Goodbye India and welcome in Malaysia

Guys, I know... it has been a too long time since I was updating you on my life and travel adventures, but as you can imagine, a lot happened and prevented me from writing. Today is the 5th February 2011, Chinese new year just took place and I´m right now sitting in a train station in the centre of Jakarta, Indonesia. As I said, my last login is long ago and it seems that ages have passed, but I will try to tell you everything what happened since then. Hopefully I will find the time to type all the articles, which I wrote on paper during the travel through India and Malaysia...

Today, I will give you an overview, what has happened in the last weeks and month and soon you can read about each and every step alined in the right time order. So let us start in Delhi!

My intership in the Indo-German Energy Forum (IGEF) officially finished on the 26th November 2010, but due to my delay in returning from a trip to the North-East of India and the exceeding of my holidays, as well as some interesting field trips in beginning of December, I joined GTZ for one more week. After all it was an very interesting internship, which I can highly recommend to everybody who wants to learn about the structures, mandates and engagement of Germany within Development Cooperation with India (or other countries). GTZ offers a sound package with insight into its operational and strategic work, the respective project work especially, participation in internal and also international-level processes, in interesting field trips, the fostering of contacts and additionally financial and organisational support of your stay. You will not be the coffee boy for anybody and develop soft skills and learn from experiences. Beside some long days and weeks at work, you also get enough holidays for recovering or exploring the country.The fact that I am recently started another internship in the now called GIZ (in the Small Hydro Power Project in Indonesia) proves that I enjoyed it!

In the very early morning of 6th December 2011 I had said good by to my friends in Delhi and was ready to start my big India travels, which took me on a journey through the magical world of Rajasthan, showed me the buzzing city life of Bombay, let me make good friends, made me read books again (reading White Tiger and Shantaram in India is a very good combination), drove me up and down, made me relaxed on the beaches in Goa over Christmas, lead me to the mystique Hampi for bouldering over New Years and made me say goodbye in Bangalore. Six month has passed then, but I did not feel like leaving India, nor Asia. But due to my visa I had to leave for at least 2 month, so some weeks in advance I was applying for the above mentioned project in Indonesia. Since I knew that I got into it, I was planning to take 2 weeks off in Malaysia and be in Jakarta by the end of January. Read about my stops in the following map in a few days...

1) Kuala Lumpur
2) Taman Negara National Park
3) Cameron Highlands
4) Penang
5) Kota Kinabalu
6) Kota Belud
7) Mount Kinabalu

About cakes in faces and kicking asses at my birthday party

Once every year you get reminded of your age. No matter how old you feel or look, this number is not waiting for you and increasing permanently. The strange thing about it is that the older I get, the more I realise that an old man must still be the same little child in his inner self. The reason for this thought is that besides you are going through different periods of your life, which also change you more or less, at the end, you still recognise yourself! You met yourself on the way. Surprisingly for me, the inner self doesn’t change as fast as the number of your birthdays. What about, if the old man also doesn’t feel like 70 years? He noticed that his body was aging, that his mind maybe got a little slowed down, but from my point of view today, I think he is still wondering about similar questions of life, apparently why everybody looks up to him, treating him different then people treated him 43 year back.

Anyway, my 27th birthday was coming along and I didn’t have any clue how to celebrate with my friends. Definitely I wanted to do something active, where everybody can participate and that it’s not just the usual weekend party. I also knew that with respect to Incredible India’s broad variety of amazing to do’s, it wouldn’t be so easy to find a proper answer on my question. After calling heaps of bowling alleys, I found out that some of them didn’t even exist anymore, were closing right at the time when most of us are just about to leave work or we located somewhere behind the moon. The fact that none of them would have served beer didn’t matter at this point already. This option was gone. Plan B was also not to feasible, because I had to ask myself, if having a picnic with some music in the ruins of the District Park would have been too crazy for India, especially since the park is locked and secured after 8 pm. A commonly known picnic place was the area surrounding India Gate, but celebrating at one of the most famous landmarked sites, the party probably wouldn’t have get started. At the end things are mostly simpler than you think before, so we were having a BBQ at our veranda. Back in Germany, we used to have grill parties almost every weekend in the summer and I was actually missing it very much in India. Thus, I kind of made myself a gift by deciding to invite my friends for my first BBQ party in India.

Arranging a grill and chalk coal should have been the next issues, although interesting and funny ones! While having lunch in our beloved small street restaurant, I guy passed by his bike and were delivering the restaurant with a bag of coal. That was my chance, but due to enjoying the food too much, I forgot him and he was gone. Therefore Karan, Jakob and I were going on a mission to find a coal service shop, which required quite some time. Soon after Jakob dropped out, we actually found a place, where hills of chalk coal were being produced, but nobody was there for selling it. Well, at the time being we had a lot of fun with “looking at the features of the close environment”, but we didn’t get any coal and had to go back to the office. After work I tried again and got an insight of the chalk coal supply chain for small businesses in India. People were queuing up to deliver tiny little tree trunks and branches, as well as wood peaces they found on the streets. Obviously they were getting money for supplying the governmental coal store. Others were burning and smoking the wood, while again other were weighting and selling the product. At a rate of 22 Rs/kg (0,30 Euro) I bought some kilos and prevented the coal on being delivered by bike within its last level of the value chain. During the day I was also talking to Alex, who was offering his grill. The only problem was the question how to get it to my place. Without much discussion we agreed on doing it the Indian style, jumped on his motorbike and were manoeuvring the dismantled grill, fixed around my body, through Delhi’s crazy rush hour traffic! It was so much fun. On the way home, I bought chicken and mutton and if we would not have forgotten the gridiron, we could have started the BBQ without improvising. But as an engineer is not hustling with such minor issues, a solution was found very easily: two deformed metal trivets made my day!



After burning one peace of coal on the stove in the kitchen, the whole grill could have been set on fire and soon people were having corn, naan (bread), rice and grilled meat to accompany the beer in their stomachs. Afterwards an Indian birthday tradition took place and I was not aware of it before. I was supposed to cut a peace from the chocolate cake and hand it to one of my fellows. Then I didn’t expect to get it right back, but into my face! Karan rubbed it as good as he could; through my face and hair! Right after that, four of them were throwing me 27 times into the air and I literately could not hold me from laughing ;-) … it was such great and unforeseen fun, especially when you consider the final of the Indian styled birthday. Whoever liked could bump my ass with her/his feet, because I was still hung up by the four guys. Hilarious! Fortunately I was able to share some of the cake from my face with the other when I was hugging them ..haha…



Thanks for all the wishes and great moments we could share! I’ll never forget that funny party with all of you!

How the story begins

My dear friends and blog followers, after my first 6 days in Delhi passed by really quickly I finally found some time to give a life sign. This will be the opening post of www.andimeetsindia.blogspot.com and you can follow me on my 4-month internship and life in Delhi and some travelling through this stunning country afterwards.

But let’s start at the beginning. My wish to be in India occurred so long ago, that I actually don’t remember how the idea has risen in me. Being in the final year of my studies in Industrial Engineering and Management you can think that I wanted to be out on an adventure again before I start my professional life. I cannot disagree with that, but it is a way more. The reasons of the financial and economic crisis in the past years on the one hand combined with my understanding of sustainability on the other hand also took their share by bringing me here. In my opinion you really have to see the world from as much as possible different angles and especially from one of the world’s poorest views. If we get the opportunity to follow this vision, then we shouldn’t act blind or wonder why we life so well. Anyway, I guess ‘Siddhartha’ also had his influence on me and finally there was my stay in Australia, where I food myself in a similar world as the Europe where I’m from. But I wanted more…

A long time ago (as in the meaning of ‘Once upon the time’) I applied for an internship in the Indo-German-Energy-Programme at the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), but by the time I still didn’t get into it. It all happened about 2 weeks ago, when I thought to call them the last time. And there it was. I got offered a place in the Indo-German-Energy-Forum, which is a sub project of the above and located in Delhi. Being patient was the best thing I could do, or how a friend of mine commented it: “You treated the universe well, so now it’s treating you well!” From then one everything came pretty fast, but this is how it usually goes, when it’s time for me to go.

At last I have to admit that I’ve never been in India, never in Asia nor in a developing country. It will probably change my view on the world, and for you there will be insights into the Indian life and probably funny stories from a clumsy German.

On the weekend I will post the first entry on my arrival and first impressions...