My travels have moved me to Bangalore now, after somehow miraculously getting my flight on Saturday. The plane took off at 10.05am, and I only woke up at 8.39am after sleeping through my alarm. Luckily I'd packed the night before, my taxi driver managed to wend through the trucks, buses, motorbikes, auto-rickshaws, cattle, bikes and people to get me to the airport with 20 minutes before take-off. A quick jog through the terminal and I was checked in and sitting on the plane. Easy. Did I mention I even had a shower before checking out of the hotel?
Bangalore has been great, as was Chennai, in large part due to the people I've met. On Sunday night, I met Sumit & Vishal, friends from previous projects, for a very fine dinner at Sikandar. The food was simple, but tremendously tasty.
Today I met the project team here, and had lunch on the roof of the building. They even gave me some lovely flowers, which is another first! Lunch on the roof was very similar to what happened in Chennai, and I again managed to eat with my hands, this time picking up some of the tricks, although I was still the slowest eater there. As I was reminded, my colleagues have been doing this since birth.
The traffic in both Chennai and Bangalore is absolutely incredible, and I will get a video of it before I leave. Everyone packs on to the roads (buses, trucks, jeeps, cars, auto-rickshaws, motorbikes, bullock carts, handcarts, bicycles, people), and it seems that any manoevre is allowed. Need to take a right turn in the middle lane? Just go for it. Got to take a call? Just pull over and stop in the inside lane. You're driving a bus and want to drive across two lanes? That's fine. The key seems to be using the horn. So long as you beep, you're safe. Amazingly, I've not seen any accidents at all. Once you see the video, you'll get the true gravity of that statement!
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One thing that did amaze me was that at 5am, on my way to the airport, there was a traffic jam -- fullscale horns going (naturally), three lanes across. Edinbutgh councillors should come here to see what a traffic jam is really about, before they embark on the next round of throwing money out the window in an attempt to solve a relatively trivial problem.
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The same works for pedestrians trying to cross the street. There's no point in waiting patiently by the side of the road for the traffic to stop, because it won't. You just have to step out on the road and keep going until you reach the other side; trusting that the traffic will somehow not mow you down.