18th June, 2009
We started early in the morning for Baruipur. NISHTHA had booked a guest house for us in Dhakuria, in south Calcutta. We were to drop our stuff there and take a local train to Baruipur. The guest house (Sona Guest house) was a typical city guest house mostly used by corporate houses for their clients/ employees - which in other words means air conditioners/ television sets in all the rooms. Not only was this place a little too far from Baruipur for daily travel, but a city guest …

“Hum pahadi log hai”, says bua-ji as she beats her chest with her fists when talking about the difficulties of mountain communities.

It’s true, the pahadi log are a tough people. They survive no matter what.
The mountains offer few sources of income: agriculture and the army. However, as agriculture is weather-dependent, and as water is always an issue in the mountains, the occupation is hardly lucrative. There are stretches of land that are largely undeveloped due to forest area protected by the Forest Department. So no large industries are flourishing that …

We were at Majkhali yesterday, a village about an hour’s trek from Naini where we’re staying. The summer’s been particularly hard on these people. The infiltration well that Grassroots installed has dried up and about 20 families in the village now rely on a naula nearby. A naula is the traditional type of well in this area. It’s about 4-5 feet deep and taps the sub surface water. The naula we saw had nearly dried up as well. There was a trickle of water at the bottom, which allowed the …

Packing for a trip to the hills no longer involves a few mufflers and a pair of gloves. Make sure you also have a wide-brimmed sunhat, a good pair of shades and lots of sunscreen. Ranikhet, as we discovered upon arriving, is as hot and thirsty as its drier neighbours despite being a hill station. Its body of brown, sparsely covered Kumaon hills has wrapped  itself around the area such that no matter which way you turn, you feel the full strength of its presence.
Letting yourself be swept away by …

And it goes on till forever…
Till forever turns into yesterday…
Why do all good things come to an end…that’s a funny song by Nelly Furtado, but it’s been one of my faves nevertheless. Unfortunately it’s chorus has had many instances of manifesting itself in reality in the past few days and I may start disliking the song itself pretty soon.
It was the last day of the trip, and my brain had still not grasped this fact. It remained a fact and not a realization. While going back to the station, in …

REPAINT THE OLD STROKES
It was time for the kids to repaint their school and hence those empty racks.

HERE WE ARE
The curriculum helps them analyze everything first hand in the best way with the limited resources they have. A snap shot from the Geography class at Bala Mitra.

THE MOURYA’s
Pointing at the vast Mouryan empire during times of Ashoka the great.

A SHINE
The Waldorf mode of education is a practice rarely found in the Indian sub-continent. It provides the children with a stress-free learning environment, where they are given the choice to …

If biking is as exciting to you as it is to me (even if only on the backseat), I totally recommend taking the mountain route. The deserted roads, with a spectacular drop on one side and carved stone faces on the other,  the curves of the path as you follow the mountain’s contours, all heighten the bike experience. Of course, it helps to know that you’re at the seat of the himalayas and feeling incredibly lucky to be there too.
We biked up and down and down and up and all …

Mr. Vasu came at eight fifteen in the morning to take us to the slum he spoke of the previous  day. It was a twenty minute drive in an automatic rickshaw from one of the most expensive areas to the most pathetic of slums. The slum was recognized by the government for the fact that it has been in the place for over a two decades. It is in the ununsed railway lands near the station. This area has a railway track on one side with abandoned quarters that …

The restoration of the Gagas River Basin is one of the Pan Himalayan Grassroots’ long-term projects in the Kumaon Hills. The mighty Gagas River is drying up, carrying only a fraction of the water it used to. Women and children spend hours to bring a single bucket of water home. Thousand of lives have been affected, and things will only get worse.
Grassroots believes that deforestation is the main cause for the drying up of the Gagas; if the hills are reforested, the river will return to its former …

This lady kondamma made Awesome tea for us on the Chula. While krushi was trying to capture the pics she said ,“ just don’t leave it here after taking the pics..make sure we get gas stoves from the govt”. She later told us how difficult it is to cook during rainy season as the timber would be wet most of the times. Sometimes the tribals have to go without cooking because of this.

Surprisingly her name too was kondamma. She has to trek 10kms to and fro to get water …