India was a blur of unfortunate events. My journey began with heartbreak, leaving Berlin after a brief, intense connection with a girl who, just before my departure, expressed uncertainty about our future when I returned from India. This perhaps set the tone for my time there.

Arriving in Delhi after a long, cold layover in Moscow, I faced immediate harsh conditions. The taxi driver scammed me and left me in a rundown suburb of Delhi. Burning garbage, children sniffing glue, and pervasive poverty painted a grim picture. I planned to escape Delhi and explore the country, despite my limited funds.

I traveled by overnight trains to save on accommodation. Despite visiting picturesque places, the overwhelming poverty and struggle were ever-present. Yet these travels by train left a lot of impressions on me, as I met many people and spent quite a bit of time together in a limited space.

My journey took me to various cities, each presenting a mix of beauty and despair. Without a friend with me, I found solace in photography, but technical failures, like my computer and lens breaking, hindered my efforts to create reflections for myself.

A highlight was meeting local skateboarders, which provided a brief respite from the harsh realities. However, a minor injury from skateboarding worsened when I slipped into the Ganges, beside the biggest burning ghat, notorious for its pollution. A helpful local laughed and helped me out, and the wound, though alarming, eventually healed with care.

The trip took a darker turn with a dog bite in Delhi. I had no vaccination for rabies, and the dog's strange and aggressive behavior indicated the final stage of rabies. A local helped me navigate the chaotic healthcare system, leading to multiple injections. The tropical institute in Berlin later confirmed I had received the standard rabies treatment plus some additional unknown injections. However, I hadn't developed antibodies, and the doctor warned me to watch for symptoms, as rabies is fatal, and for half a year I would not know if the rabies would break out.

Returning to Berlin, with significant weight loss, I was left with many questions. The heartbreak I left with intensified when the girl told me she wanted to continue seeing me but not exclusively. This was on my 25th birthday, and I couldn't handle any compromises that would make me suffer. The question of how I wanted to live my life became pressing, given the chance it could end. I helped myself by seeing things as clearly right and wrong, so I stayed alone. which, in hindsight, was perhaps a consequent, and only decision I could have made at the time, but it didn’t do me any good.

I think in many ways these photos mirror the emotions I carried with me. As I hear so often that people had very joyful experiences in India, I'm not sure if it was not my own loneliness that I projected onto the people I photographed. Maybe the series is more a reflection of a 25-year-old boy lost in a foreign country than a portrait of India.

All these chaotic, often painful, and surely intense experiences I had in and after India shaped me profoundly. A friend of mine once said to me, "A lot of things broke my heart but fixed my vision." I want to see it like that; I'm happy about every feeling I could experience in my life, profound loneliness is one of them.