I spoke about my adventures in Uzbekistan briefly in my previous blog post. Apologies if you couldn’t read it because it was in German. I spend nearly two weeks with a German group and a German tour guide and couldn’t not use the opportunity to write my very first blog post in a language that I’ve spend countless hours learning.

Something that I didn’t mention in that blog post, mostly as I was trying to keep it brief due to the language, was an interesting encounter that I had in Samarkand towards the beginning of our journey.

In Samarkand, Uzbekistan, as we were heading out of a Quran School, I saw another south asian person walking in the opposite direction. Now, since I had landed in Uzbekistan, I had not seen many south asians despite of reading that there are many Indians who go to Tashkent to study medicine. So seeing this guy made me instinctively wave at him and ask if he was a “Desi”.

He said yes, he was from India, from Karnataka. Super! I thought. He told me that he’s on a road trip from Bengaluru in the south of India all the way to London, traveling some 25,000kms and visiting 40 countries along the way. I found it extremely fascinating.

We chatted for another minute or two and exchanged phone numbers. He was supposed to pass through Berlin so I invited him to reach out whenever he passes by so that we could meet. In all honesty, I didn’t expect him to do so, or for it to work out.

But couple of weeks ago, he reached out saying he’ll be passing through Berlin and would like to meet up for dinner. After some back and forth, he and his daughter finally made it to Berlin on a fine Saturday evening. I took them to Sarvana Bhavan and we had good south Indian dinner.

After that, we walked all the way to Alexanderplatz, and then headed to Warschauerstr, and then walking back to Ostbahnhof after seeing the East Side Gallery. In the end, we were out there walking until late in the night. In spite of me meeting these people for the first time, we connected very well and had a great time.

The next day, we met again for dinner at the very same restaurant. I told them that I was already feeling a bit sad that they were scheduled to leave the next morning, onward in their journey. I was genuinely sad after having felt a bit invested in their journeys for the past couple of weeks concluding with that dinner at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin.

They’re still in touch, and I’ll probably see them again someday in India. I think the whole story was quite fascinating for me. A random wave at a stranger and that led to a meetup in Berlin and perhaps new friends in India. Life is chaotic and random. But sometimes, beautiful patterns come out of the chaos. The trip to Uzbekistan itself was pretty random, and then this extra layer of chance bringing few folks together was just cherry on top. A story that I’d keep telling people!

Thank you for reading.