Traffic

I have been studying traffic since the moment I arrived in India. It hasn't been until recently that I have grown accustomed to it enough to relax and begin noticing patterns. Traffic here is almost nothing like it is back in the U.S. It's not just that there are more vehicles, nor that they go faster or more recklessly, nor even that some of them are pulled by oxen. It's just a completely different way of interacting on the street. The intertwining movements of vehicles on the road here most closely resemble the tangled paths of pedestrians crossing each other in the main atrium of Grand Central Station. There are almost no traffic lights here. The last time I saw a traffic light was in Jaipur, and there were only a few there.

Don't be fooled by the empty spaces in the few photos I recently posted -- Bhopal is a bustling city with intense, crowded traffic. It can be extremely difficult to cross the street (for me at least). Intersections here have absolutely no rules that I can figure out. Passing through them makes me feel like I'm in one of those medieval battles in Braveheart. The way it is done is that the driver just holds down the horn and charges forward into the middle, hoping others will believe that he or she is the most crazy and least likely to stop. Then you see how far you get before you have to slam on the brakes or swerve around the other players. It's pretty terrifying if you pay too much attention. Sometimes people hit each other lightly, and that's ok. As long as it's just a bump or nudge you can just keep on driving.

The elephantmobile, as I call it. I don't know, I just get an elephant feeling from it. Matthias and I took this one for about 11 km for a few cents each. It was my treat. It is from within this vehicle that the first shot above was taken. Over the course of that 11 km, about 20-25 people managed to ride in and/or on this thing simultaneously. Totally unbelievable.

Did I ever mention that in India one drives on the left side of the road? That is the idea, at least. It is fine to drive on the wrong side of the road for all kinds of reasons. You might, for instance, be looking for an address on the 'wrong' side of the road and know you're going to turn off at any moment. Or you might be going just a short distance and not want to go through the trouble of crossing all the traffic to get on the correct side of the road (because it certainly can be a lot of trouble when there are no traffic lights to stop the flow). Or you might be just trying to drift over to the right side of the road. Let's say you want to make what in the U.S. would be a "left turn" but here in India is a right turn -- a traffic crossing turn -- and there's just a ton of oncoming traffic and you can't make it over there. In a situation like that, you just drive straight into the oncoming traffic and swerve around, slowly working your way over until most of the vehicles around you are going in the same direction you are. I use the word "vehicles" because only a tiny minority of people on the road are in cars. Most are on motorcycles, and many are in auto-rickshaws, which have three wheels. And then there are buses and trucks. Cars are somewhere between all those I just listed and random things like mules, oxen, and people pushing huge, precariously balanced stacks of things on wobbling carts.
Hindu adornments for good luck. Every vehicle has them. On Indian streets, luck is more important than gasoline.

My favorite thing are the cows. Just picture it -- the traffic is such that crossing it on foot is a truly dangerous stunt. I frequently see huge cows, however, just wander into the middle of huge streets, completely oblivious and almost arrogant in their position as a holy animal, and just plop themselves down in the middle. Imagine this on Broadway. A big cow sitting on the pavement with every kind of vehicle missing its nose and tail by inches. No one honking -- everyone just swerves around it as it sits there for hours staring at the chaos swirling around it. No other animal dares to do this. I saw a bunch of goats get together and form an ad hoc street-crossing bloc that almost got obliterated halfway across. Only the cows can do it right -- they handle an Indian road like a beekeeper handles beehives. People do amazing things with motorcycles here. Just tonight I saw a family of six on one motorcycle. That is a normal motorcycle, too -- not some jumbo outfit. The father was driving with two kids stuffed in front of him. Then the mother and two more kids were carefully balanced behind him. Traffic here is made beautiful by Indian women on motorcycles. Most are in the second seat, behind a male driver. They usually sit sideways, and their often brightly colored clothing fluttering behind in the wind.

A proud autorickshaw driver. This guy absolutely insisted that his photo be taken by Maude, who had just taken a photo of another guy's car. Suddenly four or five different drivers ran from somewhere nearby and all jumped in front of their vehicles, clamoring to have their pictures taken. This guy would probably thrilled to know you are looking at his photo right now.
Autorickshaws have been my main way of crossing the longer distances in Bhopal. Their engines are awful, though, and I'm not too happy about contributing to the dismal state of air in Bhopal by using this form of transportation. It's hard to imagine breathing hard enough to bike here, but I might try soon.