Out of the hills, into life

Sunsets. Always a reason to be back home on time.

I have always had a knack for doing things differently. I guess we all do, in one way or the other.
But I have also always been a rather indecisive and frisky person and that's why deciding to spend my entire summer vacation in rural India pursuing the  Grassroutes Fellowship was not the easiest decision and much contemplation went into choosing to do it. (Even after discovering I'd cleared the apparently fairly challenging application process.Yep, I just said that. This is for those narrow-minded, self-important skeptics who might carry certain judgements about any achievements one might make in this sector :) So, I decided to throw myself in an entirely new universe for a little more than a month and work not just for my own development but take the others along as I did. I must admit though, that I was rather unsure of what was going to find me and, conversely, what I was going to find. But that was probably what made the whole journey as thrilling as it turned out to be. This was also going to be my longest time away from home all by myself. But I almost never have qualms about that. Doing things differently, you see, becomes much easier if mommy dearest isn't looking. Hehe.

And so it started. After the orientation at Bangalore, which I will come back to if I am able to find time, I boarded the train to Haldwani from Anand Vihar Railway Station in Delhi. I was late and there was a rainstorm. It was an early morning train and on my way to the station, I was almost certain I was not going to make it in time. I managed to find the train on the platform, boarded the first coach I saw and WHOA! it started to move. Most dramatic train-boarding ever. "Is this something of a forewarning?" I thought to myself. I made a mental note to be a little more careful towards the strappy thing wrapped around my right wrist. It was a beautiful ride till Haldwani, from where I took a bus till CHIRAG in Simayal gaon (village), which is where the Head Office of the organization is located.

The Haldwani Railway Station

Now that I think about it, it would be extremely hard to chronicle the time I spent there following a day-by-day pattern. When I think about my time there, I think about incidents, I think about people, I think about conversations and I think about the various places where I encountered each of these. A major reason why I thoroughly enjoyed my time there was because I love to explore because I genuinely believe that I can learn from everything I experience, everyone I meet and every place I get the opportunity to see.