Day 3 - India

Submitted by James on November 8, 2005 - 22:05.

We started the day with a typically long, hot Delhi bus journey. With our ever reliable driver insisting he knew the way we weaved our way through untold districts, all of which were curiously 5 minutes from our destination. A good hour later we arrived at our destination with a nice touch of motion sickness and a heavy dose of traffic pollution. But moaning aside, all thoroughly enjoyed it as every minute on the roads of Delhi gives you yet another snapshot of the city; a slum, a manicured park, an elephant, a near miss with umpteen auto rickshaws… Time is never really wasted here it’s just spent watching.

When we did arrived we found ourselves in a suburb busy with construction. Our hosts, Pravah had just moved into a new building, fully functioning except for the lack of exterior walls on the four flights of stairs we had to climb. Unperturbed we made our way up to start our second visit. Pravah was set up in the wake of 1992 communal violence and the destruction of a mosque. A group of young professionals came together to ask what they could do to impact upon the problem of inter faith tension. They formed Pravah to engage young people so as to ensure India’s future leaders would be concerned and motivated with the country’s social and environmental issues. They run a number of initiates from a volunteering service called SMILE, which places students in NGOs, to citizenship training and curriculum development for schools, and a fund to support social entrepreneurs called Changing Looms. read more | add new comment