Nāngal

We volunteered with Pahaadi society for a week and decided it wasn't the best fit for our family. Volunteering with a 4year old was perhaps a little more challenging than we first thought.
One of the most difficult things was daily routine, we were eating in the evening around 9-10pm, so then Lila wasn't sleeping until after this and then she would wake early morning. She was often wanted to play when we were working in the garden and by the time there were afternoon classes with the children, she was overtired and exhausted.
So we thought we would try another one in Rajasthan, it's a Democratic Learning Centre, where children decide what they want to learn. The project is based in Agar village about 90km from Jaipur.
Our trip back to Rajasthan was full of learning. We had waitlisted tickets for a train from holy city Haridwar to Jaipur, which the online estimators suggested we had a 90% chance of being confirmed. Sometimes you only get the confirmation a few hours before the train is due to leave. Anyway we ended up being the 10% chance of not being confirmed. Next lesson, avoid travelling on Sundays, the only day off in India, particularly to Holy cities where everyone is also trying to leave on a Sunday afternoon. After finding our train tickets didn't get confirmed, we then found out all the air con bus tickets were sold out, so we ended up taking the local bus for the 12hr overnight trip to Jaipur. It was in interesting trip which involved going through a traffic packed New Delhi around 1am and getting suck in huge amounts of traffic. We passed huge big glamorous buildings which can be next to families sleeping under tarp tents, which really highlights the huge gap between the rich and the poor here.Read more