Going Back to India

The tall buildings, the heaps of people, the fantastic traffic jams, the unforgettable train journeys, the beautiful cars, the long drives at 1 am, the food eating at 2 am, where should I start. After going to India I can easily say that India is the best place in the world.

You might think that there is so much traffic, there are so many people, but that is the beauty of India. In NZ you won’t even be able to see one person after midnight, you won’t even be able to see anyone on the streets after 8 or 9pm. But, in India that is when the day started and that is when we started having fun.

Nearly every day all of us cousins (whose house we stayed at) stayed awake till around 4am. Now, you might be wondering what we did. Well to start of with we called some of our friends over at 12:30am and talked. At around 1:30-2am we went out to eat or we cooked something delicious at home. And yes there are places in India which stay open until that late. In fact the place that we went to opened at 11:30 am and closed at 3:30 am.

There weren’t many things that they sold over there but they were famous for what they had. The food was so nice that I remember what I had over there every time we went. There was some delicious, mouth watering and scrumptious pav bhaji, egg bhurji and pulau. Pav Bhaji was my favourite.

After eating we usually went for a long drive for around 1-2 hours. And when we returned home we sat down, talked and while talking went to sleep.

Every time we went from my Grandfather's to my uncle's house we travelled by buses. Now, once again this was not like NZ. First of all the bus waited for only a few seconds and on top of that there wasn’t much space to get in. So if you wanted to get in then you first had to push everyone out of the way. And you don’t get your tickets from the bus driver. There is always a ticket conductor who sells the tickets. Now you might think that this is bad. But, if you try it out even once then you will feel like going on it again.

Lets talk about rickshaws. You might be thinking, what’s that? Well, it is a three wheeled form of public transport. And yes, it has a cover inside where you seat. The rickshaw is a three seater vehicle but, a lot of people sit inside it. The seats are usually soft (the material of seats varies a lot). It runs on a meter. I personally prefer a rickshaw because it is small so it can get through the traffic and I find it quite comfortable.

Now, I am going to tell you about my favourite form of public transport, the Indian trains. If you go to a station then there is not much place to stand. And, if you see the train then it is even worse. You can see people hanging out of the doors and sitting on the trains.

by Harsh Shah