Going to Work

Monday morning, it was raining. In Chennai, that is unusual. This city does not get the monsoon rains that other parts of the country receive, and additionally, Chennai is in drought conditions. So the drive to work was worse than usual for several reasons:

• It was raining
• I was going to a different location that was across town
• Traffic seemed to be unusually heavy, most likely because of the rain

The trip was uneventful but it did last about an hour and a half. I did not see any accidents, traffic continued to move at a steady pace, and there were few animals in the road. It was interesting to see that even with the rain, many people continued to ride on motorcycles, bicycles, and three-wheelers. There were lots of wet motorists on the road.

Tuesday morning included another ride across town to get to work. There was no rain this day. Still the ride was interesting. I saw two buses overloaded with people including two men on each who were holding on somehow to the outside of the bus. (I wonder if they still had to pay the fare.) At one intersection, I saw a young girl stick her head outside a bus window and throw up a couple of times. (Awesome!) I saw several motorcycles with multiple riders. One had four persons on it. (One of my colleagues swears that he's seen a motorcycle with two riders and two goats aboard. I don't doubt it.) The traffic continued to move around our vehicle at a frenetic pace sometimes with only a few inches to spare. (At one point, we realized that there was more space inside our vehicle than there was around it.)

Today, Wednesday, was more of the same on the ride to work although we were back at our original location that takes only about 15 minutes to get to work.

Tomorrow night I begin the 32-hour journey back home. Whoop!