KEY POINTS:
I started writing this while my bus was wedged in a traffic jam, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
It's a narrow two-lane highway but we are three-abreast at present - one tourist bus, a truck loaded with sacks of flour and decorated with tinsel and a local bus.
When
our bus finally broke through, Salim our driver pulled out to overtake the truck in front and we hurtled towards a stationary petrol tanker directly in our path. It was helpfully labelled "Highly Inflammable" in brightly coloured letters.
All Indian roads are highly inflammable but miraculously, despite the manic overtaking, wandering cows and pedestrians with death wishes, conflagrations are not as frequent as one might expect.
Overtaking in the face of oncoming vehicles is the norm here. If Salim our driver doesn't think he is going to make it past whatever we're lumbering past he simply pulls back into line, even if there does not appear to be a gap.
The truck in front of us was emblazoned with the words "Blow Horn" - an unnecessary instruction because Salim is constantly blasting the bus horn at everything from cows to juggernauts.
We also have a driver's assistant who is almost literally Salim's right-hand man. He waves hand signals out the left-hand side of the bus to create gaps, leans out to make sure other motorists don't try to cut across our bows, shouts at drivers of small cars who block our way and on occasions masterminds the physical removal of obstables such as driverless rickshaws.
He also helps Salim perform complex manouevures in heavy traffic. Yesterday when a u-turn across four lanes of traffic going both ways was required our assistant jumped out and calmly held up the traffic while Salim performed a six-point turn in the rush hour. No-one seemed to object.
Later the same night, he helped Salim back the bus into a space bordered by two tall metal signs. We parked with maybe 1cm to spare on each side, our assistant directing operations by slapping the back of the bus.
Now as we have cleared the traffic jam a bow-legged man in a dhoti and red turban has suddenly decided to turn his small flock of sheep across the highway.
While we wait for them to cross a truck pulls alongside us and ahead of us two tankers are bearing down on us. They too stop - it is a frozen tableau of head-ons.
There are really only two ways to cope with all this for first-timers - either treat it like an amusement park ride without the queues or never look straight ahead...
