12. März 13

Traffic in India, or: The art of honking

For us as European the Indian traffic appears rather chaotic: Blowing the horn, blinking, giving signs with the arms or fingers, searching eye contact, and , of course, shouting. Red lights seem to be considered mainly as recommendations, road markings are mostly not visible or are not followed.

At first sight there are no obvious rules and regulations. At one moment traffic is running quite fluently, suddenly everything then suddenly traffic condenses at an intersection or because a vehicle is blocking part of the street. 4-wheelers (cars), 6-wheelers (buses), 2-wheelers (bikes) and 3-wheelers (tuktuks) stream from all sides stream from all sides and jostle for pole positions to continue on their way, using the tiniest gaps to squeeze through. In between, numerous pedestrians “go” for their chance to cross the street. In the middle of all this seemingly chaos - we are lost. The first few tours set our teeth on.