"There are places where you go & come back; and then there are places where you go, and your body returns, but your soul never does" - A.J.

 ~ Gawani

 Garhwal, as I was told, consists of about 52 Garhs. Every village here has its own history. In the sunny afternoons I spent here, locals regaled me with stories of warriors in these kingdoms. The marriages that took place between Garhwalis and Gorkhas and subsequent Gorkha invasions and Garhwali resistance.

Gawani is the place where we, the eight interns, were put up.

The way to our home for ten days. The road in mountains visible goes till Pokhra, the last bus stop.

After getting down from the rickety bus, I thought we're finally home. However, this was far from truth !
Shubha didi, a soft spoken teacher and our go-to person for everything there, started leading us uphill. Despite my fitness levels being just fine, doing an uphill walk with 2 bags full of clothes, after running around at ISBT with heavy book cartons, after travelling for 10 straight hours without sleep started getting daunting.
I remember the pain in my back muscles that seemed never ending when I finally tried to sleep at night. But maybe, it was the freshness of air, the purity of food or the infectious enthusiasm of my co-interns, voila ! the pain was gone the next morning !!
Our hosts insisted that we, drowned in city hues, get the authentic feel of village life and we all started enjoyed every bit of it.

~ We meet children :)

 Tired, we decided to meet the children before starting formally with them.
The team of eight was bifurcated and our team leader led the 4 members at Devrajkhal school and I, on the other hand, was responsible for the task at the Chaubattakhal school.

However, starting off for these schools from our base location meant a short, 20 minute jeep drive. It was during these 20 minute journeys that I got to know that for students of Delhi University, music is as important as food ! As if the music in cabs wasn't enough, some of us got hold of speakers at 1830 hours on a particular evening and danced till 2000 !
Frankly, I'm all arms and legs when it comes to dancing and my moves are ones that would make Shakira faint with disdain !!
The trend with songs in our driver's pen drive was that the songs started with the tune of some Bollywood number, and as soon as all of us started singing the number, it turned out that it was actually in Garhwali !
The happy-go-lucky driver played them all. Music to my ears ! I'm sure we were the loudest group travelling on those serene roads.

Shubha didi took upon herself a challenge to teach all of us basic Garhwali during these rides and I began visualizing a mobile app - "Learn Garhwali in 10 days"

~ Food

 If you ask me one special thing about the food we were served, I'd say that it was mostly green. For all 3 meals of the day, green vegetables growing locally formed a major part of our diet. This was something heavenly, especially when we all brought with us our typical, city styled stomachs dedicated to junk and impure food.
My memory fails me when I try to remember the humongous variety of local vegetables we feasted upon, but one I remember specifically.

Stinging Nettle is a type of grass, which if touches bare skin, causes extreme irritation that lasts for a considerable time. Many team members got "stung" by this grass, and were advised to apply remedies such as mustard oil and other grass but the irritation always took its own time to heal.
I got exposed to this in Chail (2012), and ever since, whenever venturing into hilly terrain, I make sure I'm exposing minimum possible skin.
What is interesting is that our hosts cooked it for us and it tasted great! We were finally eating the grass that was "stinging" us here and there.
Revenge ! I thought.
What I observed is that this tasty diet also acts as a cleanser for the digestive system. Freshness in atmosphere, freshness in food, friends for life, what else you need !?

We also went picking peas from the fields and tasted BalMithai, the local sweet. Picking peas is something I did in Shillong as well, at the Air Force Station, Laitkor Peak. Freshly picked pea is sweet, always !

Yours truly posing as a non-typical 'tau' on the pea farm, as team members look on

Tasting spring water started happening in 2017, first time at Gushaini and second time here, at Gawani.
I tasted water from an almost barren waterfall, and a natural source as directed to us by Shri Sudhir Sundriyal, head of the Feel Good foundation and a visionary (read all about philanthropic efforts in the next post)
In addition to all these pleasantries, for one dinner, we could also opt for non vegetarian food and cottage cheese.
Did I hear you say hotel buffet ? This was even better than a typical city hotel buffet.