Both of us feeling ill today with stomach pains – although seems to be better now than this morning. We left Puri in the morning and caught a taxi to Bhubeneswar (Loulou being sick in a bag :-( ) for an overnight train to Chennai .
All road journeys in India are a bit hairy – in the Sundarbans our driver described driving in India as a “constant game of chicken” – people are constantly overtaking (sometimes overtaking the overtaker) blindly and driving on the wrong side of the road. Maybe it’s because that’s how they cycle and so they just apply the same logic to cars (apparently they also drive this way on the 6 lane freeways where it is much more dangerous because they drive so fast). This style of driving also means using the horn a lot to let other drivers know you are overtaking – it’s like a constant negotiation with the other traffic to get past. On this particular journey we actually had to stop head-to-head with another car which was overtaking on the opposite side of the road and ran out of room. Fortunately the road was not very fast so we just stopped without a crash. Comically, there are signs everywhere to “obey the road rules” and warning about road deaths – I guess since there is very little respect for the police here (lots of corruption – you can usually bribe your way out of fines) then nobody cares. You would think they might have some regard for their own safety though!
The train is nicer than the previous ones – generally cleaner and quieter although there is still the odd cockroach. Spent most of the day in our bunks feeling sorry for ourselves.
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