India is synonym of chaos. Although they manage to keep the airport calm by not letting in anyone not travelling, once you get out of there, your survival instinct makes you observe of all details of the intense and diverse traffic.
There are old and new cars, decorated trucks, thousands of motorbikes (some of them with up to 4 people), the tuk-tuk’s or rickshaws which will soon become your favorite mean of transportation, the tough cycle rickshaw… You realize soon there is more life than pedestrians and vehicles…
Animals are also all around: not only dogs and cats, but also cows, goats, donkeys and porks are present in the streets, playing their role in this organised chaos. This diversity is in constant movement in flexible paths, where right, left, forward and backward become elastic concepts, as lanes are just recommendations. After a few days, you will not remember, that your first minutes you were constantly wondering why everybody is using their horn all the time.
Your focus will also turn towards those animals that walk free: pigs, dogs and even monkeys can be found in any corner of a city like Delhi. You see goats carried on rickshaws and motorbikes by their owners, and sacred cows with a not very healthy aspect, anywhere you can think of.
You even see cows walking on the railroad in a train station.
The sacred condition of the cows make them especially popular in the streets, and vehicles respect them completely, and you think that would not happen back home. A driver will explain you why they are seldom crashed by a vehicle: in such a case, driver would have to pay for any damage, and as it is an important sin, he would need to go to the Ganges to get purified, he would need to pay the brahmins (priests) for some prays, and most importantly: your family would belong from that moment to the lowest caste. Too high price.
Caste system is still present and alive in India, and it does not seem about to change in the short term. This makes some extreme poverty be present, especially in big cities. There are people begging in the streets, and the health standards are way below those you are lucky enough to have at home. The presence of animals living freely in the streets, garbage in any unexpected place, water not being potable makes the living conditions not the most adequate ones. Development is not equal throughout the country, and rural areas still show women walking several kilometres to the nearest source of water, to carry it back home.
Once you start getting used to the chaos, you will look at the people and find out the interesting mix in way of dressing that you find, mainly driven by the several religions present in India. Most of them belong to the Hinduism, muslims follow them (although the most muslim areas in the region are now independent from India -Bangladesh and Pakistan), and then the sikhs with their colourful turbans make them very visible.
When you start getting hungry, you start the challenging task of identifying in the menu, those dishes that you will like the most. A wrong choice can make your mouth be on fire for hours, as they like veggie and specially spicyfood. You take special care with the drinks, always choosing something bottled, and decide not to pay attention to the non observance of some hygiene procedures that are standard at home.
Prices will make you remember why India is one of the main manufacturing countries in the world: they are lower than anywhere else that you have been before. In any case, they recognise the tourists easily and offer them higher prices -still affordable-, and even the government has “prices for foreigners”. You will soon realize that you are an easy target for all kind of scams, even if you try to your eyes wide open: the most popular one is that any transport you take will make you stop in a shop/restaurant where they get a certain commission from any spend you have.
You have an overall idea of India. Ready to live it?