Driving in Nepal

Pieces of text taken from Holy Cow!, a novel I am reading by Sarah MacDonald. I found it too funny and too true, because India and Nepal are very much alike.

"Everyone seems to drive with one finger on the horn and another shoved high up a nostril. The ring-road soundtrack is a chaotic symphony of deep blasts, staccato honks, high-pitched beeps, musical notes and a weird duck drone. It's as if Delhi [and Nepal is no different] is blind and driving by sound -- except it seems that many are deaf. Women are curled up on the pavement sound asleep, and a man is stretched out on the median strip, dead to the danger."

This is so true!!! Here's another piece about "the strict species pecking order in the traffic jungle":

"Pedestrians are on the bottom and run out of the way of everything, bicycles make way to cycle-rickshaws, which give way to auto-rickshaws, which stop for cars, which are subservient to trucks. Buses stop for one thing and one thing only. Not customers -- they jump on while the buses are still moving. The only thing that can stop a bus is the king of the road, the lord of the jungle and the top dog.
The holy cow.
...These animals clearly know how they rule and they like to mess with our heads. The hump-backed bovines step off the median strips just as cars are approaching, they stare down the drivers daring them to charge, they turn their noses up at passing elephants and camels, and hold huddles at the busiest intersections where they seem to chat away like the bulls of Gary Larson cartoons. It's clear they are enjoying themselves."

I just had to share these with you, because they are so true here in Nepal. It's the funniest thing. And I get to go back into Kathmandu tomorrow for Town Day and experience it all again.