A consultant in India – Part 3

21/05/2009

1st day of work; we (the Indian guy worker, Mukesh, the camp coordinator, Dharamvir, and me) went to the camp location. The place is a small village 15 minutes of bus from our guest house.

The “client” is a pre-primary school for children from 3 to 6 yo. The goal of our job is to:

• repair the building (basically a single room house 4×4mt): filling the holes/scratches, whitewashing the walls, ….
• supporting the teachers and spend some time with the children, introducing them to  English by pictures and songs (I have ready “Brother John” in my song portfolio, I hope I’ll have the chance to teach them!)

School of the workcamp (before works)

The school work take place only during morning as the school close at 1pm. The first day passed really fast, we filled the holes in the walls and we prepared a list of the needed equipment for the following day. I had little contact with children: they’re not used to western people and they were a little bit afraid of me.

I spent the afternoon in Dharamsala, the town below Mcleod (which hosts the Dalai Lama), planning my future visits in these towns for the next days. While going back to the house I noticed how many monkeys live in this area, these are the first monkeys I spot!

Dharamsala's monkey

22/05/2009

After a sweet-noodles based breakfast (way too sweet!) we went to the camp for the first whitewashing day. We had to use simple brushes and couldn’t use the roller brush because the paint we use is too sticky!

Whitewashing at the workcamp

We painted  all the morning and we were able to paint the first coat on half of indoor walls. At this pace the whitewashing should be done in 4 mornings + 1 for the outside walls. Not bad, in this way we could spare some days from the last week and go checking other work camps now involved in water management, education and others topics.

Today the children were already bolder than the first day. Some were looking at me the through the window, smiling and waving when I looked back to them. I took them a picture and shown it to them; they enjoyed it and continued smiling at me.

Children at the workcamp

After the camp and a lazy Friday afternoon, Mukesh and I went to an Indian restaurant. I tried the “Dosa” a sort of omelet with various toppings; I choose the mutton, just to break for one meal the vegetarian diet.

Being the house were I stay on a steep slope I could observe a funny behavior of Indian motorcycle drivers: they keep their motorcycle off while going downwards! Some of them, during the nights, keep the lights on (besides the always present horns, clearly) but they turn the engine on only for when it’s strictly needed.

Mountains behind Dharamsala

23/05/2009

I spent the first day off from the work camp to go to Mcleod, Dalai Lama’s host city, and to Baghsu, a small funny (you’ll see why) village near Mcleod.

This area is really touristic; I have never seen so many western people since I’m in India.

I went first to Baghsu waterfalls; after a 30 minutes walk through the hills I got to a nice (and cool) spot with a little waterfall and the monks doing their laundry close below.

Baghsu waterfalls

Then I went to the Buddhist temple Tsuglagkhang, where the Dalai Lama lives. Coming from a long serie of visits to Hindu temples, I was expecting this one to be less crowded of figures, representations and gods. I was wrong. The temple style was surely different (you could see the Chinese influence in the paintings) but also in this one there were a lot of figures, gods and so on.

I understand this style in an Hindu temple, whose religion has thousands of gods (maybe more) but for a Buddhist one, I was expecting something cleaner, less decorated, self-focused rather than focused on some outside entity

Tsuglagkhang temple

I also tried to apply for a blessing of the Dalai Lama (he was in Mcleod at the moment), which is a single or group audience with him where he blesses visitors. I went to the reception to ask but I found a monk smiling at me and giving me a yellow envelope with Tibetan writings on it and inside some grains which seem to be tea; he also gave me a red string with a knot which, I’ve been told, is blessed by the Dalai Lama and you should wear it to get good luck.

Tsuglagkhang temple

I reached then a friend I met in Amritsar and I spent the rest of the day with her and her friends, among which a cool Indian guy with a look middle way between a 50cents and a Bollywood star!

There was also a dutch girl who has been traveling 2 months and half on her own around India and she plans a total of 6 months of traveling between India and Nepal.

Since I’m here I’ve met so many foreign travelers on a gap year traveling on their own around the world. At the beginning I was surprise but I start to think that we Italians make the exception in this case (this use I believe is very spread in northern europe and US countries).

Mcleod Ganj

I spent the evening in Baghsu village, near Mcleod. This place is even more turistic then Mcleod itself. A lot (really a lot!) of western people of all age come here and is capable of spending 3 months (!!!) here; they usually hang-out in small bars, smoke (in a wider sense), play drums and sketch dragons (really!).

By the way, this place is really enjoyable, the air is cool (more than 1700mts above sea level) and there are a lot of small great restaurants where you can have dinner and chat (even if you’re not into the drums or the dragons!). I recommend this place for a few days, you can add a couple more if you also like trekking.

24/05/2009

Lazy Sunday. I had a cheese toast breakfast in a nice Baghsu bar with hills view (due to the chronic lack of night buses, I preferred to spent the night there and getting back the following day)

Bar at Baghsu

I then packed my stuff (I got some very cool Indian clothes for changing last evening!) and then I came back to the guest house.

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Travel’s lectures

Tomorrow I’ll fly to India, where I plan to spend a month volunteering near Dharamsala and backpacking a little around north India.

Image via Wikipedia

I wanted to have with me a suitable book for the coming month,  I then rushed to finish Sophie’s World, which is a suggested lecture if you don’t commit my mistakes:

1. Read this book after 15 (let’s say 20 if you didn’t study Philosophy at secondary school) years old
2. Read this book after having read  ”History of Western Philosophy” of Bertrand Russell

So I ended up with Tiziano Terzani’s “In Asia”, it’s my first book by Terzani; I hope it’s well written and it will do something for my ignorance about Asia’s history. Quite a challenge…

I’m not sure I’ll be able to update this blog during the next 30 days but sooner or later I’ll post pics and anecdotes of this travel.

I’ll see you soon!

Francesco

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