There are no rules at all. You are constantly surrounded by vast numbers of cars and motorcycles weaving in and out of each other at high speed, no lanes, no thought to life, limb or consequences. Just this mad joyful dash like some vast school of half crazed fish hurdling pell-mell down a racing mountain stream. People roar up one-way streets the wrong way. When traffic slows, the motorcycles take to the sidewalk.
Cars roar around blind mountain curves in the left lane at full speed.
What is most amazing is that there are very few accidents. These people can really drive. They make New York cabdrivers look like a bunch of restrained beginners. At one point, we visited a family villa along a river in the mountains that is reached by a precipitous mountain road with hairpin curves and bottomless cliffs. On the way back home this road was clogged with vast numbers of cars filled with impatient people returning from a long weekend at the Caspian seashore.