Rickshaw pullers can be found every where in Aligarh and it’s the most preferred means of transport for ladies. They go on work, shopping or just for anything, rickshaw is always available. It’s also used to take children’s to school and when I was small, I used to go by one of these rickshaws only and trust me, it offers a most bone breaking ride. It’s slow and therefore you have to step out of home earlier so that you can reach your destination on time. However it’s quite cheap to travel on this, you can go up to 6 KM for Rs.10 (0.2 USD) but rates vary and depend on the mood of rickshaw puller, weather and your bargaining ability.

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February is the month of Aligarh exhibition and on one of the route to this exhibition have railway crossing in between. People are in so much hurry that they neglect the red light and cross the barrier. There seems to be zero patience in these people and results in bad train accidents. I wrote on this topic before also but when I see even educated people with family and small children crossing the railway line in this way, I feel how poor is our system that allows the people to do so. I can wait for the train to pass and then go, it takes few minutes only and in that time I can enjoy watching the train too (I like big engines) and every one does have a small kid inside so its time to take out that kid and enjoy the train passing by rather than crossing the line at red signal and risking your life.

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I was on my way to home and saw some people working in a building. When bricks are needed to taken on top of roof, this is how it’s done here in India and I have seen this before also but recorded it to show you all. One man is standing down and throws bricks one by one and the other person on top catches them. This looks very tricky job as the bricks are very heavy objects and if it slips from the person who is at the top catching, it can fall on the head of person throwing and he can have fatal injuries. There should be some pulley system to take bricks on top as it will be faster and safer.

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The liquid you see inside that small glass is tea, extreme hot tea and people drink it in glass instead of cups. Don’t really know the reason but I think these glasses are cheaper than cups so tea is served in glasses instead of cups by roadside tea stalls. A small tea stall (chai wala) with one person making tea and other giving it to people can be found everywhere and people are always found there drinking tea and it doesn’t matter what’s the time in the day it is. From morning till late night, tea continues and some people who work in shops rely on this glass of tea only instead of food. Every now and then tea is ordered and everyone gets his own glass and anyone at last pay for it. This tea is cheap, it cost only Rs.3 (0.08 USD) per glass. At some tea stalls, this tea taste great! The glass in my hand is from one of Tasveer Mahal market chai wala and it was good.

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This is a tractor and mini truck substitute and used to carry goods also and sometimes people also enjoy the ride. It’s slower than Tirri as it uses one animal to pull and that thing. Mule, ox etc are used as they are robust and cheap. These buggis are often used by building material suppliers for transport of iron rods, sand, and cement to nearby construction sites. Some farmers also own these buggis and use it to carry their harvest to markets and sell it. Versatile, zero pollution and silent vehicle but its slowly disappearing from the roads as more people are buying tempos, tractors and trucks.

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The three wheeler you see in photo is known as ‘Tirri’ here and its one of the cheapest means of public transport. It’s called as Tirri because its makes tirr-tirr type of sound. Not al all comfortable, full of noise and slow. It uses a small two stroke petrol engine and it uses big sprockets and short silence for more torque to pull 7 to 8 peoples. Don’t know what’s the cc of the engine but it doesn’t look more than 70 cc which means it’s too small to work in a three wheeler. But in India where poor is exploited, this poor engine is also getting exploited. Talking of rates of travelling in one of them, I have heard that for Rs2 (0.05 USD), you can go from one corner of city to another.

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