Days 5&6- Andrew

On Monday we visited the Avalon Girls Secondary School in Patankhot. Our church has been supporting some girls who live in the hostel and for most of us (Heather went last year) it was the first chance to meet them. We arrived in the morning and met Manjit Mal, the principal, who showed us around the school. It's a beautiful old building from 1902, with big courtyards and red and yellow painted brickwork, which feels much calmer than the bustle of the town outside the walls.

"Visitors say it's like heaven," said Manjit. "Heaven in Patankhot."

We went to see several classes of girls, who smiled back politely at us in their red and white uniforms while we talked to them from the front. So far it felt like an awkward school visit. Manjit told us more about the school; there are about 900 students, including 50 at the hostel. We are sponsoring 20 through the Church of North India, which runs the school. All the senior students achieved First Division results last year, the equivalent of Excellence in NCEA in NZ. Only about 10% of the girls are from Christian families, most are Hindu. I asked her how the Hindu parents felt about their girls getting an openly Christian education in a country which is split on religious lines. Very supportive, she said, because the girls receive such a well-rounded education. The local governor was initially suspicious of her school but has since come round. Now the government-run schools come to her for ideas. 

We returned to the school at 5pm to meet the hostel girls. Actually, being sloppy Kiwis we turned up at 10 minutes past to find the girls and staff arranged on chairs in the courtyard, waiting for our arrival. They were wearing mufti and suddenly looked much older and more Westernised. They sang us a couple of songs, including one we sing at home, and a Christmas song in Punjabi. There were some brief speeches, a welcome prayer and the serving of tea, samosas and biscuits. We felt honoured and hopelessly under-prepared for not having our own waiata ready. We took photos with the girls, who offered to show us round their rooms. This finally broke the ice. Megan, Joanna and David were mobbed and asked for their favourite colour and whether they liked Justin Bieber. Upstairs we found that each bedroom had between four and eight beds together in the middle, with the girls' belongings in large suitcases and cabinets around the wall. We sat on the beds as the girls performed a Bollywood song, in which Megan was apparently the queen, and a Punjabi dance led by Sarah, our very impressive and confident student MC. Everyone wanted to swap names and Facebook contacts. It was great fun and slightly overwhelming.

Afterwards we went to Manjit's house next door to this school and met her elderly mother, who talked non-stop to me in Hindi. I tried to respond politely and not look at Megan, who was laughing so much she almost spilled her tea. Manjit's mother insisted we should have a bag of her organically grown oranges for our train journey to Palumpur the next day. 

"And guavas," she added. 

"They're not ripe yet," Manjit reminded her. 

"Never mind, they can take them back to New Zealand," she said.

We were in a hurry the next morning checking out of the hotel (and drying out our laundry which had somehow come back dirtier than it went in), so we arrived on the platform with only minutes to spare for the little narrow gauge train, which would take us up to Palumpur in the Himalayan foothills. We had no time to buy food and two biscuits for the six-hour journey. So we were very impressed and relieved to see Manjit's driver Amajit appear just before the train left with a bag of oranges - and other goodies. 

The train ride was slow but spectacular. Lots of cute mountain villages appearing out of the bush, curving viaducts over wide river valleys with hardly any water (the snows haven't melted yet). Megan and David and I stuck our heads out the window and took photos. Joanna looked bored. When we arrived in Palampur, the local St Paul's school principal Mr V. P. Singh and his wife were waiting for us on the platform. They bundled us into a car and a van and took us up through the town to our hotel. Palampur is a hill station town, so the Himalayas loom up right above the winding streets, which was amazing to see. It was also freezing cold and we were starving. We ate at the hotel, then huddled under the covers on one bed, arguing about which rubbish TV channel to watch. Next day - St Paul's School, which we hope will turn into a similar NZ-India arrangement to Avalon.