The ascent of the 660 rock-cut steps, all of them polished smooth by uncounted bare feet of humble worshippers seeking to perform Darshan (“the beholding of a deity”) at Shravanabelagola, one of the oldest and most important Jain pilgrimage sites in the world, is truly worth each drop of sweat shed. The gigantic 18 meters tall and blindingly white gleaming statue of Lord Bahubali carved from a single piece of granite stone and located on the summit of the Indragiri Hill can be seen even from as much as 24 km afar and is considered to be the world's largest monolithic stone statue. Each day thousands of Jain pilgrims as well as curious visitors make their way up, passing the numerous smaller shrines. Even elderly or handicapped people get the chance to take a closer glimpse at the towering statue on top, as there is a palanquin transport service available to avoid the strenuous hike.

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Kung fu (功夫, in Mandarin Chinese pronounced as gong fu), the popular term for Chinese martial arts, is a notion that conjures up mystical masters living in misty mountains and awe-inspiring artistic movements. Even in the rapidly modernising China of today one can find this cliché real and alive. One protector of this treasure trove of traditional Chinese culture is Master Li Quan (师傅李全). Born in Heilongjiang Province in the far north-eastern reaches of China, Master Li Quan has been a student and teacher of Chinese kung fu for more than 25 years.

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This is not an average travel narrative, replete with the wonders of a world that is truly wondrous: a jazzy world that, yet, has a large, welcoming heart. This is, perhaps, not an image run-of-the-mill Hollywood WW2/spy-flicks generate, immersed, as they seem to be, in anachronistic assumptions and the resultant antipathies. But, it is clear to this writer, Germany and Berlin define the new Gross European Cool, framed in terms of “Multi-Kulti” (multiculturalism, in colloquial German) and a Kalkbrennerian Zeitgeist.

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In the last quarter of 2009, the famous actor and animal rights activist Brigit Bardot wrote a letter to the president of Nepal, urging him to intervene in the planning of an upcoming religious festival. Her request was received, but shunned by the president; the Gadhimai Mela, held every five years, would again go on as it had for centuries. It is considered the biggest single animal sacrifice on our planet. The festival’s name, Gadhimai, comes from a goddess whose temple is situated in a vast complex near a tiny village in Nepal not far from the Indian border.

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The Urs celebrations of the great Muslim Sufi saint Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti at Ajmer are famous all over the world - not only among Sufis or other Muslims. Sufism (also referred to as tasawwuf) is the inner, mystical dimension of Islam, which focuses on direct knowledge of God and the experience of mystical union or direct communication with ultimate reality. One can hardly overemphasise the importance of Sufi Islam as the key channel for Hindu-Muslim interaction in South Asia throughout the centuries, which resulted in an extremely fruitful cross-fertilisation of ideas, thoughts, sciences, and arts – and there is no place in South Asia where this is more evident than in Rajasthan’s Ajmer and even more so during the Urs festivities.

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My mother once showed me an old newspaper photo of a man with his face thoroughly beaten into an unrecognizable pulp. Giggling, she told me that the man was my father.

I looked over at the portly clean-cut man sitting across the breakfast table, wearing a starched white shirt and a navy-blue blazer. He averted his gaze, managing to look sheepish, amused, and defiant all at once.

The story of how my father fell victim to the infamous Bangladeshi Gonopituni (public beating), briefly, is this. In the springtime of his life, Shafat Sattar went to see a performance of his favorite singer, Mitali Mukherjee, at BUET, a famous engineering institute in Dhaka (“Porir moto gola – she had the voice of an angel”, he comments wistfully). He was disappointed. The music, the tune, the beats, it was all wrong. The next day, fuming, he marched up to the composer responsible for this disaster to demand an explanation, an apology, some sort of penance. He was not satisfied with the answer, and promptly did what still, today, strikes him as the only thing he could have done.

He slapped the composer, a student of BUET – in the middle of the BUET cafeteria. What followed is fairly predictable. A minor scuffle ensued, which swiftly turned into the entire BUET campus attempting to deconstruct young Shafat Sattar’s face. “The bugger,” he observes now with an objective air, “deserved it”.

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“What is the most wonderful sight in India – the strangest thing to be seen in all this land, where so much is strange? For my part, I am inclined to doubt whether anything can be witnessed more impressive and picturesque, more pregnant, too, with meaning and significance, than the Kumbh Mela, or great Pilgrim Fair, which is held, once every twelve years, where the waters of the Ganges and Jumna meet, below the wall of Allahabad. Until you have look upon one of these tremendous gatherings of humanity many aspects of Indian life and character must be hidden from you.”
Sydney Low during the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to India (1906)

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Going abroad as a part of the curriculum has become more and more common and is nowadays a key distinguishing factor in your CV. Most European students choose to stay inside Europe thanks to the Erasmus programme or go to North America, but others prefer to leave the beaten track and travel to more challenging parts of the world, in order to discover a new way of life, learn a foreign language, and experience by themselves what global diversity is.

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Some 250 years ago, during the rule of Aurangzeb in India, it wasn't the best of times for music and the arts. Aurangzeb, adhering to a very orthodox brand of Islam (in contrast to previous Mogul emperors like Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan), is remembered for his uncompromising religious views, such as the discouraging of singing or music for Hindus and Muslims alike. When musicians lost their imperial patronage, they started looking for more supportive environments.

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Perhaps "dili" (= from the heart, cordial, close, intimate) is a good expression to describe Delhi but there are probably a hundred things I love more. For example a delicious chocolate fudge brownie, which tastes so good that you even wish you could reincarnate as one. What else…

Ok, wait, maybe there aren’t a hundred things. Actually, I don’t think I can name anything else, because there is simply nothing more. But let me start with some hard facts about this incredible city. Delhi, locally known as Dilli, is a city with approximately 15 million inhabitants and is India’s most populous city after Mumbai. It consists of Delhi, Delhi Cantonment, and New Delhi, the last one being the capital of India. About 82 % of the population in Dilli are Hindus. The second largest religious community are Muslims with 12 %, Sikhs are 4 %, and Jains and Christians are around 1 % each. The main languages spoken here are Hindi and English (the official languages of India), as well as Punjabi and Urdu.

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“Fasenacht” is one of the many local German expressions for carnival which, depending on the region, have developed more or less from climatic, historical and religious origins. You can find this period of celebrations in almost every Christian culture. However, there exist comparable festivals in other cultures as well, such as Holi, Dol Yatra or Kamadhana in India. Generally speaking, they are all about celebrating the end of winter and trying to disperse the bad spirits, for example, with colourful costumes or masks. But today these celebrations aren’t reduced to the locals alone. Many have turned into multicultural events in which everyone can participate.

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