Gwalior

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The week after Diwali I set off to Gwalior to visit Sarah. It is an overnight train journey starting at 730pm, so I had to leave the campus before dinner time. I got to the station in plenty of time so decided to get some food. There was a clean and modern looking place in the station and I decided to have pizza (I needed cheeeeeeeeeeese!). This was a mistake. The resulting train journey was a bit of nightmare migh pains in my stomach, unable to sleep at all, couldn't lie on my bunk because of it, but not enough room to sit up either. Most of Saturday was a right off from being ill as well, not much fun for me or for Sarah who had been looking forward to showing me around the orphanage and introducing me to the kids and everyone.

The orphanage itself was a quite a modern building, much nicer that I imagined from Sarah's reports, but her negativity wasn't to do with the facilities. The children were lovely and demanding of attention. I must admit to not knowing what to do with a disabled child in a wheelchair who doesn't speak english, but they seemed to enjoy just having attention and being pushed around. Some demanded to be carried around everywhere. On Saturday I felt ropey so couldn't spend much time with them. In the evening I became excited to discover that the orphanage had satellite tv, what with the Scotland Italy game being that evening here (5.5 hrs ahead here). Unfortuneately there was only 10 channels of cricket and, irritatingly, the previous days Bulgaria England U21s match!

The next day I was getting better and we set off on a trip to the zoo with some of the children, cramming us, kids, carers and wheelchairs into the small minibus. The zoo itself wasn't bad, though I found the cage of pigeons a particularly uninspiring exhibit, especially as they continue to torment me wherever I go. There were tigers and cute monkeys though. After the trip Sarah, Daniel (another volunteer at the orphanage) and I stayed in town and went for lunch (pizza again, non-pathalogical this time) in a trendy coffee bar where the youths hang out (who dared eachother to speak to us, hmm). It was so trendy they even played a track by the terrible western band I mentioned in the last post! They did have good chocolate cake/brownies though.

In the afternoon we went to Gwalior fort, which is large sprawling and not so well kept, it did have some interesting Jain temples and carvings though, and was different in that it had some coloured tiles (I didn't take my camera and am relying on Sarah's photos so here's one from the net). It wouldn't be worth going out of your way to Gwalior for it. We had dinner near the station and I headed off home, with a much less arduous journey this time.