Hello!

Last week we told you about our experiences in Visthar, the NGO in India. This week, we thought we’d talk about our 5 weeks of Independent travel after this from South to North.

When we actually arrived in India, we had not booked any transport or accommodation for our 5 weeks of travelling, we simply had a list of places we wanted to see. At Visthar, we told them where we wanted to go and they helped us plan and book our journey.

When we left Visthar, the first stop was Auroville: a sustainable community in a previous French colonial area, located in the state Tamil Nadu. Our first experience of traveling solo was interesting to say the at least! We came out of the train station with an address in our hands trying to communicate with non-English speaking Rickshaw drivers. We ended up getting a rickshaw for forty minutes down a dirt track before arriving at the wrong hostel. We soon sorted the misunderstanding and arrived at a house/hostel. This journey was a bit of a culture shock but definitely prepared us for the next 5 weeks India had in store for us.

From Auroville, we got the train to Kochin in the state Keral which was about a seventeen hour journey. Fortunately we managed to sleep for a large amount of this. We travelled through Keral for a week, and then got the train to Goa for a couple of nights.

After Goa, we went to the nearby area called Ratnagiri- beautiful beach setting where we took a week to relax and read lots of books!

From there, we went to Mumbai for a few days, and then flew to Delhi. These were a massive change from Ratnagiri and they were some of the most chaotic places we’ve ever been.

We of course intended to travel to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, but on the way there we had a big problem so had to turn around which meant that we never got to see the Taj (although we don’t mind because that is only a tiny tiny fraction of Indian culture and life). When we were back in Delhi we got the train to Jaipur for a few days then went back to Delhi. From Delhi we went to Haridwar (the most holy pilgrimage site for Hindus) and then went to Rishikesh for a few days. Both Haridwar and Rishikesh are situated in the Himalayas and being surrounded by mountains was so beautiful. We stayed in an ashram which added to the ‘chilled vibes’ of the area.

We then returned back to Delhi and flew to London.

Next week we will be writing more about our experiences and what we learnt and saw but we can honestly say that these eight weeks were the most amazing and educationally stimulating weeks of our lives. We miss it so much and could actually talk about it forever.

Becky and Katie x