Only in India...

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As far as I can tell, only in (northern?) India...

do you find conglomerates of pedestrians, cars, trucks, auto-rickshaws, bicycle-rickshaws, camels, donkeys, horses, and cows all mixed together in a crowded flux through the streets...

do people nominate slight accidents, traffic blocks, foreigners buying something loud or interesting in the streets, or basically anything even slightly out of the ordinary as spectacles worth crowding around and delegate themselves traffic cops, road workers, negotiators, spectators, or whatever else is called upon...

do people carry objects four times their own size and probably their weight up steep hills or twisting mountain passes and call it part of everyday life...

do gaggles of women and children climb and descend mountains that we foreigners climb in hiking boots carrying 2 liters of water, trail mix, and lunch... with flip-flops and nothing in their hands...

do people live by dried up river beds that have become rivers of trash in tiny, tarp-covered huts, and not move because there's nowhere else to go...

are medicines cheap enough that you can get some for a rupee each, and yet still women will come up to you and beg for money because they haven't enough to fill their prescriptions for their children...

are women allowed to be doctors, authors, and politicians, but not waiters, taxi-drivers, tailors, or clothing-sellers...

do you have gorgeous, what in the States would be million-dollar homes, being neighbors to the most decrepit huts you'll ever see...

do you have, in these same cities with huge houses, open sewers that overflow into sewer-rivers in the streets when it rains, that children run around in their bare feet...

do children play cricket in in the villages with cow patties and large sticks...

does the holy cow roam free and is the only thing that some cars and trucks will bother to swerve around and that everyone leaves alone, tolerating the dung in the streets and their blocking of roads, and yet also is sometimes tied and used as an animal of burden, pulling carts...

can people make enough money to live on by selling Chai for 4 or 5 rupees a cup (about 10 cents) by the side of the highway...

do people consider you "like a God" when you are a guest in their house (I was told this by several people, so I know that phrase was not just something chosen by one solicitous host), and yet there is also a _general_ culture of everyone being out for themselves and their own family alone...

is the society basically modern, yet most marriages are still parentally arranged, castes still matter, and the culture is still sexist enough that women are not allowed to go see the doctor about the results of the autopsy on a family member (there were about 30 men when we went with Dr. Joshi but not a single female was allowed), women don't wander the streets alone, and even the hint of dating can be hugely damaging to a girl's reputation...

are the people so incredibly lean and hardy that they seem to be able to go without food, sleep, and very little water and still climb *mountains* and drive 24 (or 70, as was our driver's record!) hours straight...

are time, normal courtesies like waiting your turn in line or pushing you out of the way so they can stand/sit in front of you, and personal space entirely relative for some of the people...

are questions like whether you're married or dating someone entirely normal to be asked directly after the first, "Hello"...

are children of 11 allowed to drive motorcycles through the crazy congested streets that adults would be wise to beware of...

is honking while driving nearly every 3 seconds not only accepted but completely expected...

can you consider almost being run over or crashing head-long into a car/truck/motorcycle or careening over a the ledge of a mountain pass only 3 times in one day a pretty good day...

can with all these characteristics, and despite the country having made you so sick you considered your chances of dying from dehydration and only half-jokingly informed your friends that if you did so you'd like your body to be shipped back to the States for cremation, can the country so enthrall? enchant? infect? you such that at the end of 7 weeks you're completely conflicted about your feelings about going home. Some percentage happy, some percentage relieved, yet also some quite significant percentage sad and sure that a part of you will always long to be back every single minute you're away...

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