Easily the highlight of the night for the Mumbai leg of Trevor Noah’s Off The Record tour—coming after two cancelled shows at the Manpho Convention Centre in Bengaluru—was Noah telling us exactly what went down in India’s IT capital.

“The shows did not happen. On the bright side, I will always remember India,” Noah said to huge applause from an audience that loves schadenfreude.

“We get in the car and start driving to the show, driving to the show, driving to the show, driving to the show… a few days later, we get there. I said to the people in the car [on the way] where are we going?! Because the scenery was changing! We went from Lamborghini and BMW dealerships to Suzuki and Tata dealerships. Then houses, then no houses. At some point, the road wasn’t a road anymore. All of a sudden, we’re off-road. I thought to myself, I’ve never gone off road to get to a show—and I’m from South Africa. There were no lights, where are we going… Ah, I’m being kidnapped. That’s when I relaxed. Because now at least I know what’s happening.”

The crowd was hysterical.

“We pull up to what I guess was the ‘venue’. You think a venue is a place where people come together […] What we got was an open piece of land, with no parking and no signs. And a tent. Driver goes, ‘We’re here.’ And I was like, ‘No, we’re… not.’ (We were.) We get out the of the car, and start walking through the mud to get to the show. Now what’s happening is that me and the audience are all getting to the show together. Not a bad thing, just… unusual. I’m now listening to people complaining about me making them come here. ‘Why did Trevor choose this venue?’ ‘Why did Trevor make us come all the way here?’ ‘Has the show started?’—at that point I leaned over to say, no the show hasn’t started, I’m right here.”

Thunderous applause break. I suspect there’s some envy for the guy who bumped into Noah.

“We walk through this dark alley to get ‘backstage’, and there’s… dogs. [mimics barking] Lots of dogs barking [mimics barking]. A guy comes running out, “These dogs are safe, don’t worry. The dangerous ones are in the cages. I turn, and there are cages (!) with dogs (!)”

Then the security at the gate wouldn’t let him in because he didn’t have a pass. So the [Indian] guy who was with him tried explaining to him—“And this is weird to everyone but you, India. You do this thing where you take your [local] language, whatever it is, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil… and you pepper it with just enough English for it to be terrifying to us.” The act out that followed was just death by laughter. And the rest is… Twitter history.

Full review of the final Mumbai show here.

Feature Image Courtesy: BookMyShow