Taxi !?!?

Okay, so lets talk about that taxi ride up to the ashram yesterday. First lets set up the picture in your head. The national highways here in India are at best two car widths wide. When you get into towns the roads do widen up, sometimes quite a bit, if you consider all the people walking along the sides as they don't know what sidewalks are. Then there is that white line that they paint down the middle of the road. In the US that little line weather stripped or solid tells you many things like what side of the road you should be on, weather its safe to pass or not, etc. The Indian government could says millions every year by not wasting time putting the lines down on the road because the only thing I could figure out about what that line is for here is that yes indeed that is the road. I'm quite certain that if you asked a taxi driver what the line in the middle of the road was for he would ask you "What line?" (Note to mother: for you to ride in a taxi here, we would need to blind fold you, put ear plugs in, place you in the back on the floor and then sedate you!) To compare riding in a taxi here vers the states, if you have ever been in a cab in New York (Las Vegas would be a close second) that would be compared to riding Its A Small World at Disneyland compared to the cab ride here. So the roads here are shared by everyone, and everything! Cars, trucks, buses, motorbikes, peddle bikes, rickshaws (motored ones), carts being pushed by ox, and yes carts being pushed by people. Of course everything is going at different speeds so everybody needs to pass everybody else and its always at the same time! I honestly think that out of the 3 hour ride we were on the right side of the line at least 40% of the time and thats the wrong side! They literally drive down the middle of the road unless something is approaching ahead then they move over. The best way to describe the roads here is complete and total controlled chaos!!! I must admit it was fun for the first 20 min, then when I realized that my hair was standing on end and I wasn't breathing I should maybe watch the scenery go by and not watch the road. Coming home that night was even worse because headlights don't tell you much about the object in front of you coming at you! For the rest of the week we will be walking every where we go!
We traveled to Varkala on Friday afternoon and spent the night there before going on to the ashram. I can't wait to share with you about Varkala only because of the headline I have picked, and hope I can get the picture loaded. When we planned the trip there were going to be 6 of us so we rented a taxi specifically for 6 people and that had A/C. By Friday morning it was just Daren and I - but we didn't care, and off we went. While we were in Varkala we ran into some ladies that were also doing the practice here and they said they traveled to Varkala by means of rickshaw. Daren and I both went "WHAT?" So imagine spending two hours (we didn't take that long) riding in something slightly larger that a go cart, open to the heat, dust, and pollution and on these roads! Needless to say, talking to them this morning at practice they took the train home.
Last but not least. So we rent the taxi here in Kovalam Beach, and the driver takes us to Varkala where we get in, find a hotel, play on the beach, go have dinner, sleep all night long, breakfast in the morning, and get ready to leave at noon for the ashram and yes the same taxi driver, with a smile is waiting for us......this is considered normal here in India!