Transportation

India has by far the gnarliest driving I have ever seen. The traffic in the city is like Saigon on steroids. The mix of vehicles is what takes it to another level. Taxis, motor-rickshaws, bicycles, motorcycles, cows, scooters, and big public buses all fight over the road. The horn is always blaring, and it is complete madness.

The highway is a completely different animal. We drove on the two-lane from Pondicherry to Chennai at night. They strongly advised us not to travel at night, and now I understand why. People cut it extremely close passing on the highway. The bigger vehicles will push smaller ones off the road at 100 K an hour. Hindu’s hold their cows sacred, so they are wandering all over the roads. To try to slow down traffic, there are barricades every few miles in alternating lanes. Both directions of traffic have to slow down and zigzag through this one lane. It might work, except that nobody slows down, they just crank the wheel and fly through the barricades. This essentially sets up a high speed game of chicken with oncoming traffic as to who will get into the barricades first.

I saw two accidents in my few days in India, and one of them was a big public bus that went off the highway. It really is nuts here, a New York cab driver wouldn’t stand a chance in Chennai rush hour.