Quality Time on Buses in Tamil Nadu

For the past few days, I’ve been moving rather briskly through some towns and cities in Tamil Nadu. As these towns have been fairly close together (no more than 200km), I’ve been riding buses quite frequently. The countryside in Tamil Nadu is full of rice paddies (earning the area the title of the “rice bowl of India” (well this was according to one guidebook and I think the people in the Punjab might dispute this, but that’s ok)). The roads are one line each way and are shared by buses, tractors, ox drawn carts, cars, people on cycles, people walking, trucks, and the occasional auto-rickshaw. There’s an excessive amount of honking as that denotes wanting to pass someone, passing someone, alerting someone that you’re changing lanes, etc. When the bus stops at stations along the way, the stops are usually short (2-10 minutes) and during this time men carrying baskets of food (samosas, vada, cooked beans, chips, pineapple, etc.) climb onto the bus to sell things. They serve the food on newspaper and magazine cutouts. Lots of excitement.

 

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