My graduation project is on healthy nearly zero energy building designs for governmental schools in Delhi. My project is supervised by BBA binnenmilieu bv, and we work together with Santrupti engineers pvt ltd. Santrupti is hosting my stay and giving me the opportunity to explore the ‘real’ India. Believe me when I say that everybody is most helpful and humble to work with me (I am still not sure if it is because of the foreign looks though).

As expected, rest and structure is nowhere to look for. Additionally, it is hard to get things set for my fieldwork. There is a lot of paperwork involved in order to get into the government schools. And still they manage to keep me locked out.

Luckily there is enough to do around here. Either I hang around as a tourist or I try to blend in with some locals. The good thing is the festival season which has recently started (October). I noticed there are all kinds of different religions or different ways of celebrating one religion. Religion and family still play a big role within India. But I noticed there is a whole new generation on its way which is going to handle things slightly different than the religious way.

The art to get to know a bit of the ‘real’ India: stay normal. Don’t act like a selfie-queen, stop staring, forget about the culture shock. Yes, there is a lot of inequality, poverty and illiteracy. But there are so many good things happening. And they might be even happening in a faster pace than in the western world.