After months of anticipation the day finally arrived. The whole thing just seemed so surreal even saying goodbye. The journey from home to the airplane seemed a long one in itself; unaware of the long journeys we had to come and oblivious to the size of India! I constantly felt nervous and was questioning my self and my decision- to jet half way across the world for 10 weeks with complete strangers who were soon to be my family!

After a long flight we arrived into Delhi and were greeted by IDEX oblivious to the long journey ahead to Agra.

Nearly 24 hours after leaving London we arrived in Agra, known as the white city also the city of the beautiful Taj Mahal! The travelling gave us insight into the culture and exposed real poverty which is something I have not experienced. As beautiful as India may appear it just didn’t make sense how such a high amount of the population live below the poverty line.
Arriving at the hotel we were greeted by a mob of children as young as five years old persistent to sell us things.

Early morning call to see the Taj - much appreciated of course! The Taj Mahal its self was beautiful just how I imagined it.

Another long journey later we arrived at Jaipur, known as the pink city where we received information about the project and stayed with host families. Jaipur still appeared to be a deprived city but slightly nicer than Agra.

We expected the worst - a shanty house or a mud hut, but actually stayed in a lovely house with Mr and Mrs Singh a lovely welcoming couple. This gave us real firsthand insight into the culture and religion. At tea we were presented with a drink which looked like orange squash (what a treat!) until we drank it; it was a very sweet drink with a surprising taste although all of the other food was lovely.

Whilst in Jaipur we visited the cricket ground, the cinema, shopping centre and Amber Fort where we had an elephant ride up the mountain. All of which gave us insight into Indian culture except for the fact that we stood out and received a lot of stares.

Leaving our host families we exchanged gifts and headed back to the office to discover the train was casually 8 hours late!

So we decided to head to Pizza Hut to get some meat in our system for one of the girls birthdays - seemed a stress-free idea at the time until we tried to return to the office in a tuk tuk (a 3 wheel taxi with no windows or doors). The driver had no idea where we were going just like us so it was the blind leading the blind!

A 14 hour train journey to Himachal Pradesh with the company of cockroaches was never going to be fun but it was worth it when we arrived! It was such a relief there was a sense of home and everyone was just on such a high and ready to settle in. The first few days involved a lot of meetings and getting settled into the town. And for me it was time to get rid of the frizzy mop and get the straighteners out!
We began our projects. I am teaching in a day car centre; aged from 2-5 year olds in the morning and then women’s empowerment in the afternoon. The children are beautiful and bright but communication is hard; the schools themselves are dark and dull upsetting to think of it as a learning environment.

There are just two of us in the day care centre so we are really keen to make a change we are going to begin by painting the school.

The girls from the women’s empowerment were lovely and seemed confident which may have been built from previous volunteers.

The journey in itself to and from work is stunning just mountains and sunshine, more of a pleasant journey than travelling to Edge lane!