Sensory Overload

Talk about culture shock. Walking onto the streets of Hyderabad is an experience that engages all of your senses.

First there is the smell. It is difficult to define, largely because it is a mixture of so many smells: raw sewage in the streets, incense candles, burning trash, smog and exhaust, fruit stands, and burning coal. It's hard to get a good breath of air on the streets. Our room smells distinctly of moth balls, placed in the drains to hide to smell of the sewers.

Then there are the sounds. The most common noise is that of honking horns, which is almost constant. Cars, motorcycles, taxis, and bikes swerve through crowds of pedestrians beeping all along the way. Our guide told us that the louder and more frequent honks mean business, and the others are just to make sure you know the vehicle is there. You hear conversations in multiple languages, children crying, and vendors yelling at each passer-by, trying to sell a belt, a pair of sunglasses, or a map of India.

And the sights are a thing to behold. There are more than 1 billion people living in India, and you notice the difference in population right away. There are so just so many people everywhere. Little children with no shoes--and sometimes no clothes at all-- are running through the streets, weaving through traffic, with no parents in sight. The streets are stuffed with pedestrians, young, old, male, female, dressed in traditional garb or in blue jeans and t-shirts. There are stray dogs running around and even an occasional cow walking down the street. Crowds move in every direction, everyone constantly bumping into each other, without any sense of "right of way." In some sense it is like walking in New York. Or maybe it's like walking to a sporting event from a crowded parking lot. But there is no special event going on. This is just "normal" here.

There are no crosswalks, and crossing the street is perilous at best. I need to capture this on video to give a fair picture. The basic rule of thumb here is that once you decide that you want to cross the street you just walk in front of moving traffic and expect the cars to stop. It seems like insanity at first, but it's just how it works. The only rule is that once you start walking you have to commit and keep going because the cars drive defensively and plan around you walking through traffic. The worst thing you can do is to start walking and then timidly stop or go backwards.

India is a captivating place. So many sights, sounds, and smells. It is repulsive, and yet somehow beautiful at the same time. It truly is another world. I do love it here.

-- this post written by Michael