Paddy sent us over a story about a recent trip he did with some crew to India for some Demo’s, well worth the read…
10 days ago I got asked to fly over to India to ride demo’s with my mates Sergej Deier & Daniel Dressen. India??? I haven’t even heard anything of BMX coming out of India so heck yeah I thought, I am going.
Well where to start? Because you wouldn’t even believe what life is like over there. Let’s say it’s a mix of religion, poorness, happiness, history and far away from our world as we know it. It seriously takes its time to get use to things like that there’re almost no traffic lights and the streets are packed with people, cars, animals, motorcycles, trucks and bikes. Everyone is going where they want and they show their presence by honking their horn but for some reason, it all works out.
We rode demo’s in different citys like Udaipur or Gnarghar. We spent lots of time in planes and cars to go from one city to another and it’s kinda normal that you’ll need around 12 hours of driving for 400km because the roads are just wrecked, full of holes and half finished construction, a pain in the a… to be honest. The people just don’t care, even when the streets are flooded with water everytime it started raining because there’s nothing like a sewerage in small citys where we’ve been. Big citys like New Delhi seem kinda modern but at the end there’s no difference. I’ve seen way too much suffering, sickness and things I don’t understand like their religion and castes system. Lots people get treated like their life is worthless and others seem like gods for them just because of money.
I think we had the chance to make a lot of people and kids happy for one day because of riding our bikes for them. At the places we’ve been a bicycle had the meaning of not having enough money to own a car and having a lower value in their society. I remember having a street session with Sergej at a curb-hip construction and after 10 minutes the place was so crowded that the police had to stop our action because we just caused a traffic jam. So the demo’s were absolutely amazing for them and for us as well because the people thought we’re from a different planet and we felt that the more we ride, the more we’re creating us a place in their hearts, and we did! The ramp set up hasn’t been what we’re used to but we’ve done our best and had a lot of fun doing it.
Well I can’t explain in words about my experience in just a couple days and my mind is over flowing with things, people and life I’ve witnessed. I already have been to lots of different places in the world because of that little kids bike but no other place expanded my horizon as much and made me apreciate the life i have even more as India did!