Close Your Eyes and Pray

When I was ten years old, my family went to Europe to visit friends.  On our two-day trip to Paris, we developped a theory for surviving taxi rides: close your eyes and pray that the car will not hit anything.  Traffic and travel in India often forces me to recall that theory.  There are far too many cars on the road, and many drivers do not have licenses.  As a result, traffic lanes are irrelevant.  Even more noticeable, drivers only pay attention to objects in front of them (most lost their side mirrors anyways) and honk to gain the attention of anyone they pass.  Think the traffic rules of biking (using a bell to pass, easily crossing to the other lane) on overcrowded streets of too many people.  I hope to detail the various types of transportation, of which there is quite the combination, in another post, but here are a few anectdotes from recent experiences in traffic:

Auto-rickshaws are little three-wheeled vehicles that are a dirt-cheap form of transportation (the yellow vehicles in the picture above).  They should probably only hold two passengers and a driver, but the vehicles only move with four passengers: three squeezed in back and one with the driver.  Often, a fifth passenger sits on the other side of the driver, holding on for dear life while only half sitting on the seat.  As the vehicles move, they make for quite the experience.  I worry that I may at some point hit that bus the auto drives past leaving less than a foot of space between!

In another auto experience, my friend Bekkah and I were in one last night that broke down in the middle of the road.  The driver pushed it to the side of the road and tried to fix it.  We stayed in the auto, unsure of what to do next because we had not yet paid for our trip but were also not at our destination.  Fortunately, our driver caught another auto for us that only had three passengers, and we rode the rest of the way.

The metro actually entertains me and, in my opinion, shows how kind people can be.  It gets extremely crowded during peak hours.  People shove their way in and pack tighter than sardines.  This can make for an uncomfortable ride at times.  However, whenever someone needs to leave the car, people somehow find a way to create exit paths.  It amazes me that riders, uncomfortable as they are, willingly squeeze tighter in order to let me stand in front of the door before it opens.  Then the flow out involves another shoving episode...

I mentioned that drivers often ignore traffic lanes.  This often includes the center lines.  Just as we in America sometimes move into the opposing lane of traffic briefly to pass slow vehicles, so also Indian drivers pass slow vehicles...all the time.  I feel we sometimes spend more time passing than driving in our lane.  This is fine, but it moved to a more extreme experience last Sunday.  Our van saw traffic ahead while on a major highway, size-wise comparable to I-94 in Central Minnesota - two lanes each way divided by a ditch.  Our driver crossed the ditch to the other side and proceeded to drive in the wrong road until the end of the traffic jam, forcing cars to change lanes rather to avoid head-on collisions. Talk about frightening!  I think I would have rather sat in traffic!

This last bit is not amusing at all, but it fits the general topic.  In a very frightening and sad experience, our bus was in an accident on Wednesday.  I was reading when the bus slammed on its breaks.  There was a thud followed by the windshield shattering.  Then I heard, "Oh, my God!  We hit a man!"  A motorcyclist had been in the wrong lane and lost control before he could change lanes or we could stop.  I never want to relive the experience of seeing him pass in the vehicle that took him to the nearby hospital (they didn't wait for an ambulance).  Fortunately, last we heard, the man is likely to recover.  The bus driver should be able to keep his job, as it was obvious that he could not have prevented anything.  Then again, we were told that only the presence of police immediately on the scene kept people from attacking the driver and possibly even the bus itself.  The nightmarish experience literally forced us to reflect on the dangers of driving anywhere in the world.  Passing slower vehicles is easier said than done, and even motorcycles cannot squeeze into all spaces.  I pray that we will never again encounter the horror of another accident.

I did not intend to end on a sad note, but I feel it would be disrespectful to the situation if I followed the last story with something funny.  So I will not.  Expect another post soon with more on some of our recent activities.  I may also have more pictures prepared and even possibly videos.  But for now, goodbye.