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Published: August 30th 2015
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the Golden Triangle, Amritsar It’s been a while since I last uploaded a blog ; due to going on an amazing trip around the Golden Triangle, busy at the school and having been very sick for a while, I have been severely slacking! But a lot has happened since I last wrote and I will try my best to tell you as much of what I’ve been up to now that I’m almost three months into my incredible adventure in India.
After my last blog the first of the University groups arrived to Palampur to help teach in both schools for two weeks. I had two of the volunteers, Georgie and Sam, helping me with the last fortnight of holiday club. We had so much fun doing sports, arts and crafts and music with them and we even put on short plays which the children devised themselves. At the end of the holiday club I put on another concert for the parents which went down really well.
From the end of July I went on an amazing week’s trip around the Golden Triangle with the first group of volunteers. We started in Amritsar, visiting many beautiful temples and gardens and saw the world
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feeling amazing at the Taj Mahal famous Sikh Golden Temple which was such a spiritual and peaceful place to be in. On the first night in Amritsar we were taken to the border between India and Pakistan to watch the daily border closing ceremony. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before; people were dancing like at a carnival and the guards marched up and down kicking their legs in the air and beating their chests and shouting so loudly. It was a really good experience to be a part of.
From Amritsar we got an overnight train to Agra, my first overnight train experience was actually not as bad as I thought it was going to be and whenever the boys serving refreshments came down the aisles shouting ‘Chai Chai Chai’ at the top of their voices I laughed to myself as I’d been told about this before coming to India! In Agra we visited the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort. The Taj is just such an awesome monument; so incredibly large in size and perfect in symmetry, and the story behind the construction of the Taj is a powerful story of love and devotion as it was built as the tomb of
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view of Jaipur city whilst inside Hawa Mahal (wind palace) the King’s wife who died during childbirth . I felt very lucky to be able to visit one of the most famous sights of India as not many Indians even get to visit it in their lifetime.
We only stayed in Agra one night and then took a four hour train to Jaipur the next day. Jaipur was my favourite city to visit on the Golden Triangle trip, although at times it felt very chaotic and touristy, there is so much beauty, history and architecture in Jaipur that I instantly fell in love with it and it gave me such a good vibe to be there – similar to the vibe I get when I visit Mcleod Ganj. We visited a few of Jaipur’s sights including the Amber Fort, Hawa Mahal (wind palace), Jantarmantar Observatory and we saw the Lake Palace also. But on the last day in Jaipur we got the opportunity to watch a Bollywood film at India’s oldest cinema, Raj Mandir, this was one of my favourite experiences in India so far. The film was three hours long, including an interval, and even though it was all in Hindi we could very easily work out what
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the last day of holiday club at the school was going on mainly due to the audience participation – whenever something good happened everyone would cheer really loudly, when something was funny everyone laughed and when it was heartbreakingly sad at points we all cried together. After watching the film I felt emotionally exhausted but also like I’d shared the whole experience with the rest of the audience, it was something I definitely think we should take up in cinemas in the UK.
After Jaipur we headed to Delhi by another four hour train journey, this was my first time visiting Delhi and it was not what I thought it would be like at all. I was expecting narrow, busy streets with loads of small shops, but actually it’s the exact opposite. Most of Delhi is in fact very westernized and the whole city is very spread out, with very wide streets and large houses. Of course there’s the other end of the spectrum though, as everywhere in India; wherever there’s extreme wealth there’s also extreme poverty. The amount of contradictions there are in India is something that has surprised me immensely; even though I was aware that this would be the case it still shocks me every
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with my amazing new friends, Beccy and Libby, in Palampur day. For example in Himachal Pradesh, the state that I live in, plastic bags are banned, which is great for the environment, and when you go shopping you get given little fabric or newspaper bags instead of plastic ones, but at the same time littering on the side of the roads happens all over the place and everyone burns their rubbish to get rid of it.
I spent two nights in Delhi, spending an extra night with one of the volunteers, Rhianna, who was staying a bit longer in India. We visited the Lotus Temple, home to the Bahá'í House of Worship religion, it was really beautiful. We also went to Gandhi Smriti, the place where Gandhi was shot but unfortunately we arrived ten minutes before it closed so didn’t have long enough to look around. When I next go to Delhi I will be sure to go back there and also visit Raj Ghat where Gandhi was cremated. It was really good going around the Golden Triangle because I now have more of an idea where I would like to go back to and what I would still like to visit. I then headed back to Palampur on an overnight coach from Delhi.
Arriving back in Palampur I was greeted with a house full of new friends! Although it was really lovely to have people living with me, it did feel quite overwhelming to suddenly go from living alone for a month to living with four other people, but we all got on so well and quickly became a little family. Unfortunately as soon as I got back from the trip I fell very sick, I spent most of that week on the toilet and ended up having to go to two different hospitals and having two blood tests which finally revealed that I had a liver infection. It was pretty scary having to go to a hospital in another country and because I was in a lot of pain at the time I was quite a mess, but nonetheless it’s an experience I’ll never forget and once I got the right medication I soon started to feel much better.
Everyone in the house was super lovely and helpful while I was sick and Beccy, one of the volunteers who is a music teacher back in England helped me so much in designing a plan for the rest of my time teaching in Palampur. I am now going to stay just at Dhauladhar Convent School and I have two five week schemes to teach the children – the first is rhythms and rhythmic notation and the second is reggae music. After recovering from being sick I very quickly got back into the swing of things at the school. I’m really enjoying my daily teaching structure and in my free time I’m getting on with finishing painting my music room – it’s looking good so far!
So I’m now almost half way through my entire time in India and I can’t believe how quickly time is passing now. Apart from the slight set back of getting ill I’m loving every minute and even though I am very settled in this way and pace of life now, many things still surprise me most days! I will be starting to plan for my month travels around South India very soon, there are still so many exciting things to look forward to in India and I can’t wait to learn and explore more.
K xx
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