Monday evening, I jumped on a tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled open air vehicle used for taxi services here) to go see the changing of the guard at the India-Pakistan border.
I know I mentioned transportation in one of my earliest blogs, but I got a full dose of Indian traffic mania on this 60-kilometer round trip.
So a fully loaded tuk-tuk is probably designed for four to six people, but the practice here is to squeeze in 10 passengers and the driver. Two on the sides of the driver and four on each of the two seats. Some passengers even carry large backpacks. Fortunately, I got to set up front on the left side of the driver for both trips and witness the scenes unfold firsthand.
As I mentioned before, lanes of traffic are all but non-existent on all but the major highways. There do not seem to be any particular rules of traffic and traffic lights and stop signs are very few and far between. Drivers just go and avoid hitting things.
And I do mean the avoid accidents, not just try to. For all the harrowing situations I have been witness to here in India, I have only seen one wreck (knock on wood) a car head-on into a tree along the side of the road on my very first day in the country.
Vehicles do come very close. Just on this trip, my knee was slightly outside the tuk-tuk and I felt the flesh of a motorcycle driver brush up against my leg as he inched his way past us in traffic. I mean it is that close at times.
And it’s not just cars, tuk-tuks and motorcycles. All manner of vehicles share the road with people on bicycles, pedestrians, all manner of stray animals, and anything else that might find its way onto the roads and streets.
At one point on the way out of Amritsar, we were involved in a minor traffic jam at an intersection of the major traffic artery we were on and a secondary cross street. This jam, which took about two minutes to clear, involved a tractor pulling a wagon, a man on a tricycle truck with a bed full of loose garlic bulbs, a bus, an old woman crossing the street with no shoes, a woman carrying a baby and, of course, multiple cars, tuk-tuks and motorcycles. It was complete mayhem.
I really don’t understand how people drive in it.
But our driver was calm and collected. Most all of them are. The ones who aren’t blare their horns annoyingly. The ones who are calm, blow their horns casually, because all drivers in India use their horns. It’s just what they do.
He turned his hat around backward and cranked up his music and drove. Like pretty much all drivers, he answered cell calls and texted as he drove.
On the way back, it was after dark and I noticed that headlights and taillights are also generally optional and it was not uncommon to see a set of headlights (or vehicle with no headlights) coming down the wrong way on a divided highway.
It doesn’t really feel safe, but as I noted, I have only seen the one wreck in nearly two months of observing traffic situations.