Transport in Delhi

I've travelled a bit, well quite a lot really, and have seen manhy cities with bad, congested traffic. There's Manila and Bangkok for starters. In New York and London it's so congested that hardly anything moves. But Delhi traffic is something altogether different. There are as many insane drivers with a death-wish in Delhi as there other in other cities of 17 million people - the difference here is that the traffic actually moves very fast. But don't get the idea that it's all in a straight line. Nothing is straight in India, least of its politicians, but that's another story.

Delhi traffic is completely insane. Where there are lanes marked on the roads, they are perceived as rather dull decorations. Nelson Mandela Marg is supposedly three lanes in each direction, but this doesn't prevent the drivers from squeezing five or six vehicles side-by-side in the carriageway. There are cars, of course, and trucks completely overburdended with their wares. That makes up for three vehicles across. Then add a couple of auto-rickshaws, as in the picture above. Note the number of people in this open-to-the-air vehicle. That still leaves room for a motorbike or two, with multiple passengers, none of them wearing helmets. The women sit side-saddle on these death-machines, gazing serenely about them. If it was me, I would have my fingers dug into the shoulder blades of the driver, all the way up to my knuckles! All these smaller vehicles swerve in and out between the larger ones.

They all move very fast, as I say, except for the ones that don't. You see, Delhi also has animals on the road, in various forms. The photo is of a camel in Delhi. At the top of the page is an ox cart. There are also a few weary-looking horses dragging heavy loads around.

Then of course there are the weary-looking men dragging heavy loads about. Regular readers will note that I have commented on the heat, which even by Delhi standards is excessive this year (five degrees above average the weather bureau says). Well, these hardy men just keep dragging their loads all around Delhi in the debilitating heat. Their endurance is amazing.


For my part, I travel to work via a combination of Metro (underground railway) and bus. I walk to my local Metro station, which is Saket. The photo shows the bright-shiny Metro station at Saket, newly-minted for the Commonwealth Games, just six months late. The Metro is a marvel, by any standard in the world. I've travelled on the Paris Metro, the London Underground and the hideous New York Subway. The Delhi Metro beats 'em all! It is clean, efficient and runs on time. Swipe cards make the commuting so simple, and best of all, it's air-conditioned. It's super-cheap and really frequent. When I get to the Metro station at about 8:30am, it's great. I get a seat all to myself, and I dont' have to touch intimate body parts of strangers. On the other hand, if I'm running late and arrive at, say, 8:40am it's a different story. The Metro is packed! See the photo.

It might seem crowded, but it is nothing compared to the buses. They seem to warp time and space in their ability to squeeze people into confined quarters. After riding the Metro for about 10 minutes, I alight and walk in 40+ heat to the bus station. Now, let me just disabuse any readers of the concept of 'bus depot' that they may have learnt in other cultures. This is India. What it means is that there are at least a hundred people standing by the side of the road, standing on the road itself, sitting under trees and generally forming an enormous gaggle of humanity. Then a bus arrives. Well, 'arrives' is not accurate. The bus slows down and flings its doors open, and everybody sprints to the doors and leaps on. If you're lucky, the bus sometimes actually stops, rather than slows down, but it's not common on my route. I now have amazing skills at leaping on and off moving vehicles.

Once aboard, I purchase a bus pass, which enables me to travel on any bus in Delhi for the day. I pay Rs50 (about $1) and the ticket seller asks my name, which has been transliterated into a bewildering array of versions. Cathy becomes Cappy, Kaphi and my personal favourite, Coffee. I have kept my bus passes, but I think I will have one of them framed. When I first bought a bus pass I didn't realise that they also wanted to know my age. I simply didn't understand the question. So the cheerful ticket seller wrote '25' as my age. He is my new best friend! :-)

So I catch the bus for about 25 minutes to place called Mayapuri Chowk. Here the road is three lanes wide on each carriage way, and the bus just stops in which ever lane its in, usually the middle one. The doors open and all the passengers spill out into the middle of a three-lane carriageway, deftly dodging all the above-mentioned moving mayhem. Last week the chap in front of me stepped off the bus and was promptly run over by a motorbike. After much cursing and swearing, he picked himself up and toddled away. I learnt a useful lesson - when you get off a bus in the middle of a freeway in Delhi, look to the left before alighting.

After surviving alighting from the red bus, I then board a green bus to take me on the final leg of about 6-8 minutes. This local bus is usually incredibly crowded, with bodies pressed into every available space. It's not possible to take a photo in those conditions, since one can't move one's limbs, but the photo on the left shows a practically empty bus. Imagine it with four times as many people in the aisles.
Now I've spent a lot of time in very intimate positions with Indians on buses, frequently with my nose pressed into someone's armpit as they hang onto the strap, and I try to hang onto my dignity. This begs the question: why don't Indians smell? I've been on other crowded transport systems, as mentioned, and travelling in summer is as much an ordeal for the olfactory senses as anything else. But not in India. Nobody smells bad. I have two theories about this. One, posulated by an Indian friend, was that the spices in their food actually make them smell better. Possibly. The other thing that I notice all the time on my daily journeys are that Indians are very, very clean. They wash constantly. If there is an open water source in Delhi, there are men, women and children washing themselves and their clothes. In the slums, men and women cart water by hand and are constantly seen scrubbing their cloths or their children. The photo shows a woman at Mayapuri scrubbing clothes outside her house. So public transport in India may be an assault on one's personal space, but it is not an assault on the other senses. And most importantly, it actually works.

Postscript: Apart from the last one, all the photos on this page were taken by my good friend Bart. As a newbie to India he took many, many photos of things that I am so used to, I didn't even notice. Dank je wel Bartje!