Trip to Gulbarga

Just a short one to update on my trip up north. I headed out on Wednesday and arrived back here in Ujire on Saturday- so three days away in total. That sounds alright, except that roughly 45 hours of it was spent travelling! We arrived early on Thursday morning, after the 16 hour (which ended up being 18 hours) ride on a "sleeper" bus". I imagine that you probably would get a decent night's sleep on one of these when travelling on one of the UK's straight and smooth motorways... Not quite the same on Indian "roads" which apparently require the driver to brake and manoeuvre so ridiculously hard and fast    it would probably make a can of coke explode after 10 minutes.

There's also the issue of beeping. Actually for bus/truck drivers "beeping" is probably too soft a word so I'll go with the (probably american) "honking" to describe the ear-splitting sound made by just about every vehicle on the road. In the UK, I probably would use the horn about once a fortnight, for situations involving mild roadrage, being cut up or going around a blind corner. In India, horns are used with the same frequency as we'd use indicators in the UK. All together, not the easiest place to sleep, especially when you're about an inch too long for the beds...

Anyway, enough complaining. In Gulbarga, Deepti, Robin and I were able to visit a farm where the local SELCO branch had set up a solar powered electric fence. This relatively simple device helps this small scale farmer, who's field is very remote and miles from grid electricity, to keep his crops safe.

Deepti talking to a smiley farmer

A troupe of locals carrying produce on their heads

Robin and I later headed off to the school where we needed to gather information about their energy needs and cooking set-up. It was a sweaty, noisy (yes, teenagers blasting out tunes on their mobiles from the back seats is not unique to the UK) almost two-hour bus trip, which was not a lot of fun after all the travelling the previous night. When we arrived we were given Indian coffees and I was surprised how peaceful the place seemed (despite the 60 or so children who were being taught that day). We managed to gather lots of information and discussed the idea of trying out some solar cooking and clean burning pellet stoves, instead of smoky, inefficient wood burning on stones.

The leaders (right) were constantly smiling - until you take a photo of them

It was an interesting visit, and good to see that they were keen to try new things after having invested in some solar lighting. The institution was situated in a really run-down and remote village- but it was good to see that kids were being fed and educated here. The leaders of the place were quite excited and said that it was the first time a foreigner had visited their village. They gave us a lift to the main road to catch the bus in a tiny little Suzuki, and I answered lots of questions about British culture, religion, marriage and weather...

We spent the evening with the guys from the SELCO branch - eating some notoriously spicy local food     and drinking tea.  On the way back the next day, I have a feeling the bus driver decided to take an even bumpier, windier road than the route we arrived on. It was a worthwhile trip, even if I did come back incredibly tired and with a man-cold.