Transportation (Revenge of The Horn)

Jodhpur to Jaisalmer

Perhaps the most omnipresent thing in India is the Horn. I capitalise that intentionally, because it’s so present, so in your face, so everywhere you go, that it seems to assume a life of its own. You hear it when you’re sitting in a comfortable air-conditioned six-seater, or perhaps, a cramped four person Tata, a rickshaw, a yellow Kolkata love-machine, a scooter, while walking the streets, while sitting in restaurants, and, unfortunately, while sleeping. You can’t escape it.

 So whilst all the Horns are blowing, and the cars and trucks and motorcycles and animals and people smash together into one big cluster-fuck of activity, all you hear is the carnage of the road and all the Horns trying to outdo each other. Believe it or not, the Horn does reign supreme, and with rigorous application, eventually everything gets down.

And amidst all this carnage – and indeed, all of India – lays this wonderful collection of people transportation machines. My descriptions won’t do them any justice – there are far too many of them, and they normally just brush by when you’re immersed in a roadside Dosa or chicken Tikka.

So, let me just show you, and hopefully you can create your own images of what it’s like when all these machines merge into one single rolling mass and somehow take people where they need to be.

There’s trains too – I’ve already blogged about those. They give you a really good feel for the distance between places, and somehow create some interconnected web, which you don’t often get when flying place to place. Only when you leave the airport do the machines take over.

And you can imagine, myself, beak dipper and Ben, all crammed into a car, the back of a rickshaw or whatever, the Horn overriding any form of conversation, along with its constant companions of exhaust fumes and burning brake pads.

There are a lot of things I will miss about Indian when I finally leave. A lot of things. The Horn is not one of them.