Delhi, you can sit for hours (on day 2 of our trip, Jake and I sat in traffic for FOUR hours to go about 5 km. Luckily it was day 2, so there was still a lot to see and take in, but much of the novelty of the streets are no longer as exciting). Usually seated in a tiny yellow and green auto rickshaw, I'm amazed at how many things occupy the road. There are cars, with the windows tight shut, A/C blasting, both small and increasingly large (the amount of SUVs I've seen in Delhi is disturbing.. If you think it's ridiculous to have an SUV in suburban America, try justifying it in Delhi where traffic rarely exceeds 40 mph) ; buses that zoom down the side lanes, with people dangling in the doorways, packed in like sardines; autos blasting Bollywood, squeezing their way through the mess, the drivers completely at ease; motoscooters, sometimes packed with a family of 4 on board, zig zagging and zooming around the larger vehicles; cycle rickshaws teetering along, driver and passenger usually looking miserable in the hot summer sun; bullock carts piled with masses of produce; solo bicyclists cycling along on decrepid looking things, completely in tune with the rushing traffic around them; jaywalking businessmen, jaywalking housewives, jaywalking yogis stopping all traffic with just one palm held up; dogs that act like squirrels, running across the roads and freezing in the middle like they've never seen a car before; children, who sell everything from magazines to jasmine strands, that dart in and out of the lanes and approach momentarily stopped vehicles with their rehearsed salesman script; begger children, and women holding babies who painfully look you in the eye, and simply hold out their hand, point to their mouth, and point to their baby until the traffic starts moving again. And then of course, there are the cows who show up periodically. It's madness, it's mayhem, it's absolutely terrifying, but pretty beautifully coordinated at the same time. I've seen a couple of minor skirmishes, and I know there are pretty big accidents, but considering that traffic lines on the road serve an aesthetic purpose and little more, Indian traffic is pretty impressive.