this was India

Hey hey, we're out of India and back to bad english... Staying at a farm with many non-native speakers and Indians on top of that didn't really help improving our skills. But what else happened?

At last we got to travel a bit, first of all in trains, which was nice, not to say a lot better than what rumors say. Mostly, trains were on time, food and drinks were available almost all of the time and overnight travels were almost comfortable (we always took the lowest class). Only during the day it got so hot that just reading a book got us sweaty all over! No need to mention that it was a cheap way to get over huge distances...

Busses weren't as comfortable, local ones, I mean. The system is quite confusing, since vehicles sometimes don't have numbers and people only seem to know where the bus goes that takes them home... Next to the driver there's a helper who stands in the door, shouting the destination when the bus approaches, chasing people in and collecting the money. The A/C is ... open windows! But the bus to Hampi, for instance, stopped so often that it barely helped to sit next to the window. The seat must have been designed for people of slim built, students maybe, or Nepalese. The music shouting from the speakers is surely taken from some Bollywood movie, and despite not being beautiful, it's very appropriate in a way. So while we're given a good shake on this endless bus ride, we had enough time to think about the lessons this country has taught us...

So how does India appear to the traveller?
First of all, as a country of spicy food (lassi and not breathing through the mouth helps), chaotic traffic (a street has exactly x lanes, and x being the number needed at that time), hundreds of languages (hindi is only spoken by a fourth of all Indians), thousands of gods and last but not least millions of cows, everywhere. On the second glance we saw the beautiful sarees and punjabis of the women, which are (like snow-cristalls) never the same. We saw the curiosity and suspiciousness in the eyes of most Indians when they saw white people like us, and not only when it came to the multiple times higher prices for us, I had to think of racism. It's an annoying and tiring feeling to be always different, excluded in a way, to be stared at and looking at pointing fingers. But still, I'm grateful for that experience, showing us what it's like to be different. And of course we've also had many positive moments: people smiling at us, asking where we from and trying to help if we needed it or not, especially with busses. They seemed to be fascinated by Germany ("good country!"), and usually wanted to know what we work (or even how much we earn).
As you may have heard about India, PDA (kissing, hugging, even holding hands) is like a crime and you will never see even a married couple doing it. So you can imagine our surprise when we saw men of every age hugging, cuddling and holding hands! I'm not sure if girls do it, but two men walking hand in hand on the street is very common...

We won't spare you some of the dark side we saw in India, like the stray dogs, the litter lying around (globalization and plastics came here before the concept of recycling did) or being burned everywhere, and the poverty. There're many beggars walking around, and not only the slums of Mumbai were scary, because we saw them right next to the runway while driving in a bus on the airport. Anyway, even the poor ones have smartphones which really makes you wonder about priorities in life...

And now, after so many words, some pictures from our trip in India: