ast year, I went on a rollercoaster.

It was in New York, it was called Cyclone, it was eighty-five feet tall and it shot upside down and round and round at sixty miles per hour.

And for the whole ride, I was convinced I was probably going to die.

This time, I’m sure of it.

As the car heads through the dusty outskirts of Delhi – the pastel-painted and grey cement buildings getting smaller and less regularly shaped and the air getting hazier and smokier – the roads begin to fill up.

And I don’t mean just with cars.

There are cars, vans, trucks, lorries: weaving in and out, beeping and braking and swerving. Food carts wheel across the road without warning, full of fruits and corns, beans and fried breads. Little green and yellow rickshaws and bicycles bolt haphazardly between spaces; nimble motorbikes lace their way in and out.

A cow ambles across next to a horse-drawn carriage. People run into the road from the streets, inches from beeping lorries. Scooters perched on by two, three, four, five people – whole families – dip between the traffic: a tiny baby without a helmet held firmly on a lap at the front.

A bus with thirteen people sitting on the roof and seven standing on the suspension shoots by, followed by a bicycle with a sofa strapped to the back. A big, white, bony cow with prominent shoulder blades draws a packed carriage; a car with fifteen cardboard boxes piled precariously on top takes a sharp left, wobbling as it goes.

And we just keep driving faster.

Faster and faster: braking, accelerating, beeping, swerving. Curving around enormous trucks and holes in the road; bolting through dirt and dust until the air and the windows are thick with orange.

There appear to be no rules at all.

No regulations. No actual lines on the road. It’s like the polar opposite of Japan: as if somebody took one country and flipped it over.

From what I can tell from my cowering position on the back seat, everybody just ploughs forward as hard as they can and the biggest vehicle wins: as proven by the five-thousand-kilo lorry hurtling towards us on our side of the road.

I whimper and put my hands over my eyes.

There is one death and four road injuries every minute in India: in one year, half a million people will be involved in an accident, a hundred thousand of those fatally.

These are statistically, literally, factually the most dangerous, deadly roads in the world.

At times like this I really wish I didn’t know quite so much.

“Are you OK?” Deepika asks, glancing at me from over the top of her sunglasses.

My hands are clutched in sweaty fists, my stomach feels three times smaller than usual and I can feel terrified sweat prickling down my back, even with the air-conditioning blasting out.

So I think it’s safe to assume the answer to that question is NO LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT …

“Mm-hmm,” I say, squeaking as a scooter with a ten-foot metal spike tied to the back dives around us, missing my window and face by two centimetres.

“We’ll be fine,” she says reassuringly. “This driver knows exactly what he’s doing.”

As if in response, he beeps six times at a lorry loaded with mattresses and yells something aggressive in Indian through the window.

“Mm-hmmm!” I manage.

Then I try to focus on the scenery instead.

As we leave the outskirts of Delhi and head for the countryside, the buildings are becoming increasingly sporadic and ramshackle: slanted and pale, with mismatched floors stuck to the sides and tops like dolls’ house extensions.

Corrugated iron and cardboard are propped everywhere, bright-coloured clothes hang from lines across the front of houses, and people sit on little boxes and benches, eating their lunches.

And as these buildings start to thin out, fields start to appear: long and flat, gold and brown. Rubbish and rubble pile up in heaps at the side of the road.

Camels wander in long lines, smoke drifts.

An enormous truck blasts its horn, telling us to get out of the way immediately or it will crush us to death and this whole plan will have been my fatal undoing.

My ears have gone completely numb.

You know what?

I think maybe I’ll do my sightseeing when we get to our destination.

“E to the power of K equals half M V squared,” I whisper quickly, closing my eyes again. “V equals I R. F equals M V squared over R. P V equals n RT. S equals D over T.”

Speed equals distance over time.

That last one is important: the faster we go, the quicker this is all over.

“Physics formulas,” Deepika says approvingly. “That’s a new one. We’re going to have to go a little faster, I’m afraid, or we’re going to miss it. Keep doing your homework and I’ll let you know when we get there.”

So I slump even further down and put my fingers in my ears.

And I revise as hard as I can.