Hyderabad, India

My nose is assaulted by the overall stink of traffic fumes -- not that the vehicles are belching clouds of oily fumes into the air; it's simply the sheer overload of traffic.

And then there's the noise honked and tooted in various octaves. A honk can mean 'Get out of my way', or 'You idiot, look where you're going'. A toot could signalise 'I'm turning left here'. Take your choice.

The roads are shared by all: cars, lorries and high buses with huge wheels (to get them through the sludge when they leave the town for some village on the outskirts). There are motorised and pedal Pedicab rickshaws sporting yellow canvas canopies. These may be fitted with long horizontal metal bars to carry an extra four or five adult passengers. They're also the favourite form of transport for taking children to school. Where two adults sit, five or six children clamour onto the auto-rickshaw in blue school uniforms. The white ribbons in the girls' pigtails are flying in the wind and, despite the heat, I can see some of the boys wearing dark ties.

A Pedicab driver careers in front of us; with one hand he tries to prevent a metal barrel from rolling off his canopy, and with the other he steers. Another motor scooter weaves through the congested streets with its pillion passenger clinging on to an armful of wooden planks. I watch a motor scooter driver struggling to both drive and hold on to his goat.

A motorbike family overtakes the taxi. A small child balances on the bar between his father's legs, casually clinging onto the shoulders for safety like an Indian remake of that scene from Titanic. A luminous eye -- curious yet detached -- stares at me through the folds of her father's fluttering shirt and the shawl blowing about her head. Her mother sits behind, holding a baby close to her chest with one arm; the other arm clutches a shopping bag.

There are no obvious lanes. The roads are used by pedestrians, cows, goats, ducks and geese alike. Some cows pull loaded carts while others just wander about between the traffic. Animals are sacred so, either way, everyone negotiates their way around them. There are only centimetres between every road user. We swerve round a man in a spotless white shirt and dirty white trousers running back to pick up his wing mirror, which he'd clearly forgotten to snap in. Most drivers make that mistake only once.

Through the darkened windscreen I see we're on a dual carriageway. A black-and-white striped meter high concrete wall separates the two sides of the road. "We do have traffic regulations...," my driver announces as he hears me yelp in panic. My eyes are riveted on a car. It's driving down our road, but the wrong way! "…It's just that no one really cares about them." He makes no effort to swerve and I'm digging my nails into the upholstery, visualising a head-on crash. The other car vanishes between a break in the wall. I'm still alive, if a bit faint.

The traffic crosses the dual carriageways at irregular intervals; there are gaps in the dividing wall for just this purpose. My nails have snagged in the upholstery and I'm feeling conspicuously guilty about them until I notice that I'm not the only one to have left such marks of fear.

The driving style is definitely offensive rather than defensive. Traffic from the left has priority, but nobody pays attention to it. Priority goes to either the biggest vehicle, or whichever comes first, or whoever is the most dominant. You have to be aggressive on these roads or you get nowhere fast.

There are traffic lights, but they tend to be ignored, as my heart can attest when it leapt into my throat as my driver cheerfully drove through red. He dismissed my protest with a wave of his hand before his mirror. He did tell me that it has been known for a car to stop sometimes. But he also told me the only place to see any traffic control is when a police officer is in charge.

There are pedestrian crossings too, but no pedestrian lights to control them. The locals suggest that you must prepare to commit suicide if you want to cross the street. "Leave your life to destiny," they say. "Shut your eyes. Hope for the best. If you make it, shrug off your suicidal tendencies -- until the next time." Your chances are good. Only the sacred animals are more revered.

If you find yourself in my shoes, my final tip is to help the driver look out for manholes without a gully lid. It can take forever before someone heaves them back in place. One even made the local newspaper for more than a week. There was a photograph of the offending lid beside the manhole. It was still lying there when I left.

The taxi has reached my hotel. I step out with as much dignity as I can muster. My taxi-driver grins as he hauls out my suitcase from the trunk of the car.

"There are three things all drivers must have when they drive on Hyderabad's roads," he says while I wrestle with the wad of Rupee notes that have been stapled together.

"Oh," I say, interested. "And what are they?"

"First you must have a good horn. Secondly, you must have very good brakes." He gets back into his taxi, banging the door shut. I knock on his window and he winds it down.

"And the third thing?" I ask.

A broad smile crosses his face as he starts the engine. "Very much luck," he shouts as he speeds off to join the chaos once more.

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