Yelläks /ˈyæl•eks/

On the 12^th of February I will go to Bangalore to do my Master Thesis at the IISc (Indian Institute of Science). The application was just because of a friend, who suggested me to try. After gathering some information about the institute I applied and finally got admission. I did not know that it is one of the top institutes of India and after figuring that out, I had some doubt, if I will be intelligent enough for them. But without trying it out, I might never know.

This was my preparation plan and maybe it will give you an outline of what to do, if you want to go abroad.

1. November 2006:
   Convince your university: I am one of the first, who is actually going abroad to do a Master Thesis in a different country. It took a lot of persuasiveness so that the professors let me go. It is a complete new field to my university and they had a lot of doubts. They linked their permission to several conditions:
   • The supervising person of the guest institute must at least be a professor with some academic background. This was actually not, what I wanted. Due to my plans to stay and work in India for several years, I wanted to use the project for the Master Thesis to test, if I can handle the Indian working conditions.
   • The supervisor has to write a report about how I performed. The final grade will partly base on his judgement.
   • several other minor conditions

   So be prepared that you have to fulfill conditions as well.

2. Then an institute or a company had to be found, which accepts me. I do not have so many preferences regarding the topic of the thesis as long as it keeps me busy and is interesting. So I tried the IITM, Anna University in Chennai and AMI and HCL.
3. After I found the IISc I started to discuss the suggested topic with the professor from my university in Germany and I got the permission to go ahead.
4. December 2006:
   The really painful part was applying for a scholarship. I never did that before and I needed to fill out more papers than for the visa application. Due to the short notice (I started to plan this stay in November) there were not many scholarships left with deadlines long time back. I had to write several detailed reports about my plannings, proceedings and also the project. It took around one month to gather all needed information. The deadline was on the 2^nd of January and I sent the papers on the 30^th of December. Unfortunately the post service had some problems and instead of sending the papers to the institution, it sent them home to the place where I live. Somehow the addresses have been mixed up. The deadline was already over, but I called the scholarship institution and it was no problem to send the application again. So I packed everything in a new envelope and went to the post office again.
5. January 2007:
   After all that I applied for the Indian visa. The validity has to be at least 6 months starting from February. But the first valid day of the visa was the day on which it was issued (which was the 8^th). So I had to go to the Indian embassy in Frankfurt and finally I got a visa for one year.
6. The final step is to book a flight. Check for a flight, which does not need so much time. The travelling time between India and Germany is usually 1 day. But there are cheap “special offers”, which took 3 or more days.

That is it basically. It is not very hard, but a lot of thinks have to be organised. Some institutions will advise you to start your plannings a year before. But if you do not want to apply for a scholarship, it takes even less preparation time. In my plannings there was not involved an Office of International Affairs and everything has been done by myself. Even if you have some throwbacks, do not hesitate and try again.

.

Narayanan (or also called Naru – due to my inabilities to pronounce his name propely) invited my one day to his home in Kerala. The house is in the middle of a forrest, but some hats were nearby. We reached there at night of round 3 or 4 am and we had to make our way through a pitch-black forrest, which was only lit up by a candle and a little leaf functioning as windshield carried by Naru.

His family was already awake and awaiting us. After the sun rose I could see the whole farm with banana, jackfruit, coconut and palm trees and a peacock sitting on top of one of the palm trees. It seemed that even the mosquitos got a better view and discovered that there is a new guy with fresh European blood. So a war started between them and me with heavy losses on both sides. Naru and his family were quite amused by my struggeling movements, since they had no problems at all.

In the morning we took a bath. Due to it did not rain in the past few weeks, water was rare and worthy. But fortunately a neighbor had a half filled pont with fishes. It was the best option to cool down and to relax in the water while the fishes were sucking on my skin which tickled a bit.

Then one day we went to a temple by bus. The trip took several hours, but it showed me the beautiful scenery of Kerala. The inside of the temple was forbidden for Non-Hindus and therefore I waited outside till Naru showed up again. Although I had company I felt somehow uncomfortable, because I do not want to offend anybody who believes in god with any unintended behaviour. A lot of people kept watching me the whole time.

After that we walked through the scenery around the temple and found a river to take a bath. One of the local kids saw me and shouted “a foreigner” in Malayalam to the others. They were very fascinated and curious. In the evening we headed back to Naru’s home and the next day we went to Chennai, which welcomed us with the normal heat and humidity.

[Show as slideshow]

.