Aside from the sheer volume of traffic, the first thing that you notice is that Indian roads aren’t just for cars, trucks, buses and bikes. They are also for cows, dogs, tractors, goats, pigs, cycle-rickshaws and auto-rickshaws, water buffaloes, earth movers, chickens, hand-carts, and the occasional elephant.

With footpaths almost non-existent, they are places where small children play games, sari-clad women carry loads of firewood on their head, and dogs sleep. Men stop for a chat or to take a piss. Cows stroll unhindered and other animals are herded across or along with no thought for the traffic.

Most roadsides are lined by stalls and open front shops where stock, surfaces and sellers alike are covered in a layer of fine dust and pollution.

Everything co-exists in varieties and quantities that are hard to comprehend, both inside and outside of the sprawling cities.

All forms of transport are overloaded. Huge trucks lean sideways under the weight of gravity-defying loads. Motorbikes carry entire families and are used to transport every conceivable type of product – the more inappropriate (think ladders or stacks of plastic chairs) the better! Auto-rickshaws carry entire villages (OK – maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I did count 15 people including the driver in one). Buses burst at the seams, and people hang from the top, back and side of small utility vehicles.

Almost every vehicle is scratched and dented. A few are barely held together with wire and rope. The sides of buses are stained with the spit of passengers expelling the red juice of whatever disgusting thing it is that Indian men habitually chew.

The quality of Indian roads is extremely variable. Some toll roads are double and triple lane highways, similar to those you’d find elsewhere in the world. But these start and finish randomly and can be linked by anything from a basic, single-lane road, to a pot-hole riddled dirt lane, to an almost impassible goat track. All of which teem with an incredible volume and variety of vehicles, people and animals – and are splattered with the shit of the latter.

Importantly, there is only one rule on Indian roads – beep your horn loudly and often! At least, that appears to be the only rule consistently applied. The words ‘horn please’ are emblazoned across the back of many brightly painted trucks and auto-rickshaws. Horn beeping means ‘I’m here’ or ‘I’m passing’, but despite the fact that it is encouraged, it’s also routinely ignored. Even pedestrians beeped at from right behind barely register a response. Horn beeping also seems to be a communal activity that involves everyone in the frequent traffic jams.

Technically, India is a left-hand drive country, but this is treated more as a rough guide than a rule. It isn’t at all unusual to see people driving towards you on the inside or outside lane of a multi-lane highway. And on single lane roads, everyone’s preference is to drive in the centre, resulting in a perpetual game of ‘chicken’.

Traffic can take any direction on a roundabout, and give-way rules absolutely do not apply. This regularly creates a tangle of vehicles and animals, providing the perfect environment for hawkers and beggars who weave in-between tapping at car windows, waving their wares in the faces of the unprotected hoards on bikes and in rickshaws.

All roads are effectively zip-lanes with vehicles of any kind simply pulling into the flow of traffic as others dodge and weave around them.

Traffic lights aren’t very common, even in the cities, and obeying them appears to be optional.

U-turns can be done absolutely anywhere, even if that means heading into oncoming traffic.

While speeding is rarely an issue on the crowded city streets, speed limits apparently don’t vary. Whether you are playing chicken on an open stretch of road or passing through densely populated towns, the idea is to go as fast as you can, passing as many other vehicles as you can. (However, the cows, potholes and randomly placed, unmarked speed bumps do tend to slow things down periodically.)

So, with ‘horn please’ the most widely adopted driving practice, Indian drivers engage in a complete (and extremely noisy) free-for-all that simultaneously requires the patience of a saint, nerves of steel, and the reflexes of a gunslinger. And while we have spent many hours sitting in traffic jams, I am amazed this is the only one so far caused by an accident!