The above title represents the sound I have heard constantly since I arrived here in India. It seems that if you don't beep your horn you are a minority and will get nowhere in traffic. All people seem to be doing is driving and beeping the horn which kind of makes the horn a bit pointless as it's meant to be there for emergencies!! I can imagine people here just think "Oh another horn, so wha...." BANG and they are dead. Stupid! Today I saw 10 year old kids driving mopeds home from school. This is also stupid!
Anyway let me rewind to yesterday. Got to Heathrow really early and got our Premiere class flight to Mumbai (I think they changed the name to try to make it appeal to more people. It's basically business class). Lovely cabin, seats that reclined into beds to sleep on. Nice. I even pushed the boat out and ate some of the food i'd never tried before. This being a duck and chutney wrap with peppers. I even ate the raw peppers and have to say they weren't that bad.
So we got to Mumbai airport and were fast tracked through immigration and i'm thinking "This is a nice place". It was then that we approached customs and they pulled us over for having 4 laptops with us. Apparantly they reckon you can only take 1 laptop per person into the country and anything else you have to pay duty on. I told the guy they were company laptops so therefore I had not bought them so why the hell would I want to pay duty on them. We were basically bullied into giving them $300. Unfair and considering whilst all this was happening the guy talking to us was trying to barter to get the laptops through for any money I had on me I doubt any of it was above board! We paid the money and left to get our next flight to Ahmedabad.
Outside Mumbai airport we needed to get back to the upper level to depatures. I asked some guy the way and he sent us down some alleyway that had a lift that looked like it wouldn't hold a feather up and told us to get into it. I carried on, the lift got to the top, the doors opened in the arse end of the airport and next to the lift was a guy with an AK47. Nice start!
There were people everywhere, how this many people wanted to fly at midnight is beyond me. It was absolute chaos. We went to a little hut as the army guy wouldn't let us in the airport without a ticket (I explained it was an e-ticket but he was having none of it and he had a gun). We got this thing that was apparantly a ticket but was more like something i'd find in the recycling bin at work. It had someone elses old ticket printed on the back!
Finally we got in, got the plane and flew to Ahmedabad (we had 20 seats to ourself in the front of the plane as we were the only people in business class. This cheered me up)
Got to Ahmedabad airport and our driver was there to take us to the hotel. This was an experience. Some of the various things I saw were herds of cows on what looked like the motorway, wild dogs everywhere, goats on the road, people sleeping in the road, tuk tuks everywhere (beeping horns), vans that looked like they should have been taken off the road in 1940 (one guy was in the back of one balancing on some boxes asleep with the back door open!! He could have easily fallen out. No awareness of health and safety here!!) The driver said "At night we don't follow the rules of the road" as he shot across a crossroads and various red lights just missing other traffic. This place is not for nervous passengers!
We arrived at the hotel which is a very nice place but looks out of place as there is some sort of slum on the opposite side of the road (again it has cows, goats etc) and people driving like maniacs. We pulled up at a massive security gate, the driver stops the car, 4 security guards surround the car and proceed to inspect it. They lifted the bonnet, checked underneath with a mirror, got a sniffer dog in and of course they all have guns! We got through the gate to the entrance of the hotel where we had to put all of our suitcases through an x-ray machine and go through a full body scanner. (We have to do this every day!) We were finally there and I went to my room to bed!
Went to work today. Nice building, poor district across the road but inside work we have a waiter bringing me drinks. It all doesn't really add up or seem fair!! They even have a guy who mans the lift and presses the button for me. I mean what is the world coming to when you can't even press the floor you want in a lift without help!
This whole place is a bit of an eye opener for me. If I look out my window now there will no doubt be more goats and cows in the road just having a stroll in the fast lane! with people nearly knocking each other off their bikes or crashing cars.
Most of all though I will hear the beeping of bloody horns!!!
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