Getting Around in Delhi

After our morning taking the plunge in the Main Bazaar we were next challenged to take an auto rickshaw and ask for the Delight Cinema where we were to meet as a group for lunch. Finding an auto rickshaw is not a problem. If you are of European descent you are continually bombarded by drivers asking if you need their services. Negotiating the price is the next step. Haggling is part of the culture and expected in most cases. Having agreed on the fee all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride. The first time or two it is terrifying as the vehicle weaves in and out of traffic, horns are honking all around you and what appear to be near misses are par for the course. You quickly realize there are unwritten rules that are followed and cooperation abounds from virtually everyone. Road rage as we know it in the west does not exist and drivers of all vehicles work together to solve congestion problems.

We pretty quickly learnt that there is order to the traffic chaos. As a pedestrian on the streets of Delhi once you figure that out the craziness starts to make a lot more sense. The horn is used to announce your presence, not admonish other drivers as it is used in the U.S. Cooperation makes everything work, stay on the path you selected, don’t change your plan and everyone will work their way around you. It helps that the average speed on most city streets is probably less than 20 m.p.h. A guide that showed me the sights in Jaipur shared his three rules for driving in India. 1. Good brakes, 2. Good horn and 3. Good luck. In the beginning these appear to be the only possible rules of the road but as time goes by you realize that everyone understands that pedestrians, cyclists, rickshaws (both the auto and pedal type), motor cycles and trucks must all get where they are going and it is the responsibility of everyone to make sure that this happens.

Later in the trip on the road through the Spiti Valley. I use the term “road” loosely here – think single lane cart track hugging the edge of a mountain often serving as a river bed also – we observed two Indian cargo trucks passing a pair of tourist jeeps by backing up, pulling forward and waving one another forward and back. On the same road we also watched as the passengers of a local bus worked together to move a large boulder from the road so the bus could continue on its route.

"Tuk-Tuk" the Auto Rickshaw 

A typical road in the Himalayas