ELEVEN -RUMBLERS

I may not have mentioned the driving here. It is alarming!
The daily paper often mentions pile-ups and fatal colisions and I am not surprised. Yesterday in the paper it was a train and van, today a minibus and a car. I just hope for the best!
Even the bus drivers are hectic. Where the road is bad, they do not slow down, you just have to grip on even harder.
In Panjim and a few other places, there is a devilish spawn of the sleeping policeman, or road hump. It is called the Rumbler. It has its very own road sign. The rumbler is a series of small ridges, a bit like corrugated iron sheeting, which is truly teeth jarring, expecially if taken at speed!
The bike riders are altogether more sedate. The bikes are large, and black, with big wheels and on the back is the prop, which I remember on my bike as a child, you push it down and the bike stays more or less upright. The bike riders are usually wearing flip flops, which somewhat prevents any sprinting or racing.
In addition to the delivery lorries, buses, small white taxis (Suzuki think), cows,dogs, bikes and pedestrians, the road users include scooters and motor bikes - the small kind that used to be called mopeds. When the festival was on recently, the young men buzzed through the village with pretty girls on the back in their best saris, often riding side-saddle. Nobody wears a crash hat, of course.