Driving in Sri Lanka

    No description of Sri Lanka would be complete without telling about driving there.
    Traffic signals are only required in the largest cities because there are complicated social mores that govern the process of getting around. For one thing, roads are particularly narrow. Sometimes what looks like a one lane roadway can actually accommodate two vehicles in opposite directions, a couple bicyclists and a motorcycle and a tuk-tuk or two snaking through any available gap.
   And as if the wheeled vehicles aren't enough to contend with, don't forget the pedestrians who cross against traffic. In Sri Lanka, pedestrians are like pot holes - they're not going to move so you have to drive around them.
   If I had a dime for each time I watched in horror out the front windshield in time to see us playing a game of chicken with a bus or truck, I'd have a tidy sum. In the nick of time, lanes were changed and all was somehow well.
     By some miracle of nature, we didn't see a single collision in the entire two weeks we were there. Drivers seemed to take incredibly foolish risks but they knew their vehicles like their own skins and could pass each other at high speeds and bristle only the hairs on the back of my neck. There existed in the midst of the swirling chaos an understanding between drivers that made it all look like a carefully orchestrated dance. Like a car chase scene in a silent movie, things got dangerously close but nothing actually collided.
    The single most dangerous part in a vehicle was the nut behind the wheel. You needed only two devices to function: the brakes and the horn. And both were used in generous quantities.
    As passengers, it was all we could do to stare out the windows, trying to see all the exotic sights: roadside fruit and vegetable stands, waving kids on motorbikes, stray dogs laying on sidewalks, people of all walks of life, brightly festooned temples and churches, fruit hanging in bunches from trees, elephants and water buffaloes, ancient trees and bright flowers.
    Our ride home in an Uber taxi through the streets of New York City seemed tame and calm after what we had seen. Now, that's saying a lot.