Before our trip to India I didn’t do any huge research and knew that everything will be just ok. Some people say that one can never be properly ready for India so I didn’t even try. I must admit that the country surprised me positively. I found India in general much more “civilised” and “normal” than most people told me. In fact, during the whole trip, there wasn’t anything that would really shock me or come completely unexpectedly. People in India are same as us, just maybe much more spiritual and kind at first sight. However, I think that in the core we all human beings are the same we just live in a different context and that is why it can seem that we are different. Here are some things that I noticed in India and wanted to write down here: 

• Indians stare at you all the time. If you are in India you have to get used to it. And it is not that kind of staring that they would try to hide it. They don’t try to hide it. They would look long to your eyes as long as they can. And all their fellows as well. It is nothing bad or good it is just like that. We were literally in the middle of attention everywhere we went to (except the most touristic and commercial place ever – the Taj Mahal)
• We were asked 100000x questions like “What’s your name?” “Where do you come from?” and so on. When we answered, the most common ( and pretty unified ) answer from them was “Nice name!” “Uuuh Czech.. what? Australia? Canada?” Almost nobody really knew Czech republic and most of them helped when we mentioned that the Czech Republic is a small country in the middle of Europe, they were happier about it. 
• India is a selfie nation. Everyone is doing selfies in India and also many many people wanted to do a selfie with us. I am sure that we were during the month in India photographed by more than 150 smartphones and posted on many social media profiles.

  

 

• Hot water is a rarity in India. Indians (the lower and middle class) don’t wash in a hot water. Most of them don’t even have a shower and wash outside or in some small sink. The cold water would be not that bad (even though the temperatures in the North during our trip were pretty low or at least lower than expected – around 10 °C ). Worse on their shower was that they usually didn’t have almost any pressure. It was just so hard to wash my long hair with that! In one hostel the shower was not working at all so we got 4 buckets with water and did our stuff with them. 😀 The owner of the hotel was really annoying and wanted money for it. Money for water that is supposed to be in EVERY hostel. And it wasn’t even that cheap one. 
• Trains and buses were on time! I heard from some people that in India there are no rules and that waiting a few hours for a train is a common thing and that we should not plan much because in India planning never works. The total opposite was true in our case! The trains were always on time and we even missed some of them because we came 1 minute later or so. They were clean and well maintained. We tried different classes on the trains (there are actually 5 of them) and none of them was anything super bad or dirty. We traveled a few times with a bus and also didn’t have any bad experience with that. When there was a problem it was completely fine and ok to call the driver and ask where he is and where should we wait. So public transport in India? Highly recommended!

• Indians spit, burp and couch IN PUBLIC all the time. It is completely normal to do it. At first, I got always frightened by that but after a few days (eeh rather weeks) it didn’t really interrupt me at all. Despite of that we always found it pretty funny to hear all those noises everywhere around us.
• There are two menus in restaurants in tourist places. One for Indian tourists and one for foreign tourists. This happened to us only once since we always tried to avoid restaurants and touristic bistros as much as we could but in Agra (the city of Taj Mahal) we couldn’t since our accommodation was right next to the Taj Mahal. In the morning we came to that “restaurant” (and when I am saying restaurant, in this context it means some dirty bistro in which you don’t want to really see how they are preparing the food) and had Thali for 100 rupees. We wanted to have the same food in the evening but realized that it was much more expensive! I asked the guy what the hell this should be and he started to laugh and with a shame brought the menu that he gave us in the morning. Good that I am so much into low prices and checking everything twice. In India, I really was always aware of everything and bit suspicious about everyone. It is good since many people want to get more money from you that is actually necessary. 
• Most of the Indians we met didn’t know how to prepare coffee. Or what coffee actually is. Their coffee is some instant mix of coffee and other cereals with milk. And sugar. Filter coffee means instant coffee with milk. But this is something that you get only at the airport. In the streets, coffee almost doesn’t exist.
• Blowing the horn – this is something that you definitely notice when you arrive in India. Blowing the horn is a part of Indian travel. Indians blow the horn literally everywhere and if you don’t do it than you might feel a bit lost while driving. They blow the horn when they meet another car or tuk-tuk, when they turn left or right or when they just want or feel that the level of loudness around them is too acceptable for regular human ears.

• ECO INDIA (?!) – It really surprised us a lot how “ecological” is the behavior of people in India and how much the state is promoting sustainability and all those ecological topics. Almost during our whole stay we didn’t encounter plastic bags. In the state, Tamil Nadu is even forbidden to use plastics and they control it when one crosses the borders. Not really carefully but they do. We actually only hid our plastic bottles in our backpacks and everything was fine. Instead of plastic bags, Indians use textile or silk ones. India is famous for its street food. The food is usually served on a piece of newspaper or on some leaf. Instead of forks and knives, Indians eat with hands. You will also not meet an Indian person alone in a car – they would also travel completely packed – so they used their vehicles properly. 

• When Indians drink from the bottle they don’t touch it with their mouth. They are literally pouring the water into their mouths. We didn’t manage to find out why.  
• On products, in the Czech Republic it is usually written the “use by date…” date and in India is written the date of manufacturing. It is good to know since we were always very suspicious that we were buying expired products.