Frantically we  returned to the pell-mell, South Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar market  street-front, where the driver had dropped us 20 minutes earlier.

Throughout India, we’d been greeted by cheery auto-rickshaw drivers offering to deliver us to any corner of the country for the price of an Aussie stamp. Today – day 41 in India – was no different.

We’d flagged down an auto-rickshaw (tuk tuk) at a roundabout near the Santushti shopping centre in South Delhi, for the 8 km trip to the market.  As we leapt in, we performed the usual family-squash to enable the five of us to  fit on the single benchseat, and jammed our chunky backpack in the sole  remaining space – behind the benchseat.

All-day-every-day in India for 40 days I’d diligently kept my newish  Canon SLR camera  in a small backpack wedged onto my back every waking hour. Until this day – day 41, when the family all agreed we’d share this larger backpack containing the whole family’s needs for the day and night (think winter woolies, camera… water bottles, shopping).

So there that backpack stayed – complete with our camera’s jam-packed memory card –  behind that benchseat, as we leapt out of the tuk-tuk at the Sarojini Nagar market. Our oblivious driver zoomed off in search of his next passenger out in the world’s second most populous city.

For 15 minutes we wandered around the market. Then we collectively twigged.  We could only rush back to that busy street-front and pray for our driver’s return  – we had no way to identify him or his vehicle.

Minutes churned by. The thought crossed my mind over and over again, “How many thousand tuk tuk drivers are there in Delhi?”  Then, we heard the familiar chug-chug of a tuk tuk close by. “Madam, I have your bag!”

What are the odds? Hail a cab in the middle of a city anywhere in the world. Take a 8 km ride, leave your bag containing SLR camera, memory card and shopping behind your seat …

India’s heaving roads – choked with blasting horns and bossy buses – frightened us, but India redeemed itself thanks to those who rode or drove on those roads – creatively ‘lane-sharing’ – who charmed us.

Weeks before the ‘backpack incident’ I’d mentioned to Gajendra – the night manager at our Jaipur guesthouse –  how friendly and helpful everyone was to us in India. He’d said, “service is in our blood, it’s how we are with family.”

Like rustling up delectable cuisine and hospitality, honesty is evidently part of India’s DNA