At the time of writing, I’m no longer in Kerala. It's a time jump into the past. But since it's the newest article it appears first now.
It’s the 24th of July. This post is gonna be full of colourful pictures.
Yesterday evening, Hari’s college friends arrived.
Today, we woke up at 5:30 to get ready for our trip to Aluva.
Amma prepared a lovely breakfast. We showered, ate, and set off not long afterwards so that we would have as much time as possible in Aluva.
And we needed it.
In the car, I found a nice-looking sheet of paper. But apart from the word “invitation,” I couldn’t read anything.
Welcome to Malayalam.
It was a wedding invitation—but not for the wedding we were going to.
I marvel at Kerala’s stunning beauty. There’s a reason the whole of India calls it God’s Own Country.
While everyone in India knows how beautiful Kerala is, they also know how bad the roads are—and how insane the driving can be.
Just look.
Both facts confirmed.
In Germany, that road probably wouldn’t even qualify as a one-way street. Here, it’s a state highway—the equivalent of a Bundesstraße.
The colours, though. The colours.
After about an hour, we reached Aluva. And suddenly, the greenery was gone—replaced by advertisements that hardly anyone truly needs and cars turning a two-lane road into a five-lane one.
From the parking area of our apartment, we had a pretty nice view. Honestly, I particularly like this picture.
I wanna be clear: I was living like a king.
Nothing to worry about. Everything taken care of. Everything so shiny. So tasty. So nice.
And then India hits you with this:
The “flat” of the parking staff.
Which is literally in a parking slot itself.
Fitted with beds, a kitchen, a little workshop and so on.
That hits hard.
And the sheer absurdity is that we only had to walk down a couple of steps, enter our room, and suddenly we were in a completely different world.
Both are real.
Both are happening at the same time.
The first part was done. The easy part.
We chilled in the room for quite some time.
And then came the next challenge:
Getting clothes for the wedding functions.
And most importantly, getting ready for a rather typical kind of bachelor party:
We were going to “kidnap” Mustafa after the programme that evening and celebrate with him.
Just to calm down us Westerners: “kidnapping” is a very common term here for surprising someone and taking them somewhere fun.
There were several layers making this tricky.
First, Mustafa didn’t know about it.
Second, his family did know—and they weren’t exactly thrilled by the idea.
Third, the flat didn’t look like a party location at all yet.
Fourth, we had to go shopping with ten people. The malls are one hour away.
I mean, the first point was fine. Mustafa had no say in what was going to happen to him anyway.
The second could have been a dealbreaker.
For the third, we had until 5 p.m. to transform the room. That included cake, confetti, party poppers and everything else.
As for the fourth: thank God I didn’t need anything myself, because I probably would have taken longer than everyone else combined.
Fifth: somehow find food in between.
That’s a lot to squeeze into a couple of hours.
At least we hadn’t wasted any time sitting around in the room beforehand, so we had the maximum amount of time for all the preparations.
Wait…
Hadn’t we done exactly that?
Chilling, talking and watching about half a movie?
=))
Shopping was relatively quick, but then we had to drive for two hours to reach our actual destination.
Here’s another picture I love because it shows so, so, so much about the culture here:
The petrol station attendant filling the vehicle for you.
The driver’s dhoti—the towel-like garment.
The sandals.
His expression.
The condition of the truck.
The greenery in the background.
I simply love this picture.
Then we went to get some food.
That was awesome.
AWESOME.
Everyone later said it might have been the best fish they had ever eaten. And these are people who live near the ocean and get fresh fish every single day.
That’s why I later decided to return to the same restaurant when I went to Aluva to visit the language schools.
After eating, however, we decided to split up.
One squad took care of the confetti, cake and everything else.
We took care of the atmosphere in the room.
We wanted to take it to the next level.
We took the metro and an auto-rickshaw to reach the city’s tech hub.
What did we have in mind?
You’ll see later…
We got back home, got ready and went to Mustafa’s place.
Buuut…
We were already too late.
In general, we were late everywhere.
The function had started an hour earlier.
We had all dressed in kurtas because we had been told that the dress code was kurta and dhoti.
We arrived—and then, to our surprise, discovered:
Nobody except Mustafa and us was wearing a kurta.
Basically, it was a photo shoot at home.
A funny detail about the picture: three of the guys were wearing traditional clothes that I had brought with me.
That’s what I call integration.
After a quick photo shoot, everyone from the house went to the event hall, where the Mehndi Night was taking place.
None of us knew what to expect.
But we knew it was going to be first-class.
This wasn’t going to be a small wedding on Sunday.
It was a biiig one.
This is what it looked like:
Actually, it wasn’t quite that full.
I liked it because we could actually connect with the local people.
The look on Malayalis’ faces when I start speaking Malayalam is priceless. It’s such an easy way to make their day.
I love the energy in those moments. It’s magical.
And it shows that speaking beats overthinking.
I’m nowhere near perfect, but I still try. I show people that I care about their culture and appreciate it—and they respond with genuine amazement.
That isn’t unique to Kerala. It has been the same everywhere I’ve travelled.
Approaching people with respect, kindness and curiosity is often enough to open a path into their hearts.
To our surprise, there were also some other friends from Europe.
And how could it have been any different?
That was no coincidence.
I needed to meet them.
Why?
Because two of them had travelled to exactly the place I wanted to visit afterwards:
Ladakh.
Up to that point, almost everyone I had told about my plans had reacted with shock and concern.
They, however, had actually been there—and their reaction was the complete opposite.
They loved it.
Not only did they reassure me that travelling there was easy and safe, but they also gave me the address of a place where I could stay.
I don’t like admitting it, but I was really relieved.
I had heard the same questions over and over again:
Is that really a good idea?
Are you seriously going alone?
Are you sure?
It had become a constant topic, and my gut feeling alone was no longer enough to calm everyone else down.
I needed real experience.
And, apparently, so did they.
So let me introduce these two absolutely lovely people:
Claudia and Sebastian.
Then we all gathered for the mandatory group picture.
And here it is:
Here’s what normally happens at weddings:
Take a picture.
Eat.
Leave.
Then do the same thing again at a different place.
Usually, there’s one function organised by the groom’s side and another by the bride’s side.
Then there’s a pre-wedding gathering like this one.
That’s it.
Personally, just when it starts becoming interesting for me, it ends.
And that’s why I liked what happened after dinner so much.
The closest family members started dancing.
To celebrate their Mustafa.
It lasted for a full hour, and the group kept growing and growing and growing.
I would have liked to join them on stage, but that didn’t seem like the right thing to do.
The atmosphere immediately changed, though.
It became much livelier. Much more fun.
People clapped. People moved to the beat.
It was a really beautiful part of the evening—and, at least in my experience, not something commonly seen at Hindu or Christian weddings there.
And then the function ended.
It was 11 p.m.
No end in sight though. Another fun part just began:
Convincing the family to kidnap Mustafa.
Somehow, something happened—and we actually got the green light.
We took Mustafa with us, and since he hadn’t eaten yet, we first went to get some food.
It was a famous place.
We were sitting in a very narrow area. Any groups wanting to sit beside us had to step up onto a small ledge and balance along a narrow wall.
I was sitting directly in everyone’s way, but I couldn’t really move either. I was at the end of the table, with that wall directly behind me.
So I kept trying to make room.
But I was also tired after a full day of craziness.
And after one group after another had squeezed past me, I eventually stopped caring.
Then an actual celebrity came and sat right next to us.
The funny thing was:
None of us knew he was a celebrity.
So, just like with everybody else, I didn’t really care—and they had to squeeze through the tiny space behind me.
Slowly, however, we realised what was going on. The restaurant staff and other customers recognised the guys and started asking for selfies.
Their only minor problem:
I still couldn’t move.
And they needed to squeeze thourhg as well.
I also didn’t want to leave my family just because some celebrity was sitting next to us and people wanted pictures.
Quite a funny situation.
Even funnier: the place was actually horrible.
The food was bad. Ridiculously expensive. And the portions were tiny. But the absolute peak came when we ordered lemon tea. They brought us overpriced hot water with a slice of lemon and some sugar. They couldn’t even get the basics right—and made us finish the job ourselves. We had to remind them that actual lemon tea also contains black tea.
Then they finally brought it…
In a tea bag.
That’s almost German standard.
For us, one thing was clear:
This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Because we would definitely never come back.
Just for reference, that’s worse than ordering coffee in Germany and being served nothing but hot water.
Mustafa was still hungry, but the place was too bad and it was getting late.
The only condition was that he had to be back by 1:30.
So we went to our place…
And I think we absolutely nailed it.
We had recreated the same kind of party setup we would have in Germany:
Fog machine.
Lasers.
Speakers.
Surprise…
We weren’t finished by 1:30.
I think Mustafa left at around 2:30.
And we played local card games until 3:30.
And in the end, only one thing mattered:
Mustafa was happy.
And he was!
Job well done.
Did you like it? Leave a comment or reach out to me.
