We were taken recently to a slum project run not too far away from where we are currently living. It was a memorable trip for many reasons, (beautiful kids, amazing work being done, 5 people crammed in an auto-rickshaw!) but the main one was the various modes of transport we took to get there and back. I will probably talk a lot about modes of transportation in the coming months as every different way of travelling is different and seems like an adventure (someone said to me the other day that their rickshaw ride that day was like a ride at Disneyland, except real!) and there is always a story to be told!
Every morning and afternoon we take a rickshaw to school, in the mornings the traffic is not too bad so it’s generally fairly tame, although fairly bumpy as the road surfaces are pretty bad. But the journey home is often a bit mad; a rickshaw is essentially a bike with a trailer and you sit perched precariously on a seat that is frequently on a lean and the rickshaw wallah weaves his way through traffic, cars, motorbikes, trucks, buses (with men hanging out the doors yelling at the rickshaws to get out of their way-at least I think that’s what they are saying, my bangla isn’t great!) other rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, people, produce! I am a little more relaxed about it now but the first few trips had me clinging to the seat for dear life! The trip to the slum project was a bumpy auto-rickshaw ride with 5 girls crushed in the back-jolting over every bump in the road, of which there were many.
The ride home was a rickshaw through a rabbit warren of tiny streets which was the bumpiest ride I’ve had yet, my legs were sore from bracing myself and we got rear-ended a couple of times from making abrupt stops for cars, not to mention the potholes in the roads!
I seem to have gotten off-topic. What I am trying to say is…getting from A to B in this country is not easy, it is an adventure every day that at the moment seems exciting but I can imagine that in a few months I may find extremely frustrating! Every mode of transport has different pros and cons, and at the moment it’s a matter of trying to figure them all out and use the best one for where you are going! All very confusing-there is no jumping in the car and going from A to B here, it all depends on where you are going and who with and whether or not they will give you a good price!
I have a feeling that I’ll be so used to it by the time I get home that New Zealand roads will seem very boring, but at the moment when I’m about to get crushed by a bus while teetering on a rickshaw, I do miss the well-ordered streets of home!
But life is an adventure right?
Lots of Rickshaws merging with buses and trucks!
The view from the back of a cng or tuk tuk.
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