Saturday 24 October
Welcome to my blog with stories of visiting countries, seeing beautiful places and meeting wonderful people.
This years studytour brought us again in India, after having visited South-Africa and Uganda, this is the place to be!
With a group of 14 master students from the Faculty of Science this years destination is Hyderabad and Kerala.
And what's it all about?
To carry out a small research based on ICT related to Society, Government, Research, Education and Industry.
On our first day we would meet at 'Starbucks Coffee' at Dusseldorf airport and there it already started.
For my 1,2 hour drive to Germany airport leaving my own city it was somehow a complete chaos, I drove right into a traffic jam pff!
But no sweat, a small detour brought me on track but of course I arrived late at the airport.
After all comments we checked in and the second small issue happened. One boarding pass of a one of the students disappeared in no less then a few hundred meters and getting a new ticket was the only option.
Fortunately Emirates has a perfect service and a second ticket was handed out. Happily we all boarded the plane
As if not enough delays and trouble already, the plane was not planning on taking us to India yet, some technical problem needed attention and looking out of our airplane window made us all think we were to stay in Germany.
But finally it seemed all fixed and of we went, sky high!
Sunday 25 October
Dubai was our first in between stop, which is something you actually never regret, cause buying stuff there is often like having landed in paradise instead of the desert. The second flight was perfect and Hyderabad was in sight!
A welcoming committee of the University was present to take us all to our hotel at ICRISAT.
The afternoon was planned for cultural activities and so we all drove of to Charminar, a nice monument in middle of town.
Getting there was a big adventure to begin with, traffic doesn't go by any rules and there are buses, cars, tuk-tuks, cyclists, cows, people and lots of motorcycles on the road where no stop signs work and 2 lane roads are used as 5. All space is used on the roads and left and right side has no meaning at all, nor do mirrors or blinkers. But one item should work in cars and that's the horn! It is used as a method of conversation with everything and everybody in front of you.
At the Charminar monument there is also a bazaar with all outside shops and markets. It is colorful, crowded and noisy but so much fun! It turned out to be that we were the main attraction, tourists don't go there very often and here we come with 15 persons at once.
We tasted a special sweet Iranian tea in a small teahouse along side the road and after that we drove to our next attraction the 'Chowmahalla Palace. It's really such a beautiful palace. As the day goes so fast it was already time to go back to the hotel and have some diner. Diner was served at the poolside, so none of us were complaining!
The Indian Food is so tasty and the variety they have is hot, hotter and hottest, which for some of us was a big challenge to eat without sweating or having stomach trouble.
Monday 26 October
Today was a full day at the University of Hyderabad, where a workshop was organized by the Social Science Department, by dr. Rekha Pande.
This took all day and the students presented their research topics and we listened to their areas of interest.
After the morning session, the afternoon was kept for interaction between our group of students and the Indian students.
It ended up being a great afternoon, where lots of information was shared and some common activities were set-up!
As a surprise they took us all to Golcondar Fort for a light and sound show and closed the day with a fancy diner outside the pool 'queen style' as they called it. It was outside a large swimming pool, where the tables where all covered white and they were so close to the ground that you could only sit or lay down (with some cushens) and get served! It was lovely.
Tomorrow Tuesday 27 October is the Cordys company visit planned at the Hi-Tec parc of Hyderabad
28 October
Today Wednesday is already the last day in Hyderabad, time flies when all goes well. The activities of today were all meant for some good interaction between our dutch students and Indian students from Computer Science. As they are supposed to have lots in common yet there are so many differences we figure they would have a lot to share.
So in the morning we mingled both groups and just asked them to interact. In the meantime I took the opportunity to have a moment of peace and took a quick look on the campus, strolled around a bit and found a cafetaria, where I could taste a delicious freshly made coffee and pineapple juice. Some tastes of India are unforgettable! Fresh juices, teas and sweet coffee and along with that all sorts of pies, cookies, cakes and other sweets. Around midday it was time to head back to headquarters (iCRISAT) for evaluating, packing and swimming. Towards evening we left for the airport and along the way we picked up our pizza's who were supposed to be ready when we came for them. But noooo, this is India..everything does not work as you expect!
So we were held up for over 20 minutes. What's the problem you may think...well our flight of course...Kingfisher is a nice beer brand and an airline company too but i doubt they would wait for us to fly off. So, I sat in the bus just calculating the minutes back on to time so we wouldn't be late.
Luckily we were just in time and after one hour Bangalore would be our base for one night. It is just a pit stop for our end destination Kerala.
The Bangalore Gate hotel is really classy, though one thing I must share with you all, the rooms have WIFI internet, which is perfectly arranged but the hot and cold water system is still not regulated properly. New technology is great and we are all so happy its there, but a good shower is unbeatable!
29 October
Early morning after breakfast the hotel guys promised us to drop us at the bus station as a service of the hotel. Great we thought!
So, he chartered 6 tuk-tuks, these typical Indian taxi 3 wheel motorcycles and gave instructions to each driver to bring us to our bus.
Yeah...but no, that's not what happened at all. I was the last to leave and my driver passed by the group, so I told him to bring me to them.
They were not all complete, 6 people were missing. Within 5 minutes looking lost as we did, we were surrounded by at least 10 taxi drivers who all wanted to bring us somewhere
...God knows where... for ridiculous amounts of money so I had to bargain and shake them of. With a fakeprice and a clear destination back to the hotel I let the hotel guys arrange payment and we went for a second round to find our bus to Mysore. In the meantime the others where still not spotted.
This is chaos at it's best. The bus was to leave in 15 minutes, but the others were still on the road, being dropped of somewhere far from us.
Finally some light came in, our bus was there and it would pick up our lost group on the way.
Driving to Mysore is not such a big adventure, just a long road and when we arrived we were welcomed by Danesh from RASTA oganisation.
We spent a good meal and off we went again now heading for Kerala, Wayanad.
15 suitcases on the roof of the mini bus and with only 14 seats the bus was loaded. I think even overloaded.
Of course as every day brings a new adventure todays adventure was that somewhere in the hills and forests of Wayanad the breaks gave up. With some 10 km's to go, we were stuck! We decided to just all sit down and wait for a bit. The solution seemed logic, just cool down the engine and then it would work again.
And so it did. We arrived late, but diner was already cooking and we could relax a bit.
Some extra's we get here on the countryside are mosquitos by the hundreds and spiders as large as I have never seen.
What is really special is the evenings are very dark and stars are more then we usually get to see. It's beautiful!
Kerala here we come!
30 October
Today lots of visits were organized but not before we had our breakfast. If you like rice India is the country to live, they serve rice for breakfast, lunch and diner!
But yes..there was also cheese on the table, that is a real treat for a dutch person. Although the cheese came straight from the freezer, I could not complain and
made myself a real cheese sandwich in the forests of Kerale.
Now all of us went to different places and my group drove north to one Panchat (district), to meet with the President. The moment we got out of our car a camera crew was present to film us and we felt like celebrities right from the start. We were invited for a round table meeting with local people and staff. We had about 2,5 hours time to ask anything, interact with people and were shown the whole office centre and ICT facilities they use.
We even came to see how much pension the elderly receive per month. All information was transparent and in detail we were informed of the policies and activities.
So we came to learn that there was no unemployment in this region, farmers are trained to work with ICT and use mobile telephones to ask market prices, women are represented 50% on the labor market, so also gender balance is taken care of. Kerela is a role model state for many other states in India when it comes to IT and community development.
The next meeting was at government level and the group was warmly welcomed to tell their story and ask any questions. Presentations were given, tea was served and the information provided was useful. The IT programs for this region are progressive and successful. At grassrootlevel information is disseminated through the hub centres (telecentes) reaching the families and farmers that live in this district. It's turning illiteracy to literacy and empowers farmers, women and poor people. On-line services are made available and people are trained to work on a PC.
It has been an interesting morning and we all deserved a good lunch. The menu was fish curry and of course rice,
The afternoon we visited a centre for preservation of local plants, development of community services and taking care of education of local youth with special programs.
After all these interesting meetings it was time for a shop stop, so we stopped at the main road were lots of goods, drinks and sweets were sold Indian style. All these small shops are outside, it's lively, and open 24/24. The prices compared to our European standards are very cheap, so no one left empty handed!
Back to RASTA our evening meal was prepared for us, this time it was sardines with...rice.
More stories tomorrow where some more field trips are organized.
31 October
Today's program was very nice and divers. Our first visit was to a private hospital, mainly for tribal people of the region.
They serve about 200 patients a day with only three doctors. One of the doctors really took about half an hour for us, and gave us lots of insight information on how the hospital treats and organizes patients and the way ICT supports their work.
Our second visit was to an organisation called FRIENDS who handle care of e-booking for traveling by public transport and e-payment for villagers. The system is very successful and reduces workload and travel time of people used to buying tickets in the bigger cities.
Thereafter it was lunchtime at RASTA, where we were interviewed for the local Hindu newspaper. Yesterday also we appeared in the local newspaper when we visited the Panchats office. A few more days like this and they will come for our autographs.
Our last visit was to a local secondary school and we had some good interaction with students and staff. We were all amazed about their knowledge and curiosity of the Dutch culture. After taking a dozen pictures, exchanging emails and shaking hands we hit the road again to buy some souvenirs and go to a tea plantation.
We could walk around freely, see how tea grows and watched the amazing views on top of a hill while the sun was setting.
We ended the day with a some KFX's, for those who don't know the terminology translated it means King Fisher beer extra large
Luckily today went without the usual problems but what made all of us sweat was diner.
One of the students asked the cook to make the evening dish a little bit more spicy, and that is what happened.
After taking some bites sweat would break out and tears would fall of pure hot hot food, and everybody felt like they were on fire.
My only tears were from laughing, as I for once decided to skip this dish and go for some tasty fish.
All well ends well, the problem was solved with another taste of KFX's!!
One gets resourceful where circumstances force you to be creative.
01 November
Today Sunday, we had one more visit for the research to do, so we went to one Village Knowledge Centre in the area.
It was a small centre in a small community, but so effective and resourceful. The centre is used for farmers and tribal peoples education on ICT, agriculture, culture, health issues and womens empowerment. After a small introduction we were taken to a farmers house and he showed his way of working his rice fields, banana plants and other crops.
All with traditional methods. We ate fresh pepper, tasted honey from flowers, grapefruits and ginger.
It was a wonderful experience! The afternoon we went to the caves, for that we had to climb up some 2 km's and entered caves as old as 6000 BC.
There were engraves on the wall showing statues of people and animals and the view over the valley when we reached the top was breath taking. Kerala has such a natural beauty and rich flora and fauna.
Everywhere you looked it was worth while to make a picture. But some things can only be memorized in the mind.
Our next treat was a visit to the dams where again the beauty of nature was stunning followed by a visit to a tribe for some folklore dancing and singing.
This Sunday it has been very good and satisfied with all experiences we went back to RASTA.
Monday we will head back to our cold flat country again, but we'll first hit Dubai for some good shopping.
