We don't need no stinking regulations! (posting from the road)

The title is what I imagine to be the defense to the glaring number of safety infractions that occur in Delhi...each millisecond of the day.

Something happens as you age - aside from the obvious effects of gravity, the inability to lose weight and the constant uttering of the phases you swear you would never say, "When I was your age" or "just you wait and see" - you develop this odd sense of self preservation.  I was never a super carefree kid by any means but I used to have no qualms about walking into a protest to take a good photo or trying to pet a hippo (ok, I haven't yet aged to the point where I wouldn't stop and pet a hippo).  But Delhi...whoa.

There's a man named Karl Pilkington who descried Delhi in the TV Show, "An Idiot Abroad" as a place where you get a sore neck by the end of the day - there is too much to look at, resulting in your head needing to maintain a sort of constant swivel to absorb it all.    It is the very definition of assault on the senses - cows, goats and dogs living in amongst people on the side of every street, traffic that seems to operate as if a nickel was received for every honk of their horn, the smell of curry and poverty as we struggle through what feels like 90% of Delhi's 18 million people converge upon us as we try and see absurdly attractive ruins dappled throughout the city....and it's 40 C outside.  

But none of this is new to anyone who has travelled to India, knows anyone who has travelled to India or watched the Amazing Race.  I should not be shocked by the disregard to safety, Dar Es Salaam will not be appearing on a safety billboard anytime soon, but somehow it seems worse here.  Maybe it's the population density - I know that when that 3-wheeled truck transporting watermelons traveling as fast as Delhi traffic will allow, rolls over (as it obviously will) it will kill 11 people.  

Our driver, Mr Negi, who it seems is going to be on vacation with us as our permanent driver, told us not to worry about the seat-belts that we were requesting...we will travel like Maharajas...no seat-belts needed.  Despite my staunch belief that seat-belts do in fact save lives, I am choosing to not panic here.  Partially because it's really hard to get up any speed when traffic has turned what should be a 4 lane road into a 7 lane road.  

But the worst has to be the electrical wiring of this city.  I am writing about it because I have seen it, all of it. It's handy that it's not concealed like conventional power that we are used to...it's out in the open...twisted and woven just above our, and millions of other folks heads.  Remember how every year, when you pull out your Christmas lights, despite swearing you put them away in an orderly fashion, they are a tangled mess?  That is the best descriptor of what appears to be the electrical grid that blankets this city.  Anyway, it's also why I feel it deserves the title of the industry with the greatest safety concerns...or maybe I'm just hoping that's true...and it's not the food prep industry.   

Good night from Delhi!