Arrival in Pune

Due to constant power outages, here is what I wrote about my arrival in Pune, only a little late.

I've arrived in Pune. I got in at 4:30 this morning, and met a couple of the fellow interns. They gave us a quick tour around where we are living, and let us unpack and try to catch up on some rest. For me, that meant three hours of sleep. Due to the late monsoon this season, there is strict water conservation, so we only get water between 7 and 9 in the morning and at night. I got up at 7:30 to fill up bottles of filtered water and take a shower.

The drive from Mumbai to Pune this morning was something that was absolutely amazing. The plane landed around 11, and I left the airport around midnight. There was a mob scene outside of rickshaw and taxi cab drivers looking for fares. As soon as I stepped out of the airport, my glasses steamed up from the mixture of fresh rain and intense heat that is the monsoon season. The noise is overwhelming. People were shouting and car horns were blaring. We had a ride arranged with us from the company, so the driver was waiting for me when I got there. Bobby had gotten in before I did, and so they were both waiting for me.

When the driver brought the car around (it was a white Tata hatch back, every car we saw last night on the road was either a white Tata, or a white Toyota), we put our bags in to the car, and found no seat belt clips. He assured us they weren't necessary.

We barreled down the Mumbai streets. The first rule of traffic is that everyone has the right of way. Intersections become a game of chicken with on coming traffic. We dived in front of a bus that came inches from crushing our flimsy vehicle. Horn honking becomes a battle cry as we speed ahead of other drivers. It was nothing personal.

The second rule: traffic lanes are optional, and often best ignored, if they're painted on the road at all. When people say they drive on the left in India, they mean to expect traffic on the left, middle, and sometimes right sides of the road, depending. We would dart in and out of incoming traffic, and ride the sides of the street if things got too slow in our lane.

Highways aren't very common in India, and one of the largest in the country stretches between giant Mumbai and little Pune. It is a six lane highway, with drivers often creating their own extra lanes between other cars. There isn't a speed limit, with cars being naturally limited by the hair pin turns on the mountain, and by the vast number of trucks. Each truck was painted brightly green or orange, covered in colorful Hindu symbols. From the bright cabin would blast Indian pop music. These whales of the highway would lumber up the sides of mountains, and bomb down the other. No two trucks had the same horn; each had it's own unique song. The cars would have the familiar low 'brrrrp', while trucks would play 'brooop breeep blooop beeep' and 'tweeet toot toot', or 'bradanana branana'. Each truck would play a different short song with different notes. Even in the middle of the night, the highway never sleeps.