White Water River Rafting at Rishikesh

Last weekend I and Kundan with our families, planned for white water river rafting. We booked a camp and a raft with a vendor and started off from Delhi on Saturday morning at 7:00 A.M. According to our plans we had to travel 230 Km as haridwar is 210 km and then 20 Km more for Rishikesh, but due to pathetic roads and horrible traffic jams it took us complete 12 hours to reach there. So we reached our camp at 7:00 P.M. Then we had a bath in the sub river of Ganges and had some snacks. The camps were good but a little bit humid, might be because of the weather.

We had our dinner at 9:00 and then went for sleep as we were very tired of long driving. In the morning we wake up at 5:00, and had a view of the marvelous sunrise in the valley. Then we went out for a small photo shoot. Had our breakfast at the camp and then we got the call from raft manager.

After a couple of minutes we were at our raft listing to the instructions and commands which we were supposed to follow. We were a team of two boys and 7 girls.

After this session we moved our raft in the middle of river Ganges with a started off with huge cheers, saying "Ganga maiya ki jai", thrice. Soon after starting we met our first rapid. We met four rapids in our 16 km journey. Out of them "Roller Coaster" was the biggest. Our raft was going up and down on 16-20 feet waves. In between our guide asked us to jump in the water. That was a thrilling experience as the water was chilled and we were moving in the current with support of a single rope on the sides of the raft. In midway we did cliff jumping. There was a rock, around 10 feet high. We were supposed to jump from there into the flowing river which is 50 feet deep. That was the most rocking experience we ever had. When you stand at the top of the cliff and look down at the gushing current, it increases your heartbeat and you have to gain a lot of courage, but once you jumped, it feels like you are falling without any gravity. We jumped three times, and were willing to do more, but due to time restrictions, we moved our raft towards Laxman Jhoola and ended our adventurous journey there. Then we drove back to Delhi which again took 9 hours. In between we visited Patanjali Ashram of Baba RamDev. The road and driving conditions are really pathetic. Except this the rafting experience was marvelous. It was a life time experience.

Visit to Udayan Care Homes in Noida and Mayur Vihar

As a T&F India CSR initiative we visited the Udayan Care Homes in Noida and Mayur Vihar on Friday 18 June, with a plan to bring the children together for a cricket match. In our group were Aman Pilani, Vikram Asthaniya, Sudhanshu Goyal, Pankaj Bhardwaj, Rajeev Kant, Harish Arya, Ankit Gupta, and Ashish Purwar.

We started off by reaching the two centres to begin our fun-filled day. All the volunteers brought their own vehicles for the convenience of the children. We reached the Boys Home at 8:30 am, collected the children, seated them in the volunteers’ cars and departed for the playground near Udayan Care Girls Home in Noida, Sector 52. There we divided the children according to their age groups. We arranged two matches, one for younger children under the captaincy of Sudhanshu and Rajeev, and another for older ones under the captaincy of Pankaj and Ashish. Everybody had a lot of fun playing their matches. In the senior category, we had a match of 15 overs and the team headed by Ashish won the match.

We came back to the Boys home in Noida, distributed snacks to the children and played an animated movie for the younger kids. For the older children, we played a documentary film on the Top 100 Guinness World Records. After this show we had an interactive discussion on their interests and career goals. The children shared their hopes and aspirations and we gave them some tips on how to go about achieving their aims. Then we wound up, because it was time for the children to study. All of us left feeling very positive after our day spent interacting with the children at Udayan Care.

Ashish Purwar

A Day at Udayan Care

As part of T&F India’s CSR programme we (Anjali, Tessy, Surmeet and I) set out to spend a day (Friday 18th June) at Udayan Care’s Sant Nagar Girls Home. We prepared for the trip by getting together material for arts and crafts activities, put together a fun and interactive quiz and took along a couple of movies we thought the girls might want to watch.

On arrival we found a number of student volunteers at the home and sought their help in conducting our planned activities. We began by sitting in a circle, getting the girls to introduce themselves and tell us about their hobbies, interests, likes and dislikes. This was a fun icebreaker with answers ranging from ‘I enjoy playing football’ to ‘My hobby is fighting!’ After we’d got to know everyone’s names, we had a session where we shared how to meet and greet each other in the different languages that we knew – French, Spanish, even Malayalam.

We then asked them what they would like to do and at their request began with the quiz. Three teams were formed and the school volunteers helped their respective teams by giving hints, but not outright answers. A lot of fun and excitement ensued, with answers flying thick and fast, as the bright young girls came up with intelligent guesses (with some help from their volunteers) and won toffees and chocolates as prizes. We asked the girls what they wanted to do next and they voted to watch a movie.

It was almost 2 so we decided to take a break for lunch and sat down to eat with the girls. Conversation and information were shared along with the meal, for by now the ice was well and truly broken. After lunch we assembled again in the activity room and gathered round to watch a movie. They choose the movie from among the CDs we had with us. ‘Madeline’, the story of an orphan girl in a boarding school was their choice. The girls laughed aloud at Madeline’s adventures and cheered as the spunky little girl helped defeat the evil plan to shut down her school. The movie ended with clapping and requests for ‘one more!’

We chatted with the girls, they showed us their drawing books and charts and Tessy conducted an interactive session on France, showing them pictures of its famous monuments and cultural highlights. The Mona Lisa’s unique feature of her eyes appearing to follow the viewer wherever they stood caused much excitement, with many of the girls walking from one side of the picture to the other in wonder. They asked us to play them some music and when we asked them what they wanted to hear, ‘Waka Waka’ was a popular choice. Luckily Surmeet had it on her phone and played it for them, while they tried to sing along.

We distributed gift packets from T&F India and took some photos. This led to an impromptu photo session where the children enjoyed taking pictures of each other. Surmeet was at the centre of the photography session while Tessy helped some of the girls with their school work.

We bid goodbye to the girls, promising to return, and left deeply touched by the warmth and affection we had received from the children. While this may have been one day spent at this centre on behalf of T&F India, I’m sure I will be back again to spend more of my time with the bright young girls at the Udayan Care Home.

K.E. Priyamvada

First Batch - Udayan Care

Dear All,

I’m happy to inform you the first batch of volunteers received a tremendous response from the children at Udayan Care. A total of three groups went to the shelter homes at Noida, Mayur Vihar and Sant Nagar on Friday, June 18. ‘Most fulfilling and heart-warming’ has been the unanimous response of all the T&F volunteers. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words, the Udayan Care subfolder in the Common folder of P drive has its own story to tell.
The three groups comprised the following T&F volunteers:
Mayur Vihar Boys Home
Pankaj Bhardwaj
Aman Pilani
Vikram Asthaniya
Sudhanshu Goyal

Noida Boys Home
Ashish Purwar
Harish Arya
Rajeev Kant
Ankit Gupta

Sant Nagar Girls Home
KE Priyamvada
Anjali Madan
Tessy Margaret Rajappan
Surmeet Kaur

Am in the process of forming more groups for the volunteering activity. Look forward to everyone’s collaboration.

Priyamvada’s report on her group visit to the Sant Nagar Shelter Home for Girls follows after this entry.


Best wishes,

Anjali

Delhi for a Day

It was a meticulously planned exercise–so much so that how much time will go into seeing what was decided beforehand and the average time for each stop was also calculated. Everybody’s interests and demands were taken into consideration–Prerna’s fascination for dolls, hence the Dolls Museum, Khalid’s enthusiasm for Maths and Science, hence the National Science Centre, my inclination towards things artistic, hence the National Gallery of Modern Art and well Abhinav’s residence’s proximity to Chanakyapuri and hence the Rail Museum.
In the midst of all the planning and enthusiasm, the weather Gods decided to play spoil sport–morning came with a dust storm making it hazy and dusty. Two cars were pressed into service, but parking problems on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg were well anticipated, and therefore one was parked at Mandi House. Chivalry took a back seat and so did two of the men as the sole woman of the group drove us up to BSZ Marg, only to find that there was no parking left at all. We cut across the by-lanes of BSZ Marg, much like a Mumbai criminal evading arrest in the by-lanes of Kurla. We finally found a spot, parked the car and got out to know that the place was “reserved”. Abhinav used his persuasion skills and struck a deal with the attendant. Once inside the museum, perhaps one of the first things we all noticed was the neglect the museum was subjected to. Though the museum had dolls from some of the remotest parts of the world, they were decades old and many of them were in such dilapidated condition that they resembled characters more from a horror film than dolls children could play with. Nevertheless, we had fun, indentifying the clothes of the dolls with our cultural knowledge of the world. While Khalid had fun looking at the ‘tau’ dolls from Haryana, I had fun looking at the Native American dresses dolls from South America were wearing. We were done soon and headed towards the National Science Centre.
This place has changed little since the last time some of our team members visited it; that was the 1990s. Though there were some new instruments like the stringless piano, the main area looked more or less the same with age-old scientific tricks. We later discovered that they have added an entirely new section dedicated to innovations in information technology that could help a novice understand the computer and digital technology better–a must visit for those of us who are curious to know how a command given to a computer gets converted into action on screen. One could also find a dummy replica of the Morse code machine–the instrument that helped ships in the nineteenth century to communicate and send SOS signals.
After a sumptuous meal at the Sri Ram Centre’s canteen we headed to the swanky new wing of the National Gallery of Modern Art. Opened in 2009 by the UPA President Sonia Gandhi, the gallery has works from medieval India to works of some of India’s best known modern artists like SH Raza, Satish Gujral, MF Hussain, Amrita Sher-gill, Raja Ravi Varma, and many more. A visitor is treated to four floors of art and paintings and that is excluding the old wing of the gallery. While the new wing’s exterior depicts traditional Indian use of red sandstone, the interiors of the gallery are designed totally in European architectural form (this contradiction coupled with traditional Indian art on display inside and the sitar music in the background makes the visitor bewildered about the ambience the gallery is trying to create). Nevertheless, we completed our sojourn well within the average time we were allotted.
Our last stop was the Rail Museum though it was initially distracted by a brief windstorm. Inside the museum we saw remains of some of the most luxurious compartments of the Indian railways during the Raj. Trains of Patiala State Monorail Trainway, Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the majestic Fairy Queen of the East Indian Railway (rolled out in 1855) and many more. Our trip ended with a ride on the toy train and a visit to the museum (that had miniature models of levers and pulleys used to change tracks as well as railways seats from the old era).


While our choice of places to visit reflected our individual choices, they were also chosen because some of they are longer on the upper-middle class Delhites radar, but are worth (read required) a visit to understand a Delhi beyond the glitter of shiny malls and hotels. All in all a good trip spoilt partially by the weather gods but saved by our enthusiasm. I highly recommend everyone to visit some of these places when they get a chance.


Jasmeet Singh