Culture Guides

A glimpse of just how busting to the seams most countries are through their trains, metro and packed streets.

One of the often forgotten luxuries of living in the First World is the relative absence of crowds. A third of the world’s population is Chinese or Indian and in most poor countries it’s almost impossible to ever be alone.

We tracked down some videos to give you a graphic feel of what it means to live with overpopulation as your daily reality.

Bombay Trains

There are places in Bombay where there are more than a million people for every square kilometer. The city is so overpopulated that hundreds die every month on the internal trains system necessary to move everyone around.

Would you go to work on a train like this one?

More on Bombay trains

Tokyo Metro

It’s hard to count the population of the world’s biggest cities because who decides when a suburb becomes a town in its own right or vice-versa. But by most accounts there are some 30 million people living in Tokyo and that means rush hour is crunch hour.

The normally reserved and isolated Japanese are obliged to get physically intimate…

Walk Like an Egyptian

In many parts of the world something as simple as crossing the road becomes a real challenge with the sheer weight of numbers. In Cairo you can’t hold back and wait for a good monent, you have to simply lurch forwards and enter into the terrifying dance of pedestrians, scooters and buses.

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