Indore was a super awesome experience, because we stayed here with a couchsurfer once again. Rhishabh for that was his name, showed us around the cityon his motor scooter, introduced us into the street food culture and made our stay something special.

Indorians are proud for their city because of two main reasons. First of all, they are known in India for their food and second – they are the cleanest city with a functioning waste disposal system, much like the ones we are used to from Germany. Somehow clean streets and street food go hand in hand very well.

Indore’s street food food street

So on our first day there Rhishabh showed us the main thing to do on Saturday evenings/nights in Indore. A little food street in the heart of the city, where you can buy everything from honey dripping sweets to wholehearted meals. All of it really cheap and all of it freshly prepared in front of our very own eyes. The atmosphere of this place was just awesome. Imagine a small street, filled with little street shops and stands that sell food left and right and hundreds of people with food somehow streaming, pulsating in the little space left.

It was surreal and one of the most Indian experiences we had so far. Especially because we ate one Indian speciality after another, everything somehow tasting different and better than the thing before. Then after some rounds around this street, when we started to feel really really full, we drove back through the night with a breakneck speed on the scooters.

Having Diarrhea

Sadly I felt very sick the next day and spent the whole day sleeping with a mild fever and an urge to vomit every time I woke up. By the night I had proper diarrhea… In the whole time in Sri Lanka in India this was our only real incident with diarrhea.

Flo on the other hand jammed A LOT with our host and his friends, roamed around the city at night, eating even more exotic street food stuff, not feeling ill at all.

Well… on the next day I started to feel better though, the rehydrating solution and paracetamol had worked wonders.

Is that a freaking elephant?

When I stepped outside on the balcony I could not believe my eyes and I ran back inside to get Flo and Rhishabh outside as well: There was a fully grown elephant standing in the middle of the street, its trunk beautifully coloured and people around it laughing, touching and feeding it. Amazed by this situation we also went down to the street, bought some bananas from a little waggon roaming the area and fed the elephant as well. It was something so beautiful but random at the same time that we could not help but feel like nearly bursting with luck from the inside.

An Indian’s worst fear

The rest of the day we spent, relaxing with friends of Rhishabh, some of them just came to see us, his white guests. Again we appeared on so many Facebook and Instagram stories, by then we started to feel kind of famous. One hillarious thing, that left an everlasting memory on us, happened, when a Gecko entered through the open window in the evening. Suddenly somebody shouted: “LIIIIZAAARD!” and before we realized what was happening all the Indians had left the room in fear… and we were just looking around wondering, what the heck scared them.

When we finally saw the source of their fear, a little gecko, we started to burst out in laughter and I could not help myself and catched it. Holding it in my hand triumphantly, I went outside to show them that those animals are among the most harmless things in existence. None of them wanted to listen and everybody was keeping a minimum safety distance to me and the gecko in my hand. It was just funny. Running behind grown-up Indians with a small gecko in hand scaring the shit out of them.

Changed roles

Sadly Flo started to show the same symptoms that I showed the day and night before and so we basically switched roles. Now he was lying in bed and sleeping and I was roaming the city at night with our new Indian friends. Even though I could not jam with them, like Flo did, they sang wonderful Hindi songs in a café and we had a beautiful time. Indores street and night life, the food, the crowdedness, the busy feeling of the place, the people staring at us, the hospitality, the night-time scooter races, the random elephant encounters and also the travel diarrhea somehow made us feel like we finally found India.