August, 2006

Chantal Van Bladel is a primary school teacher, teaching children between the ages of 2.5 to 12 at the town of Turnhout in Belgium. During the summer holidays she spends many weeks volunteering at not-for-profit organisations around the world and then writes about her amazing and fulfilling travel experiences in the school's newsletter. In July and August 2006 she visited SISP in India. This is her report...

Hallo everyone,

As you all know, my latest holiday was spent in India. It was an incredible experience.

On Friday evening I landed in Mumbai (one has to give the new names to the Indian cities, the old name is Bombay but both new and old names are used). This is an enormously large city with 15 million inhabitants. It took an hour and a half just to drive from the airport to my hotel!

Several days before I could really enjoy the new impressions...

The day after I arrived I was overtaken by the amazing heat, the mass of humanity, the enormous volume of traffic, the potent smells, and the terrible poverty. It took me several days before I could really enjoy all the new experiences. This was greatly helped through my contacts with occasional guides because Indians are, on the whole, very pleasant people. Imagine the scene: loud unidentifiable sounds of machinery and the constant questions: "How are you?" "What is your name?" "Where do you come from?"

Sometimes the conversation didn't go further than that because they knew no other English, but frequently it became a sociable chat. They are very interested in everything that you tell them but, on the other hand, they are also keen for you to know about their country and their life. More than once I was taken to one or another monument, and I got many tips concerning things that I must be certain to see!

To Page 2 >