Did anyone realize India was crazy?

I feel like I may not be the first one to realize this, but I am definitely the first me to realize this, and it truly is unbelievable, I wish I could describe it to you in words, photos or audio, which I will try to do, but there is no way possible that even a fraction of the degree to which this country has surprised, astounded, and scared me shitless can be conveyed through any medium other than a person's actual presence. That being said...

I could tell you something to the order of, "holy shit, half the day we were driving in the opposing traffic's lane...!!" but you might not think this is so bad, it certainly doesn't sound that way to me, so let me expand the description a little. We have in India, these little taxis called autorickshaws, I rented one this morning to buy a ticket at the train station, now I imagined my life was in danger the night before when I arrived (speaking of, I've only been here 24 hours, it feels like a year), when I was in a taxi weaving through traffic like an insane chicken playing soccer with its head cut off. This was nothing, instead, this "auto" is a small cage, intended to trap you until you either forfeit the required amount of money, or your life, when a slightly larger "cage" barrels into you because the driver decided to cut across a 5way street with his eyes closed. Luckily I gave my driver money before he reached that zenlike state of driving, but what we did do took a couple years off. Imagine driving on the wrong side of the road, passing a bicycle with half a family on it, prevented from braking by the "auto" behind you, and quickly approaching a 10 ton bus with literally 130+ people hanging from every side. Try and imagine a way to avoid it... I couldn't... so my life passed before my eyes and while it was doing so Kumar the driver pulled off some magic, and I missed it, every time for the countless times I almost died, I could not figure out what kind of magic he was doing. But I think it had something to do with the cigarette he was constantly smoking or cell phone he was using.

Anyway, saw some cool stuff, one of Jesus' apostles tombs' is here, Saint Thomas, so I checked that out, shoes off, in this crazy pure white church in the middle of the most dilapidated part of town...

My brain is frying, I'll write more later, but I got some good pictures of some indian kids, here is part of an email I sent to a friend earlier...

I miss everyone at home right now, or rather, I would miss them all if I wasn't scared shitless everytime I leave an airconditioned room (of which there are fewer than you might think). I'm in this city called chennai, and the fucking place is the dirtiest, smelliest, craziest-driving, dilpidated hole of a city that i have ever been to. Think Mexico, then think of how nice it would be to be in the shittiest part of Mexico if you were here. That said, I thinking I'm starting to like it, although if I were to hire peopleto work for me here, the first one would be a masseuse to get all the stress from almost dying every few minutes. I really am beginning to understand what they meant when they said, "you will find god when you get to india." Speaking of God, I visited a few of his pals today, from all sorts of religions, most of them unpronouncable, and also the tomb of St Thomas, the only other catholic other than St Peter to have a church built on top of his grave (according to their description). There was this cool cat cab driver who used and abused my kindness, which I allowed because it was my first full day in India, I hope he feels privileged that I let him take advantage of me, because he was the last one. But I basically used his services for the entire day, and he used me to check out some tourist shops (from which he got commission), but I didn't buy anything, to the chagrin of every single one of the vendors, but I managed to assuage their dismay at my ingratitude by telling them I would be back the next day... I actually have a 6am train to another crazy place, but it'll be air-conditioned (this is also the last time I get to spurge a little while travelling, I figure its ok while I get my feet under me, but today I already changed hotels because the one last night was raping me), which is good. Anyway, I can't begin to imagine how to tell you what this has been like, but I'm going to be uploading some audio descriptions from my days so at least you can hear and see a small portion of how crazy this situation is, I've been taking a few pictures and I use my little mp3 player to record my experiences while walking and driving around.

I can feel my brain energy fading, and I may need the rest of it to make it back to my hotel, I hope you are well and I hope you don't mind if I post this up on my website http://lifelikeschaos.nomadlife.org.