Exploring the wonders of Northern India

Intrepid student WILLIAM RENTON reports on a trip of a lifetime, as he and ten other RGS students and two teachers rose to the challenge of exploring Northern India

The World Challenge expedition is a great opportunity to develop independence, gain travel experience and make life-long bonds with the people you’re with.

The trip, run through school every other year, involves a three-week expedition to a country, usually quite far from home.

My favourite part was most definitely the trek we did at the start. To begin with, we had jeep rides that were interesting to say the least, tearing up the side of the mountain and resulting in some very shaken passengers. However, it was great fun and set us up nicely for India.

The trek was a great chance to get to know everyone in the team better and discover how people function when under pressure from some pretty horrible weather conditions.

Despite this, we were treated to stunning views of the Himalayas rising up thousands of metres around us in some of the clearings. These stunning views along with the rare and special flowers that we saw in around the Valley of Flowers were truly amazing.

Unfortunately, during the last few days of the trek, our time in India had caught up to some people, with the infamous ‘Delhi Belly’ hitting the group and resulting in what I’ve been told was ‘the worst two-hour mule ride ever’ down the side of a mountain for a certain individual. Not recommended.

After this trek, we had our next thrilling adventure in an exciting roller coaster ride of a bus journey back to Delhi. This ride was lively, with the edge of the road appearing to crumble in places, about a foot from the wheels, followed by a very sudden drop to the raging river below. After a couple hours of travelling, the bus suddenly stopped, and we found out there had been a landslide a few vehicles ahead of us. Thankfully, we had avoided being taken into the raging river.

Back in the city, we survived a military style yoga session where stopping was not an option and everyone was stretched beyond their limits, literally and figuratively! We also couldn’t resist one of our many shopping visits while we had some time in the city.

The following morning, we went to an elephant sanctuary and learnt of the horrors that captive elephants face. We then visited the rescued elephants and gained the new motto thanks to Mr Saxon’s new t-shirt of ‘Refuse to Ride’.

Next up was our first fort visit where we learned about the complex and interesting history of India and saw inside Agra Fort. The following morning, we visited the Taj Mahal early, a great trip to one of the wonders of the world. We learnt about the perfect symmetry of the entire building and surroundings (apart from the tomb of Emperor Shah Jahan).

On the same day, we moved to Ranthambhore, where we went on an evening safari with the hope of seeing tigers. Unfortunately, there were no tigers however, we did see lots of colourful birds and other animals.

We had a second safari on one of the following mornings and enjoyed our second fort visit to Ranthambhore Fort which overlooks the national park.

In the afternoon we had a rest at our resort, enjoying the games and local handmade goods shop. Mr Saxon and I also went into town to ‘post’ some postcards. At the post office in town we were met by the most unhelpful worker who couldn’t post our post. We then proceeded to ask for stamps and she looked at us as if we were crazy. In a post office! Eventually we got stamps and started searching for a post box. This was a great challenge given the post box looked more like a bin than a post box. However, we risked putting the post cards in this bin-looking box and I can confirm that the postcards made it to the UK a few weeks after we got back.

Following this I had my first tuk-tuk ride and this is an experience that everyone should have at least once in their life. Bargaining with the driver, squeezing into the dodgy looking vehicle and bouncing around in the back. It was amazing!

After this, we spent an evening with a local learning about turbans, sarees and kite flying - which I can say I’m not great at having crashed three!

We moved on to Jaipur, the Pink City, where we spent time exploring the old city and visited the Golden Fort and observatory. We also went to a fabric printers and learnt more about the art of traditional printing (and of course spent a long time shopping!)

Finally, we moved onto the last part of the trip which was the community initiative. Here we were tasked with upgrading some of the outdoor sports facilities at a local school.

We spent three days clearing the ground, building steps, painting posts and playing with the school children of course. We also had a Hindi lesson and attempted to speak some of their language.

While at this project, we stayed in a local guest house and were given a cooking demonstration in addition to art and yoga classes and were treated to a local dance performance.

At this point of the trip, I unfortunately suffered an anterior cruciate ligament sprain while playing football with the children. On the advice of World Challenge, I was reluctantly taken to hospital, worried about what an Indian Hospital would be like. However, my worries were very much misplaced as I was seen exceptionally quickly and managed to get an x-ray, MRI and CT scan within about four hours and was seen several times in between, receiving my treatment and leaving the hospital in about six hours. Compared to the UK this is like an express service.

Thank you to Mr Cocks for enduring the trauma of the hospital with me during all that time.

We then had the great experience of an overnight sleeper train which was generally better than expected and the absolute highlight was the Domino’s pizza delivered direct to the train carriage! This was the best pizza ever at 9pm, given we had had no food since lunch, along with enduring the stresses of an Indian train station.

The following two days were spent shopping in Delhi and experiencing group tuk-tuk rides before we caught a late evening flight home via Dubai to Manchester and most of the group arrived tired, bright and early the following morning.

However, I had a slightly different experience- my clearance to fly was on the condition my leg was elevated and World Challenge’s insurance took this to mean upgrading my seat to business class. This was almost worth the injury and my journey home was certainly a bit more luxurious than I’d planned. Because of this I met an ex-cricket player called Herschelle Gibbs in the business lounge. I also had fun smuggling muffins out of the lounge for everyone!

I’d like to thank everyone who was with me for their kindness and support when I was injured - it really kept me going to the end and your support meant so much to me.

A massive thank you to Mr Cocks, Mr Saxon and World Challenge for taking us on this epic adventure!