Last days in India :(

Today is my last day in India. The last moments of my time spent in Ujire were spent with a group of about 25 representatives from a company called SAP, which provides software management solutions. They had come to visit the SELCO lab to learn about solar energy provision, how the social enterprise business model works, and sustainable business.

Myself and Sam each gave a presentation on our projects and how we had ended up in Ujire. Also on the agenda was a short trip to Dharmastala, Anand's Farm and a SELCO Solar installation, which had been installed because although the houses were right next to electricity pylons, they were too high voltage to take electricity from. The owners themselves would have had to pay for the erection of the electricity poles. I was lucky enough to leave Ujire by filling a spare seat they had on their luxury AC bus which took them back to Bangalore last night. I will be waking up at 2.30 tomorrow morning to travel to the airport and catch my flight back to London & can't wait to start University again.

I thought I'd finish this blog and my last post with several top lists:

Top 5 best experiences:

• Home-stay visit in rural farmhouse

• Having a guide to take us around Mysore (including the Centre for renewable energy and sustainable technologies)

• Masala Dosa, Ice Cream & Gobi Manchurian

• Meeting and sharing experiences with everyone in the engineering college hostel

• Transporting testing the solar biomass hybrid dryer.

• Houseboat tour of the Keralan Backwaters

  
  

Top 5 worst experiences:

• 6 hour bumpy overnight bus journey from Dharmastala to Mysore (10.30 – 04.30)

• The day of a strike in Trivandrum

• Walking half an hour back in the rain having forgot my Umbrella.

• Loosing my appetite for Indian Food when not feeling well

• Chundering everywhere

  
  

My top initial annoyances for westerners traveling to India:

• Understanding the Indian head wobble

• A huge number of junk calls and text messages on Indian mobile phones

• The possibility chance that every rickshaw driver might overcharge you.

• Lack of pavements on most roads, combined with the crazy traffic behaviour.

  
  

Top questions asked to me:

• How do you find this place?

• How do you find the food?

• What are you doing here?

  
  

My list of top 5 things India is good at:

• Sustainable food production and agriculture

• Hospitality

• Cheap newspapers

• A workforce who are skilled enough to carry out repairs

• Religious Culture

• Maintaining a high population

• Governmental corruption

  
  

NB. I've definitely missed / forgotten many things from these lists.