First impressions of Hyderabad and Bangalore

You hear about traffic in India, and you can watch videos of it. But until you step into an auto rickshaw at rush hour in Hyderabad, you haven’t experienced traffic. My 50 minute commute to go 3 miles was like a roller coaster. My life was in this driver’s hands who spoke virtually no English, who didn’t know where my hotel was and had to keep stopping and asking people for directions, and then speeding off honking what seemed like 100 times during the journey.

My first days in India were filled with sensory overload. So many people, vehicles, animals, sights, smells, and sounds overwhelmed me. The sheer number of people and noises everywhere was a bit of an adjustment, even to an urban American.

Travel is very inefficient in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Not many people ride bicycles, but most are on motor bikes and motorcycles. Next most common are auto-rickshaws. Then you see private cars and cabs with small liter engines. Then you see American-sized cars and taxis. Occasionally, you also see Ox-pulled carts or people pushing carts down the street. People crossing the street risk life and limb and often stand inches away from serious injury. However, you have to put yourself in the middle of traffic to cross the street, because there's rarely an opening in traffic on the main roads.

There’s a lot of construction and poverty in these areas as well. Child beggars come up at intersections asking for money. The streets are filled with so many people all trying to go in the same direction at the same time. It’s just completely jammed up. On a 3-lane road, there are 6 vehicles across, all vying for space, and trying to get through the blocked intersections as fast as they can.

One image I found striking was (because I was staying in the Muslim section of Hyderabad) was to see Muslim women in full black burkas, with only their eyes showing, sitting side-saddle on the back of motorcycles, being driven by a man who they weren’t touching--crisscrossing and zig-zagging through traffic.

If one side of the street was stopped up, motorbikes and auto rickshaws would promptly jump the curb and start driving on the other side of the road, with cars honking at them, then they’d reach the intersection, and get in the far-right lane, and carve a path for themselves through the intersection to get back over the left side of the street they should be on.