When deciding if you’d like to fish mahseer, you need to ask yourself if you’d like to come to India. While India emerged from colonial rule in 1947 with an expansive rail network and at least 50 million English speakers, there are other aspects of travel here that one might find challenging. Beyond the gastrointestinal trials you’ve no doubt heard so much about, there are a few other considerations that need to be weighed. Ask yourself: “do crowds of people swirling over and about the roadway on two dozen different methods of locomotion overwhelm me?” “How do I feel when every person I talk to tries to invite me into their shop or home for chai or food? Am I flattered or frightened?” “Do I find it funny or infuriating when my bus driver, barreling along at high speed within inches of pedestrians, depresses the horn for no less than twelve continuous seconds?” 

This last question brings up an important issue, and you'd do well to consider at length: “How do I feel about honking more generally?” In the West, horns are used only in emergencies, or when danger is imminent. But in India, horns are used whenever possible! Here, drivers actually encourage their peers to honk as a matter of policy. Hand-painted on the back of trucks, auto-rickshaws, and an unpredictable assortment of other vehicles, one can find words of exhortation: “Horn please,” “Sound horn,” “Blow horn,” “Horn okay,” “Okay,” and even, “Good luck.”

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Here are another couple paragraphs, still in the works, crafted toward the same end:

Some of the brightest and most idiosyncratic moments in India -- the times when you hear yourself thinking: 'I can't get over this place! What!' -- seem to take place during the actual experience of transit. I travel to the Himalayan Outback’s Ramnagar camp on the day of the Hindu festival of Holi. Holi celebrates a miraculous event, even by the standards of Hindu mythology, wherein one Prahlad, a sort of model of devotion to god, emerged unscathed after being carried into a fire by a demoness, Holika.

Among other things, Holi is a day on which people all over India throw paint and pigment at each other and have a really good time doing it. It is also a day when grinning little kids line up on the road’s shoulder and shoot Super Soaker-style water cannons at passing buses, effectively marking, with festive and probably-toxic coloration, those passengers-dumb-enough-to-have-their-windows-open-when-it's-90-degrees-out as just that: dumb.

When I’m not scanning the shoulder ahead of the bus for mischievous looking groups of kids (friends of the water cannon operator will stand by, you see, clasping their hands in anticipation and clapping once the bright stream of god-knows-what-they’ve-bottled lets loose), I watch my fellow passengers. Four men whom I’m pretty sure have never met take turns reading a paper. Another man, face painted, falls asleep with his cheek on this neighbor’s shoulder, leaving bright colors on the pale shirt. I watch, again betting they don’t know each other, wondering what will happen when someone else takes notice. Nothing comes of it.