Transpo in the subco

Its impossible to describe the chaos of streets in India. I thought about doing some random research on this topic as I like to do on here, so I took a look at Wikipedia. Here I was thinking it was pretty neat that there was cows all over the road in a city of 7 million people until I saw a picture on Wikipedia of an elephant walking down a busy city street. What a crock that would have been way cooler. I can see cows in the road in Wyoming.

India.
Wyoming.
See? Same thing.

Here are a few "snaps" (as they say in India) that try (and fail) to capture what it is like.

Street in Chennai. The yellow things are auto-rickshaws. The green things are trees. The things that look like people are people.
Below, my favorite cars ever. There are millions of these in India, and they are probably the only thing in the entire country that are GLEAMING clean and white and sparkly like a game show host's teeth. Apparently they are Hindustan Ambassadors, and no, they were not all made in the 1950s. They STILL make them to look like this! They were the first car to be manufactured in India (based on the Morris Oxford), and, according to Hindustan's website, they have been ruling the Indian roads ever since 1948. I think a lot of ex-India automakers could really take a few style points from these guys. No seriously, those burnt orange Honda Elements give me nightmares sometimes.

BUT, why ride in a colonial-era car like an Ambassador you could ride in a modern executive coach? Yes, it is fluorescent green, has flames on it, and actually says "executive coach" and YES, I drove through Madurai with 4 investment bankers in it. And further, YES, I asked one of them to take a picture of me in front of it (on the basis that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity).

In the countryside in Madurai. I've seen 3 or 4 guys at a time riding up top like this.

Here is a picture of the time when our driver made a wrong turn. And then made a U-turn. And then drove the wrong way down a one-way street to get us back to the street he missed. Lots of people honked, which was pretty much indistinguishable from when he was driving down the street the right way.