Traveling through India with a tuk-tuk as a white person means a lot of stunned faces and attention. But who would have guessed that we would end up in a freaking newspaper?! But first things first: It all started with Couchsurfing. In Calicut, we met our first Couchsurfer ever. Sushil agreed to meet us and give us a place to sleep even though he had no time actually – he had a meeting with a friend scheduled for the evening. After a day full of driving, we reached Calicut in the late afternoon. The sun was already about to settle and the traffic was getting worse.

The usual tactic of avoiding city traffic by avoiding the cities did not work this time, because we needed to get into the city to meet Sushil. Do not ask how we managed to get there safe and sound. It was a real nightmare to find our way through the busy streets of Calicut. Especially the narrow streets up the hills were tricky as we had problems with the clutch once again. The most annoying things were the speed bumpers in this hilly area. Speed bumpers (especially the very well built nearly invisible Indian ones) were our worst enemies indeed!

Going to the beach

After meeting Sushil and parking the tuk-tuk we went to the beach, which was, to be honest, one of the ugliest beaches we had ever seen in India: Trash wherever you looked like we already saw it in Chennai. on top of that streams of sewage flowing directly into the sea… the sunset looked quite beautiful nonetheless.

So we went back to our “home” or shall I say we rolled? We ate so much for dinner that we definitely were very close to rolling. Indian chapati with gravy is simply the best. Especially if eaten in one of the many local restaurants.

In the late night, we saw Sushil again when he came back from his meeting. Sushil is a really nice dude and a traveler himself. He was truly amazed by our tuk-tuk story. So amazed in fact, that he wanted to arrange a meeting with a big Indian newspaper for us.

Enter: The Chronicle News

Well, and what shall I say? The next morning I was woken by the words “Flo get up. In five minutes we have an interview.” It took me a few seconds to be fully awake. After a fast breakfast, we started with a little photo shooting. The actual interview took place in the afternoon. Together with Sushil, we drove to a little Cafè, where we met Pooja, the journalist, and Viswajith, the photographer who took pictures of us earlier in the morning. On contrary to our imagination the interview was rather relaxed. We had a nice and interesting talk with them. If someone would have eavesdropped on our conversation, he would have never guessed it was an interview. The article was published the very next day in the Deccan Chronicle.

We were so proud! Sadly we had to leave Calicut with our tuk-tuk towards Mangalore the next morning, but our sadness about leaving Sushil and the small time we had together behind again did not last long…

Nice beaches and another Couchsurfer waited for us, but see for yourself in the next article.