Following an invitation to a wedding from a complete stranger, we met a day earlier, we hopped on a bus in Pondicherry and left towards Chennai, hoping to experience our next adventure.

The party

When we arrived there, we were completely baffled, because we would have never thought to attend a wedding party and especially not this type of party. We thought Indians to be modest and conservative, but we were so wrong. The new generations are completely different to the picture we had in mind. In fact, they were really westernish and so was their party: Young people having fun, drinking alcohol and dancing to crazy Indian music in a giant, luxurious villa…

Now imagine us being thrown into this scene: looking a bit hopeless at first, then starting to warm up and by the end dancing with our new friends to their Bollywood music inside a swimming pool at 2 am in the morning. It was magnificently hilarious.

The day after

During the next “morning” we went to a nearby beach and enjoyed the best-fried fish ever for breakfast – what a superb way to start the day.

An Indian wedding

After we came back from the beach, we hurried to not be late for the actual wedding ceremony. The couple, which we already had met and danced with the night before was a bit unusual. At least in India a marriage between a bride belonging to a Hindu and a groom belonging to a Christian family is rare.

So they actually were going to have three weddings: a Christian, a Hindu and a private one. We attended their Christian ceremony that day, which was actually quite similar to the marriages back in Europe and sadly not as crazy as we thought an Indian wedding might have been like (the crazy ones are the Hindu weddings, for which India is actually quite famous).

This one was nonetheless equally beautiful. I was really glad to be a part of such an intimate and happy moment. When the freshly married couple left the church, a little surprise happened. The groom was an Indian marine officer there is a lot of customs in India. So the shipmates of mariners use to stop the freshly married couple with their swords. Then they ask them to complete little funny tasks or else they will not be allowed to pass.

Next, we went to the wedding buffet, which was on Indian army grounds. Yep… Indian army grounds. Are two Germans allowed on an Indian army ground, you ask? No definitely not. But something like this can definitely happen in a country as crazy as India. To cause no international incidents we tried to keep quiet. Therefore we took no photos at all during this part of the wedding. The rest of the evening was relatively quiet in comparison to the last night, no party, no alcohol. Maybe at some points, India is still modest and conservative… as long as the parents are there watching…

New friends

During those roughly two days we made some really good friends in India. On top of that we were amazed by the Indian hospitality for the first time. Even now if we think of it something similar to this would have been unthinkable of in Germany. But our journey continued and so we went to a little hotel in Chennai the next day to wait and organize stuff for our Tuk Tuk Dream. But once again – you can read more about that in the next post.