After the first few days of culture shock, acclimatisation and long journeys it was such a relief to finally arrive at Chatti Bank station in the Punjab. After the amount of time we'd spent on either road or rail, the 3 hour journey to our camp was just a drop in the ocean- the ocean that I'd not seen once since arriving and probably won't unfortunately! Sitting on the step of the open door of the train on the way up (a novel concept which I don't think I'll tire of) I was noticing a change in the landscape as the train snaked it's way through the countryside. The dry, dusty plain that was Rajasthan was slowly transforming into the fertile green fields of the north. It was still baking hot but we still had a couple of thousand feet to climb before we reached our destination and higher altitude means lower temperature.
The drive from the station took us through some of the most beautiful scenery I'd ever seen. The winding mountain roads took us past deep green valleys and rolling hills, sheer terracotta coloured cliffs and lush vegetation which would not have been out of place in the Mediterranean. We stopped halfway for lunch at a small roadside restaurant that could have been a Greek taverna if not for the thali plates they were serving and the hindi lettering painted in red onto the whitewashed walls. The food was a very tempting alternative to the curried potato and chappati lunch that IDEX had provided us with almost every day so far, and at 50 rupees you can't really go wrong- obviously death by dysentery was the worst-case scenario but it was a risk I was willing to take. Craig and I put in our order and when the food arrived a few other people followed suit. The food was not dissimilar from the One Stop Thali Café in Bristol, slightly better flavoured, fresher and one tenth of the price- I'm still alive to tell the tale, contrary to what Platform 2 would have you believe from their pre-departure briefing.
In the typical fashion- one that we had become accustomed to over the previous days- Rakesh, our escort gave overly optimistic and constantly varying estimations of our arrival time at camp, a running joke throughout the trip which is usually resolved by multiplying the given time by 3 or another number depending on the situation. The following formula can help in situations such as this:
T x V = A
where T is equal to the duration given and A represents the actual duration
V is a variable number which is usually either 2, 3 or 5- I could draw a graph to demonstrate how to choose the variable but I won't be doing so for the following reasons:
a. I'm boring even myself with this mathematical digression I seem to have entered into
b. There is no actual way to predict how long things are going to take here
c. I'm not familiar with the procedure for drawing graphs in Microsoft Excel Mac:08
Anyway, some time after the given ETA we arrived in Bandla where we would spend the rest of our ten weeks. The house is visible from a fair distance- a four storey whitewashed concrete structure with balconies all the way round on every floor and a curved bay-window type creation that ran the whole height of the stairwell. Of course, the house is not the thing that catches your attention. Behind it sit the Himalayan Mountains which appear as these gargantuan mist-shrouded and snow-capped mythical beasts which slumber peacefully on the horizon. Even today, two weeks on, I still have to double take when I catch a glimpse of them out of the window in the common room or see them from the corner of my eye whist searching in my wallet for 50 rupees to pay the rickshaw driver on the way back from town.
The irritating thing is, I'm not entirely sure what makes them so enchanting, after all they are just large mounds of rock covered in frozen water vapour and I've never been a massive appreciator of nature, preferring the manmade cityscape with its many separate fragments of carefully calculated engineering and design which, however different, are forced to come together to form these ever-changing and ironically organic conglomerations. One of my favourite city views is the City of London as seen from the balcony of the Tate Modern. Buildings from the grey stone of St Paul's Cathedral to the glass curves of the Gherkin jostling for their little bit of space, built with very little regard for one another still manage to exist in a bizarre aesthetic harmony.
Those mountains, like a city, hide a plethora of intricacies and activity under their placid façade- whole ecosystems, deep caverns and caves that no human ever has or ever will explore and to borrow and old saying- if those mountains could talk, they'd have some stories to tell. There's a certain mystique about natural beauty that man can never re-create. The fact that these amazing creations are just there- in front of you- and nobody planned it, built it or even willed it to appear (apologies creationists) is really quite mind-boggling and adds to the big questions of why. Why is all this here? Why are we here? What would the world be like if certain things hadn't happened/hadn't been invented/had been different? Not wanting (or able) to get deeply philosophical but when faced with such natural wonder and sheer enormity it really does put ones life into perspective. All of us volunteers are here without most of the things that define who we are at home. The clothes, jobs, accessories, people and even postcodes that we attach to ourselves- be it incidentally or unconsciously- seem insignificant out here. Obviously as young people we're reluctant to shed every piece of shallow materialism mainly because- however much it's denied- young people love to be defined because it makes them feel accepted and with the wonder/horror of Facebook it's near impossible to get away from your socially defining features but out of situ and without the appropriate mis-en-scene it is difficult to immediately typify a person without actually getting to know them a little bit and anything that instigates genuine inter-personal communication can only be good.
I was worried that with such a large group it would be hard to get to know people. This wasn't helped by the fact that when it was announced that there was one single room in the whole house my hand shot up before my brain had even had a chance to mull it over. This was supposed to be a chance to share an experience with other people, the good bits and the bad bits. It was supposed to be me getting out of my comfort zone and dealing with things I perhaps didn't want to deal with, not sitting in a large en-suite room with a view and wardrobe space aplenty alone while everyone else is discussing the meaning of life with their room mates after lights-out time, but the only child part of my brain was just too quick and here I am, actually thinking it was the best decision I've made since applying for P2. I could see peoples faces as my hand shot up thinking I wasn't a 'team player' or that I wouldn't be participating fully in the 'experience' but after two weeks of eating, sleeping, working and socialising with the same people, a single room seems a lot more appealing, and its not short of visitors- I just get to tell them to b***** off when I want some space.