We arrived at Jaipur Junction station around 11am and were soon on our way to our guesthouse which was a delightful villa with a courtyard filled with birds, pets and fish ponds. Checked in our stuff and had some lunch before setting out on a stroll to see a bit of the city. Found a real coffee house and could resist the urge for caffeine and a cake. I was still feeling weak, so to build up my protein I actually went to McDonalds and ordered some fillet o fish burgers to help me through india. They tasted awful, but I had little other choice in India as I certainly wasn’t going to eat any meat or fish in a restaurant as hygiene is the last thing on their minds when preparing food.
The next day we decided to do some sightseeing and after about 3-4 hours we had seen enough. It is weird when you travel for so long since you expect yourself to see everything in everything town or city, but after 3 months you really don’t give a sh!t anymore. So what if we don’t have any photos of that town, I been there and have a mental photo of it, and that is all we need. So we took a few snaps but didn’t go ape. In the evening we decided to venture out to an Italian restaurant recommended in lonely planet. There was nothing Italian about it, the food was rubbish and it was expensive. One good thing came out of the evening, as our tuk tuk driver had an uncle whom could drive us to Tilonia the following day, so we agreed a price and made a few calls to Barefoot College whom said we were most welcome.
Our day at Barefoot College, Tilonia was the highlight of our india trip. The college has been around since 1978 when Bunker Roy set it up. The theme of the college is to educate less fortunate people from surround rural towns to help them survive without the help from the government. I first visited Barefoot College as part of my studies in 2007 with the Duke of Edinburgh Commonwealth Development Conference in India and since then have never stopped talking about it. The college itself is completely self sufficient, providing 45kW of electricity through solar panels, has rainwater harvesting and stores 700,000 litres of water which is enough for 100 people to live on for 10 months during the dry season. They have their own radio station, all food is cooked using solar cookers, and have a puppet show and theatre which is truly amazing. The best part about Tilonia is that all the people there really care about others and commit their entire lives to help others less fortunate. The college also brings over women from third world countries such as Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Bolivia to train semi illiterate women into solar engineers. After six months they return to their respective villages to install solar panels and provide much needed electricity for their everyday lives.
It was sad to leave Tilonia, Mariana could have stayed there for weeks, but our time was now limited in Jaipur since we had cancelled our volunteering and changed our flights to get back to Thailand asap. If, and I mean if we do return to India, Tilonia is number one on our list of things to do, and we will certainly not be visiting any cities, purely sticking to urban areas where they don’t see you as walking atm machines….
Our last day in Jaipur was spent chilling out since we were both very tired from our Tilonia trip and my chesty cough seemed to be getting worse, to the point where I was downing a bottle of cough syrup every 24 hours.
Early the next morning, we took a tuk tuk to the bus station, not sure why, but the driver didn’t seem to understand the word train. Anyhow, we eventually got there, boarded our train and headed off in the direction of Delhi.
No comments:
Post a Comment