Incredible India – AutoExpo

Me and Míša are probably at this very moment in Singapore and Anna in Ninh Binh, if you wanna know more, than please follow us on our instagram @czechsouls for daily updates.

This post is going to be about the very beginnings of my biggest adventure so far – my trip to India, which happened one and half year ago.

It was more or less pure luck, that I actually got to go there. I always wanted to go to Asia, no matter where and I planned a trip with Míša for a long time, but around Christmas, I already knew, we weren’t about to go anywhere at least in a next year. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, my aunt has asked me, if I could go for a bussiness trip to India with her boyfriend. She wanted to go, inicially, but she doesn’t speak any English and she had a lot of work and luckily, I knew I’ll have my exams finished by the departure, how lucky is that? I was leaving in less than a month for India. To work there.

What was I about to do there? We went to AutoExpo, where we had to put together a car simulator, which we were operating afterwards.

But going back to my first impressions… We arrived at New Delhi Airport and then spend about 4 hours in a taxi with a guy who didn’t speak English. And didn’t know where he was going. Perfect. After some problems, we arrived at the venue. Our employer was shocked, that we want to take a shower and have some rest after more than 20 hours on the way. We got half an hour. Great. We started slowly getting used to India. The room was less dirty than we expected, cows freely running across the road and cars honking nonstop…

When we arrived to the venue, everything was under construction and the air was so full of dust, that you could barely see one meter ahead. I was the only woman there. Most of the people working there at the beginning were illiterate poor people, who has never seen a while person, not to mention a woman. I got followed all over the place, that’s how much they were fascinated by me. I have received “bodyguards” from my employer, who were going with me to the toilet and back, because they were too scared about me. But don’t worry, this has passed away couple of days later, when there were less constrution workers and even some women have arrived. I was the only white one still, though.

From left to right: George, Roman, Boris and me (Diana)

We (me and my coworker/aunt’s boyfriend Roman) made some friends quite quickly. On the picture above is George, who is British and Boris, who is Bosnian/Croatian guy who lives in the UK. They were one of the most significant ones (don’t worry Ibrahim and others, you are important as well!). Remember those two as I’ll be talking about them in article about Incredible India part two! 😉

I had a lot of fun, but I won’t lie to you, we were working hard. Usually at least 12 hours a day or more, in dark room with loud music and over the whole AutoExpo 2016, which is the largest car show in the world, we served probably more than million people. Working with Indians also wasn’t always the easiest. The language barrier wasn’t a problem, but a cultural one was. The Indians are not very systemic and effective. Tell me, would you rather employ 20 people with a 15×15 cm (6×6 inches) cloth to wipe the floor, or only half of them with proper mops and buckets? It turned out later, that they had mops and buckets, but noone taught the staff on how to use them. Effectiveness like a case sensitive search engine.In the beginning, there were some coworkers, who would refuse talking to me, because I was a woman. It took me a lot of effort to change their mind. This wasn’t the case of our lovely assistants, though. Suzuki-Maruti, for whom we were working, decided to employ young students of my age as assistants. They were all smart and hard-working and become close to my heart, I wished everyone was like them!

Left to right: Nikhil, Deepika and Pavitra

Last but not least is Ibrahim, with whom I’m regularly in contact with. I miss him a lot and I strongly believe I’ll visit him soon. With Ibrahim, it’s something special. We are quite different. He is crazy and I’m not. And we often doesn’t understand each other in English (because he is mubling a lot! haha). When I was going through my pictures I strangely couldnt find one, where there would be both of us and looking decent, so enjoy picture of him and George bellow.

In the evenings (or maybe during the nights), we were trying to make the best out of our stay. We watched the backyard of our hotel and the weddings happening almost everyday there. In was only couple of days after we arrived when we realized, that they make our food on the floor in the garden. But we ended up fine. No stomach issues. So far, so good.

“Kitchen”

A wedding we actually went into, because we were too curious to just watch it from the outside. And trust me, there is no more beautiful wedding than an Indian one.

As the days went on, I felt really sad I’ll have to leave this beautiful country. Boris and George have realized that and offered me to stay there and travel around India with them for almost a month. I wouldn’t wait a minute and stayed, if

a) They weren’t complete stranger’s I have met less than 2 weeks before.
b) I wasn’t a 19 y.o. girl.
c) I didn’t have to go to school.

What do you think? Did I stay or come back after AutoExpo?