[Second Edit, Friday 12-Feb]
I've already talked about our driving experience in Delhi, but since this is they guy's edition of an India travel blog I've got more.
When we got to Agra after a few hours on the train, our newest driver gave us some more sage advice about driving in India. He said the key to driving anywhere in the world is, "good brakes, a good horn, and good luck." After over two weeks now of riding in the chaotic streets of three cities, I have still not seen any collisions or people get hurt on the roads. People actually seem to look after each other on these hectic streets. A honk of the horn serves more like echolocation. It says, "I'm here". It is fascinating to watch the harmony within the chaos of these streets. At the beginning of the trip I wasn't sure if I should be afraid, or just close my eyes.
The drivers seem to alternate between semi-orderly main roads with traffic lights that people actually heed, and hectic narrow side roads that are filled with people, animals, produce carts, "tuktuk's" (motorized 3-wheel rickshaws), leg powered rickshaws, delivery trucks, and buses. When I think of the Biblical phrase "easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle", I can surely say I've seen that. Ancient streets are extremely narrow, and have not gotten wider as more people and things have wanted to go through them. Each trip down those narrow streets makes me feel like a camel getting threaded through that needle.
Space issues aside, let me expound about what you see on these journeys. Having now been in Delhi (old and new), Agra, and Jaipur, I can say that there are significant differences between regions. When we moved to Jaipur we entered a different state in India called Rajasthan. Jaipur felt significantly different to us. It reminded me most like Haifa in Israel, but without a port. It is very much a modern city that is having a growth spurt. It is a busy place - not fake busy, but real busy. People all around are working at building up the city. I see technology and modern housing. I see more normal streets with functioning traffic lights that people follow. Jaipur is known for its hand made textiles and marble carvings. The people here are proud of their state and look down upon Agra and Delhi.
By contrast, in Delhi and Agra the garbage is everywhere. When people open up a gum wrapper, they throw it on the ground. The garbage just seems to accumulate in spaces and no one takes any pride to pick it up. In Jaipur things are much cleaner. You will encounter heaps of garbage here and there. This is left for the animals in the streets to graze upon. I suspect this heap is scooped into the dumpsters each night after the animals have gone through the food scraps. I believe the attitude of the two regions will define their success or failure. If you take pride in what you do, who you are, and where you live, then life will prosper and people will band together to build a better future. If you are living a life of pure survival and don't derive meaning to your existence, then you are doomed to live in squalor.
In Delhi and Agra, large sections of the city streets present you with shanti towns used by the extreme poor. They are everywhere. People camp out under bridges, by the train tracks, and wherever there is unused space. Jaipur is much different. I haven't really seen the shanti towns here, though they probably exist on the outskirts of the town. I see some people sleeping on the sidewalks, but this is common in any major US city too.
The streets are just filled with everything. Every kind of human, and animal, and contraption. I feel that even after only a few weeks here I have developed filters to cope with it all. I expect to see the unexpected. My wife and I will often seen something truly remarkable from the safety of our car and glance at each other with puzzled looks on our faces. It is a place that defies explanation. Our driver sometimes sees the same remarkable thing and just quips "It's India".
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