Heading to the conference (AB)

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Shimoga proved interesting, especially Wednesday, when we visited seven different places. The morning began with an elephant ride. Our hosts had heard that we hadn't been able to ride an elephant at the Dubare Camp, so kindly added an extra trip to make up for it. Elephants seem very tall from the ground, but once you climb the ladder and are placed on the howdah, it doesn't seem so bad and the animals move so gently, it's almost as if they want to look after you and give you a comfortable ride.

The summer palace was another interesting place to visit, with beautiful carved stone pieces, brought from many places,which were really attractive works of art. Then there was the tiger and lion safari. Again, we had failed to see tigers earlier on our tour, so it was a plus to be able to photograph some now.



Maybe, though, the best parts of the day were visiting four examples of the kind of projects Rotary clubs in Karnataka have been involved in. First there was a low cost housing initiative, where we saw four houses built with Rotary funding, in order to give rural workers a better home to live in. We worked out that each one had cost the equivalent of £750 to build. The owners were keen to show us around and to follow us round the village and be photographed with us. It was interesting to see a rural set up.



The next project was a blood bank, which was a new thing for me to see. I learnt a lot there, and now feel much more aware of how blood banks operate. Then there was a Rotary funded school, where we were asked to address a hall full of students, neither for the first nor the last time during our trip. Nicola was cursing me for dropping her into speaking off the cuff to the audience, but I was confident that she could do it well, and she did! Tracy was the one who was speaking when the awkward question came up about how sex education was imparted in Britain. In her usual form, she handled it perfectly. It's a very good team we have here for being able to speak to any audience on any subject which is thrown at them.



The fourth project was a residential school for the severest of mentally challenged people. Apparently these children are so difficult for poor rural parents to handle, that they tie them up all day, while they go to work. The state they are in when the parents return at the end of the day is appalling. The school manages to seek these children out and educate them in the most basic of things, such as cleanliness and toileting. It was a sobering visit for us all, but very good to see how much local Rotary clubs are managing to achieve.



After Shimogga we returned to Mangalore through beautiful countryside. This was the weekend of the District Conference, which had some interesting highlights. K. R. Ravindran from Sri Lanka proved a moving speaker, as he spoke about the importance of having passion in what we do. He talked of pity killing with kindness, whereas passion gives action and hope to people. He also said, quite rightly, that each Rotary district must look at the sort of things that they can focus on and concentrate on that. This has been made very clear to me, as we have travelled around Karnataka. Indian clubs need to focus on very different things to our clubs in Britain. Finally he talked of a sustainable initiative by Danone, the French milk products company. Apparently they have set up a very successful social, philanthropic business in Bangladesh, which now employs 1,600 people. I need to look further at this.



In the evening there was a choice of karaoke or a presentation of a wide variety of Indian classical dancing. I'll leave our readers to guess who chose which activity, but suffice it to say that we all enjoyed ourselves very much.



It is now time to move on to our final leg of the exchange, which has so far been so eventful.

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