5 days with 13 students. 3 days of hiking. 2 days of safari. This was mincourse (the equivalent of week without walls) last week for me. I have to say it was a enjoyable event. It gave me an opportunity to see a bit of India I hadn't seen before, vaguely northeast of Delhi. My first glimpse of the Himilayas, snow covered peaks with several other levels of mountains adding to the beautiful scenery. A quick stop to take photos before the cloud cover settled in and then we were off to start our hiking. Three days of 5-6 hours mostly downhill. We passed through a few small villages, vistas showing the field terracing, past a stream (and a few dry stream beds), down the winding paths, through a single tree type forest (where is the diversity?), and after several falls and some ugly blisters for certain individuals we made it down. To the cheers and pleased expressions of the students for sure. I was kind of sad to be leaving the clean air and heading back to a city.
The second half our trip was to safari in Corbett National Park. The first protected area set aside in India was made a national park in 1936. It is home to a large diversity of birds (including almost 50% of the bird species in India) as well as tigers (we only saw paw prints), three types of deer and a variety of other animals. In our two early morning starts we saw no tiger (don't be disappointed, some of the road signs remind - there are many other worthwhile things to see in our park), a few wild elephants shaking the trees, some deer and plenty of birds including a wild peacock and my favorites, kingfishers and a pygmy woodpecker.
Have to say I enjoyed the week; getting to know a few more students here at school, spending time out in the fresh air and visiting a new piece of India.
No comments:
Post a Comment