Pondicherry, 10 april 1999 Well, it's been three very subcontinental months so far. And having spend a good deal of it on an Enfield, I should know. Even the mechanics of the bike itself scream Indian-ness, that essential quality of incomprehensible disorder which beyond all logic still seems somehow to work. Uma (named after Shiva's girlfriend) was brand new when Sarah bought her just a few months ago. An Enfield Bullet 350, shiny and clean, a straight row of zeroes across her odometer, and ready for active service in the combat zone of Indian traffic. But will she start? Well, yes... eventually, once she's made quite sure that your right leg, from pumping and repumping her crank, is far too tired to walk anywhere. She makes you need her. Which is normal, I'm told: she's an Enfield. And to be fair, once she's going, she goes -- if you can drive her, that is. It's a little tricky. Her brake is on the left, and her gears are on the right (unlike every other bike in India, or the world), so that when I try to slow down, like to avoid a cow or an overturned bus or something silly like that, my tendency is to upshift, typically producing less than the desired quantity of sudden deceleration. It takes some getting used to. She has no fuel gauge -- who needs one? -- and the carrier we had custom-built to hold our packs (I won't even begin to go into what that process of hand-craftsmanship entailed) is painted with rust-colored rust-proofing. "Genius, that's what it is! Sheer, unadulterated genius!" And thus we cruise along, Sarah driving the vast bulk of the time because the only thing more astounding than the scenery we move through (worth a whole letter another time) is the traffic, at which she is an expert; and because I'm lazy, and prefer just to sit on the back, play with her hips and watch the world). But the traffic! At home it's fun to drive like a suicidal maniac asshole, because nobody else does. Here, you NEED to dive like a suicidal maniac asshole, because EVERYBODY else does. I truly believe that every -- every -- Indian driver should have his license revoked (although most don't have one to begin with: Sarah bought hers for $20 under the table). The simply can't drive. They don't seem to realize (though neither do the pedestrians) that to suddenly put yourself in front of a vehicle with momentum ("what's that?") is to invite collision. Of course, in its way the traffic here is beautiful: the way that tornadoes, lightning and drifting smoke are beautiful: fractal, unpredictable, nice to watch... just don't get caught surrounded by any of them and you'll be fine; but seriously now: to pass a car that's passing a bus on a single-laned sharp curve of a cliff-cut road? What is the logic that allows that? (Oh, wait, I used the L-word, that's a no-no here.) We see Ambassadors full of timid, sari-clad young women pulling onto roads out of driving school parking-lots, and I can't help but think of all the children they'll orphan -- as soon as they learn how. And what can we do but honk and swerve? That's the universal skill: honk and swerve. Of course, we've got it backwards, as the locals demonstrate: FIRST you swerve (into oncoming traffic), and THEN you honk (get out of my way, I'm swerving (and don't forget that the larger the vehicle, the louder the horn, and on these roads, might makes right)). If only we could adopt this reversal, we'd fit right in, well, as much as a man riding behind a woman on a motorbike can fit in in India. ...and KEEP HONKING. Forever. Just switch the horn to ON, close your eyes, and take to the open road. That's the way. Although "open road" is, I admit a bit of a euphemism, in fact "road" alone is a bit of a euphemism. An archaeologist might -- might -- be able to identify the highways here as a site upon which a road once was built, but I dare them to try to figure out when. And then the geologists would argue that no, it's a remnant from some prehistoric lava flow... but to my thuswise untrained eye, India is a country interlaced with a vast network of deforested, uninhabited and otherwise undeveloped strips of land made ready for the road construction crews who, in fact, we encounter from time to time, gathering gravel into piles,. And then recombining it into new, different piles, accompanied by no means of apparent transportation by which they've gotten to these rock-pile recombination camps so far into the wilderness. When we pass, they wave (halting all work to do so). We wave back, and we honk, which they seem to like. I should to their credit add that the ridiculously sharp switchbacks (and hairpin would snap if you actually bent it into such angles) up the mountains DO often have retaining walls, which is good because without the conspicuously car-sized holes in them, we wouldn't so easily be made aware of the dangerous bits. Who needs signs? Not the Indians. Not here, where the highway turn-off signs (what few there are) typically come 50 meters or so AFTER the turn-off: "YOU MISSED IT. (SUCKER)." It's a beautiful system here. "Use the force, Luke," and so, all things being equal, I suppose that Uma is the perfect back to have here after all. She fits right in.