Rivers of Life

I'm back in India, starting a two-week trip through the sub-continent with my mother and sister. It's my fourth trip on four years. We started in Delhi, took a two day-jaunt to Agra to see Taj Mahal, and are then driving back to Delhi from where we will fly to Bhutan for a week of trekking, fulfilling one of my mother's long-held suburban dream. Now that she has bought a Prius, all that remains for her to complete a perfect year is for St. Obama to be elected president...

We've seen all the major Mughal monuments: the Taj Mahal, the major forts in Delhi and Agra, the eerie abandoned palace complex at Fatepur Sikri. We've seen most of the over-sized, built-to-last imperialist Edwin Lutyen architecture in New Delhi, the relics of the headiest days of Britain's colonial rule. We've dabbled in Modern India, staying in some of the world's finest hotels (the Oberois in Delhi and Agra-- both excellent). But what has impressed us the most has been the view between all of these sites – the view from the inside of our air conditioned car of the endless, chaotic flow of humanity that overflows indias highways – what Rudyard Kipling referred to as “the river of life”.

It's my fifth trip in four years to India, but the first of Ima and Mimi. I think every visitor here reaches a moment, usually within hours of arrival, where you suddenly give up all Western expectations of orderly transport, and simply start to admire the system of movement around you. The incessant horn of your driver, ceases to be a reckless substitute for orderly overtaking and becomes a sort of background music. The cows lounging in the road cease to be a disappointing example of lack of order and become simply part of the scenery (as you are to them). It's part of what makes, to my mind, India the last great Asian redoubt – life here requires a sort of inner Zen lost to the Western world and more orderly East Asia alike.

The roads we were driving on were fairly new, so there wasn't much turbulence, just a lot of sudden motions as Narinder, the driver would swerve the car to avoid a reckless motorcyclist, or a burst of noise as he would lay on the horn to inform an encroaching lorry of our presence. As we sat in the air-conditioned oasis of our comfortable car, we watched essentially every form of ground transport known to man weave together around us in a strange and noisy dance that seemed to stretch the limit of the road to its absolute physical capacity.