Class System
Throughout our visit it was all-too-obvious that India has a rigid (and apparently universally accepted) Class System, in which the Lower Orders know their place and peacefully and willingly keep to it.
Litter
With the exception of New Delhi which was spotless, everywhere else we went, in cities, towns, villages, and open countryside, there was always a considerable amount of discarded litter and rubbish everywhere, with no-one seeming to care. Obviously, a considerable amount of it was single use plastic.
Drinking Water
Tap-water in India is universally claimed to be too unsafe to ever drink. We enjoyed a never-ending stream of plastic bottles of drinking water wherever we were.
Driving Practices
Drivers on the road rarely if ever voluntarily gave way to any other vehicles, forcing their own precedent on other drivers. As expected, those in the Lower Orders seemed to happily accept it, and when those of the Upper Orders clashed there was a lot of lengthy horn sounds as each of them tried to enforce their own precedence on others. The practice seemed to be universally accepted.
Dogs
We saw a lot of dogs everywhere. None of them wore collars, and none of them were accompanied by anyone.
Farm Animals
Farm animals are apparently never required to be kept in fields. They were regularly found grazing on the verges of roads, over which they slowly wandered at will, unaccompanied by anyone. They were also seen wandering unsupervised through towns, and even along railway lines, stepping from sleeper to sleeper. This refers principally but not exclusively to cattle.
Arable Crops
All of the arable crop fields we saw from the bus and train were remarkably small by European standards, too small to be accessed by what we refer to as agricultural vehicles, of which we saw no examples anyway. We saw a lot of fields being cropped, all by hand. It seemed that they manually cut the heads off food crops such as wheat, before cutting the stalks to the ground, bundling them and carrying them away manually. These tasks were invariably carried out by women.
Found in India (rounded to the nearest Million)
1,441M Population
32M Cars
243M Motor Bikes
3M Three Wheelers (Tuk-Tuks)
Avoid the Monsoon Season
In the Delhi area this runs from late-June to mid-September.
India is a different world!
An unforgettable experience.
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