What a battle getting out of town. The mass of people is unbelieveable. The thing that gets me is that they don't give a damn for anyone else. They drive ride and walk like the world belongs to them, alone. I don't understand that at all. Is it a huge inferiority complex, that says I am so important I can do what I like.....like walk into a moving motorcycle as one did to me, or ride my motorcycle into a far bigger motorcycle as another did to me. What the hell is it about these people that makes them so damn self important that they actually hurt themselves ?
Yes the chickens were alive !
They drive like that as well. It is not unusual to meet vehicles three abreast coming down the two lane road toward me. In that event its the off the road for me. It is very unusual.
My observation and mine alone is that they are so desperate for some recognition. And in a population of however many billion people recognition may be an issue for some. The commercial morality issue is another matter that vexes me.
Do they say what they think you want to hear to again appear important, or is it a deeper moral issue ? The Satyam issue which in India is big news every day is a case of commercial greed, fraud and immorality. Cheating and lying, but that is not just an Indian issue. America has it. New Zealand has it ( and lots of it ). So perhaps it is unfair to see that as an Indian issue. It is a world issue, the lack of morality in commerce and that is why we have a financial crisis.
So as I battled my way across the flats of coastal Maharashtra these things were not on my mind. Survival was. Then the Gats, the mountains that rise on the western coast, with their colourful people, the Sares in the feilds, the villages, all dirty and dusty filled with animals, carts, bikes animals, people, and people, endless people.
But the roads. Signs disappeard, the sealed surfaces disappeared, and it was just hard riding, but that what its about. Frankly there are times when it makes Russian roads look good. So with the signs missing I got the wrong road at Delia and added to my journey, however something godd often happens and as I rode toward Aurangabad in the dying rays of the sun, the fields turned gold and the parade of people and animals making their way home was pretty magical. The buffalo used as cart pulling animals, some white, some gold, and the black ones, milking animals I suspect with the lower curled horns......and the cart loads of grain stalks, and the fields of cotton buds white in the grey fields. It was pretty good.
But I made it to a Hotel. Dirty, rude ( its not a personal thing, rudeness is an attitude that they accept) and the english. Excuse me if I am repeating but I can not get used to being asked to speak english by someone I can barely understand, with statements like "if you will not be speaking english I cannot be helping you" ...that really gets me.
nzl04
