So, while we were waiting to be picked up, we decided to go to this cute little café two buildings down. There were two boys at the house, Syilus and Robin. They followed us and sat outside. It was so cute. The last time my grandfather was in India, the café had Wi-Fi. This time it did not. Ellie, Melanie, and I each ordered a chocolate shot there. I thought it was going to be, like, a mini cup of coffee that was actually mostly chocolate flavored or something, you know? But, no, it was actually a plastic shot glass full of chocolate mousse and chocolate crumbs. It was quite scrumptious. The café itself looked quite like a café in America, I'd say. A couple of couches, tables, a counter, even a flat screen TV on the wall playing Bollywood music videos. It was really nice.
Sarah's brother, Wete, picked us up from the café, and we took our first rickshaw to Sarah and Wete's school/church. My first impression of the rickshaw and India's traffic in general was, "This does not feel safe." Rickshaws are kind of like a glorified Indian golf cart. And they're street legal. Google it. Really, anything flies on the streets of India to be honest. Anyway, there are tons of rickshaws in India. I'd say there's a pretty even amount of cars, motorcycles, and rickshaws.
If there are physical, white, painted lanes on the street, they are not at all respected in India. All the vehicles squeeze in as tight as possible-including little streets and alleyways, which was quite annoying if you were a pedestrian-coming literally within inches of each other at any and all times. And they go fast in India. There is no speed limit. There are barely any traffic lights. Like, we might have seen twenty in the almost two weeks we were there, and actually stopped at half of them. There are speed bumps in places. And they speed right over them. They don't even slow down. That was usually painful...A whole ton of trust was required in India. You had to trust your driver not to get into an accident, to get you to the right place. We didn't speak the language. That was a huge problem.
The driving is insane, but it completely worked. It doesn't make any sense at all-a lot of things in India didn't make any sense at all, actually-but, it totally worked. I actually came to love the India traffic. I was still a little worried when we'd come inches from running into another car, but I think that's normal. The weather was absolutely perfect on the first day, but it seemed to get hotter and hotter every day, and the rickshaws were nice and breezy. The one thing I didn't like about the India traffic was the horns. There was literally always someone honking. The backs of a bunch of trucks actually said "horn please". I mean, I can see how the horn could be useful, but after a point it's just like come on. Especially when someone honks at you because you're walking in their way, you lock eyes with them, you're clearly unable to move or go any faster, or perhaps you're obviously working on it, and they just stare you down, their hand just laying on the horn. That was frustrating.
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