Is it me, or this country, who is crazy?

While we are enjoying another capital, Kuala Lumpur with Míša and Anna is still not back from Vietnam, I have decided to share with you a bit more from my big Indian trip. For current info on where we are and what we are doing, check our instagram www.instagram.com/czechsouls and daily instastories 😉

If you haven’t read my previous article from India, you can check it here.

For those of you, who guessed that I stayed – You were right. I told myself “If not now, then when. If not me, then who?” and since it was my big dream and I had a good feeling about it, I stayed. If you are 19 or so, like I was at that time, you can probably guess that my family wasn’t really happy about my decision. My mum, who is already used to me travelling alone was getting slightly crazy, grandma went completely crazy and my aunt stopped talking to me. Surprisingly, my dad took it the best as he admitted “I can’t do anything to stop you, you have already decided and you are the the other end of this planet.” My advice for you, young travellers is not to do stupid things, but do what you believe in your heart is the best for you, even when your family tells you not to. You won’t be 19 again.

Getting to New Delhi for the first time was a second shock. I wan’t guide you through this city, day by day, because I think that the most important thing was the impression, which New Delhi left in me. It’s the craziest place I’ve ever been to. I’ve seen the worst things ever, while there, but still, this is what made me to fall in love with this place. It’s so different from anything you know, that if you’ve never been there, you probably won’t be able to understand me.

People living on the streets, electricity cables hanging above your head, rotten meat sold by the road with flies flying around it. Honking cars and motorbikes everywhere, who don’t care if they hit you or not. I understood. THIS IS INDIA. Don’t take me wrong, there are, of course, parts of Delhi, which are a lot cleaner and safer and more beautiful, those parts for middle or high class Indians, but this is, where and how the majority lives. I was shocked. I was scared. But I felt alive. I realized, what poverty means. I mean, real poverty, not the one you see here in Europe. I believe, that everyone should go there and see this for themselves at least once in a lifetime, to learn what inequality means.

Delhi has its historical and beautiful side as well, don’t worry, I’ll show you. But honestly, this was why I wanted to travel there, because I wanted to see the real life, not a made up city for western tourists.

One smart Indian told us: “You know… Europe, that’s like ABC, but here it’s more ABF.” We didn’t understand, so he added: “When you come to Europe for the first time, you are amazed by the beautiful churches everywhere, but after a week, all you see is Another Bloody Church and here, you have the same with forts. You see couple of them and love it, but after a week, all you see is Another Bloody Fort.” I agree. In Delhi, we loved it. After a week or two, it all started looking a bit the same, to be honest.

If you think, like we did, that since everything in India is so hectic and crazy, that borrowing a car should be easy, you are wrong. You see on the streets, that some people have no clue how to ride a car, but still do (like a guy, who presented himself as an amazing driver and crashed his tuktuk wih us inside in about first 2 mins, fortunately for us, it’s not a big deal in India and he was still able to take us to the beautiful pool, where all Indians go for a swim in the summer.),

Yes, this is the pool. He said, that the water is clean under the green stuff, so no worries, we can try it. No, thanks. We were good.

for a white person, it’s far more complicated to borrow it, because they a) know that white people are not great drivers in Indian no rule system and b) want to give a job to a driver, who will drive you around the country, but that’s not what we wanted. We wanted to travel on cheap, travel how and where and when we want to and Boris is a good driver and genuinly enjoys driving, so there was no other option other than borrowing a car. After spending about a day or two by looking up companies who could borrow us a car, we finally found one quite decent. The only thing was, you can’t pay with non-indian card for it. How fucked up is that? You can’t get an indian card, unless you are indian, so how is a non indian supposed to do that? We were really lucky, we had Indian friends, through which we could do the transaction, but still, I had my first time experience with looking for at least one ATM which would take money in the whole Delhi. They either didn’t work, were full of cash already or were closed. That’s how we ended up in the main Indian bank, guarded with security, who looked like they’ll shoot us if we move, at 3 am, while falling asleep. We finally managed to get the money to Ibrahim’s bank account, when he realized he forgot to tell us, he changed his SIM card and can’t approve any card transactions. The frustration was rising as we haven’t slept, haven’t eaten and knew, we won’t get a car for at least a day or two more.

But you know, at least we had a chance to go for a drink with a friend of ours to an amazing bar.

Don’t worry. It turned out, we were supposed to meet in different one.

and we have seen first animals in India! (We didn’t count holy cows, which were literally everywhere.)

Where do you think we went next? Would you like to go and see Delhi for yourself?