Still plugging away
Walking back from the pub tonight I was thinking about riding and traffic in India. 5 months isn’t enough to talk about bigger stuff yet, although that’s what occupies the mind.
So, just rattling off stuff:
- Pedestrians have no rights. Zero.
- The traffic isn’t madness. The opposite in fact. I even have a name for it: Homogeneitraffic. Cool, huh? The first thing is that the accident rate, same as Indonesia, is (I’m guessing) lower than at home, despite the fact it looks like a video game. And the evidence of this are the mothers, children and even babies on the back of scooters and motor with no helmets. They’re safe. Because in a country with a long history of a single people densely interacting with each other there’s harmony. They’re chill. As simple as that. Even in the most dire road circumstances, you just don’t see stress. They make their presence known when closely maneuvering with the horn, which means “I’m here”. However no one is a bigger critic of the overall complexity of the experience than an Indian. They bitch about it all the time. But their doesn’t cause them them to be frustrated to the point that they feel stress, which is common to, say, Vancouver.
- Out in the country there’s a different thing because of the buses and trucks. They are higher up the food chain and have road priviledges. They’re coming through, get out of the way. No problem.
- Good thing I didn’t listen to any of the people who said ride a small bike in India. Bullshit: you would go nowhere fast and get eaten alive by the crowds of similar sized bikes, having no advantage and none of the experience or harmony. Bring a big enduro and have road presence, power and options. The HP2 has been in its element here.
However where I’m headed is maybe the place place on earth for her, which is what led me to write this.
Comments
As much as I hate Trump, that T-shirt is ridiculous. T.