My taxi sped from the airport under the power of its rubber band engine. From what I can tell, Bombay's black and yellow Padmini taxi fleet was last updated by the British in the 1940's.

This particular taxi did not have indicators and the driver deftly compensated for this fact with some agile manoeuvring and a very liberal use of the horn.

On Indian roads, the law of the jungle applies. Motor vehicles share the roads with camels, horses, elephants, push carts and people. Your right of way is not determined by rules or lane markings, but by the size of your vehicle; rickshaws give way to cars, cars give way to buses, and everyone gives way to elephants.

I felt a rush of nervous excitement as we wove in and out of traffic and more often than not drove on the wrong side of the road. I started to wonder at my driver's ability to narrowly escape death at every turn.

The dash board of the taxi was plastered with an amazingly technicoloured display of pictures and statues of the driver's four favourite gods. Ganesh (the elephant god of good fortune), Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth), Vishnu (the all important blue four armed god of preservation) and Hanuman (a monkey god whose special powers I haven't yet been able to ascertain).

With over 100 million gods to choose from, each having their own special power, each one coming in its own size, shape, colour and animal form, Hinduism certainly seems a lot more fun than western religion. A kind of religious choose your own adventure, Hinduism has cornered the religious marketplace in India by providing a plurality of gods which cater to the varying personal preferences of over a billion souls.

I started to relax into the back seat, we had an ample amount of spiritual protection.