Kutch

After my trip I was ready for another one, and lucky for me by the time I returned from Pirotan Island I was already on the train to Kutch (or atleast it felt like that) in northern Gujarat. On the train I spent one cold sleepless night curled up on my berth until slowly everyone realized no one was sleeping and everyone started to share berths, and eventually all 14 of us ended up just sitting in one to keep warm. At 8:00 am we arrived to meet another district from Maharasthra, and then when we reached our lunch place one other youth exchange group making a grand total of 53 exchange students.

The first part of the day consisted of freshening up, and doing a little exploring around Bhuj we took a bus to a rotary park where we saw Chief Minister Modi inaugurate a life size whale statue where a whale bone had been found. Later we saw a dance parade around a lake, followed by dinner, and then a two hour bus ride to our tent village. We didn’t arrive till early the next morning, but when we did we pretty much just crashed. The next morning we got up see the highest peak looking over the white salty desert that was met by a emerald blue of sea. Basically I had never seen anything like it before, and I didn’t quite know what to make of it. On the way back from our sightseeing we received a flat tire and spent an hour or so waiting to have it fixed. When we finally returned back we had about a half hour to freshen up before we headed off to our moonlight safari.

Our moonlight safari ended up consisting of a camel cart ride to the salt, and then a music/dance program by moonlight while we waited for dinner. The salty desert really looked like fresh snowfall that was calling my name to go skiing on it. Of course that would have totally ruined my skis, but it was still fun to think about it. By this time everyone had already taken their shoes off, tried the salt that was actually produced in the area, and fallen through the salty to the mud layer several times. Lucky for us the moon was really full that night, and although most of us didn’t see much of the entertainment program you couldn’t miss the moon.

After our evening program we then took a camel cart back to the bus before going back to our tent village. Myself and a couple other people decided to walk back and enjoy the evening, and we almost beat the bus back. That night it was really fun because in the exchanger area everyone pretty much had free reign of everyone else’s tents, and people would just follow the voices and join you. In one of my friend’s tents a large wild cat walked in and scared her half to death, and another one of my guy friends walked in and “saved her.” As the night progressed we enjoyed retelling the story, making it more ridiculous each time.

The final day we mainly did a bunch of sightseeing going to a bird sanctuary, fossil farm, and a village before taking the bus back to Bhuj. My favorite stop was the artisan village which had old vegetable paint murals in most of the rooms, and a pitch black tunnel that went around their temple. Once we returned to Bhuj we did a little shopping, went to a rotary meeting, and got back on the train for a 12 hour ride home. Sadly several kids in my district have already gone home for a various of reasons, and each time we say goodbye we don’t know if it will be for the last time or we will be lucky enough to see each other again. That is one of the bittersweet parts about being an exchange student; you make a ton of amazing friends all over the world, but then you want to go visit all of them soon, and at all corners of the world (at all price ranges).