Comments on life, in English and French. tag:www.essaisdevie.net,2005:Typo Typo 2010-06-10T19:19:40+00:00 Frenya christoutain@yahoo.fr urn:uuid:f12e81cc-4071-4326-95e7-60c20dbf99a4 2006-07-28T00:00:00+00:00 2010-06-10T19:19:40+00:00 <p>July 21st</p> <p>Last day in India&#8230; and what a day! It started at 6:30 am to say good bye to our main host, Dr Srinivasan, who had to go to Tirunelveli. The rest of the morning was dedicated to work at the hospital. After lunch, I went to explore the other side of the street from the guest house. It is a lot different from the hospital site. First there is the cows area, of course in India, cows are sacred and they freely live in the street. I saw a couple of cows walking nonchalantly on the road despite all the traffic.</p> <p>The traffic in southern India:</p> <p style="text-align:center"><img src="http://www.essaisdevie.net/files/Madurai1A.jpg" alt="Cows on the road" /></p> <p>I just realized that I have not spoken of the traffic yet. It is simply a mix between amazement and fear! Bicycles, scooters, motorbikes, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_rickshaw"> autorickshaws </a>, cars and trucks share the road in the same time and in a very noisy way. It seems and sounds (for that matter!) that the street language is the horn. Everybody uses it and it is the custom way to tell a vehicle in front of you that you intend on passing it. Moreover, on the lot of trucks, the quote “Sounds Horn” is written! People pass everywhere and at anytime either in the country or downtown. It really looks like the only rule to pass is to use the horn right before. This technique lead to a lot of scary moments, especially in autorickshaws where we saw the moment we would meet a car, bicycle or other rickshaw in a very unfriendly manner.</p>