Visit to India

Currently in India in Chennai formerly known as Madras. Fascinating country steeped in history and tradition. I have taken the camera so that I can capture urban scenes and life as I see it and use these for future paintings.
I had underestimated the level of poverty that I was likely to see, it is a dichotomy there are people living in palm covered wooden structures and corrugated steel fabricated buildings or even tents, no running water or sanitation but the city proudly records that an automobile is manufactured three every minute and a commercial vehicle one every 75 seconds. The business that we are visiting is on IT Highway and Paypal and Ebay, Accenture, Tata, Cognizant and many large software companies share the same stretch of highway as the temporary shelters that the people reside in.
The cows are sacred and therefore have right of way and can be seen in the middle of the highway or on the side of the road eating the garbage that is put out for them to eat. There are LPG powered yellow rickshaws and thousands of motor cycles and scooters, these appear to be the primary mode of transport and I have seen a family of five being transported in and out of the traffic on there way to wherever they were going. The roads are a cacophony of sound as the vehicles all sound there horns in an effort to alert the other road users of there presence. The vehicles have on the rear of the vehicle "sound horn" written advising the vehicle approaching that if they wish to get past just sound the horn and I know that your there and I will move over. Red lights and stop signs have no meaning, the vehicle that we have been driven in each day approaches the stop sign or red light and trucks on through blasting away on the horn to deter the traffic joining the intersection. The British presence is still in evidence with many colonial buildings still standing but many are falling into disrepair through lack of attention or lack of finance. As you can see I will have plenty of material to use for future paintings.