After the
wedding it got a little hectic with packing up all our belongings and getting
the house ready to be rented and thus when it was finally came time to board
the plane at Heathrow we were a little surprised as we hadn’t really spent much
time in recent weeks preparing for the trip or even getting excited.
After a
swift and painless eight hour flight we landed in Delhi. The airport metro express,
which took us into the center of the city, was definitely the best option as it
was fast, clean and hassle free which was in stark contrast from our first
impression when we stepped out on to the streets of Delhi. It was incredibly hot,
dusty, crowded and a little bit disorientating. After receiving lots of
conflicting advice from ‘helpful’ bystanders milling around we finally got to our
hotel where we could relax. For our first real Indian meal we were joined by
some furry onlookers. Monkeys! And cheeky ones too, they were jumping all
around the neighboring roof tops, scavenging as much as possible.
As expected we weren’t very impressed with
Delhi, it is dirty, polluted and very crowded and thus we felt that two days in
Delhi was enough and we left the capital city on the overnight train the next
day.
After an eventful train Journey (having to
wait 5 hrs at the station from 10pm to 3 am) and a bone shaking 3 hr taxi ride
we arrive at Ranikhet. Thankfully the town looked nicer than the average Indian town we had passed through on the journey and looked like a place we might like to stay for a while. 5km the other side of the town we got to our destination. Initially it felt a little bit
like being abandoned on the side of the road as all we could see was a
Grassroots sign pointing down hill and into the trees. We walked down the 150
steps to find a collection of buildings perched on the edge of the hillside and
an impressive mountain panorama.
We spent the next few days chilling out in
this tranquil hillside setting. We were introduced to Umang, an off shute company of
grassroots that specialize on giving women in the mountains an opportunity for
work and helping to better their livelihood. This includes teaching them to
knit clothes that are sold all across Indian and the proceeds go back to them.
Many food products are also made and sold, including honey, jams, pickles and
nuts. As I type this I am currently sat next to a massive pile of dried
chillies.
http://www.grassrootsindia.com/meetumang.html
As Kalyan and Anita (the founders of
grassroots) were not due back to the grassroots office for a week and we needed
to discuss with them before embarking on the charity work, we decided to use
the time to travel further into the Himalayas and try to catch the end of the
trekking season.
