Week 42, Mahabaleshwar, India

Dear Ethel, Family and friends,

Another busy week of teaching, we have been teaching in all the classes this week, not only English, but maths, computer studies, environmental studies and music as well, so it’s a very hands on approach to teaching in smaller primary schools. It is wonderful to see their enthusiasm even if it is a bit over the top at times. In addition to the Gyanankur English School, we have been doing some classes at the local Marathi School as well, they are from standard 1 to std 6. Louise has been taking Std 1-3 and I’ve been taking std 4-6. We have only been teaching English classes there. English is only one of their subjects as they also learn to read and write in their native Marathi first, Hindi and English second and third. The standard of their English is considerably different to Gyanankur English School. We have also been taking the Adult classes on Monday and Thursday evenings as well. We usually only get a few women along to these classes, but even teaching 1 is better than teaching none. This has all been very valuable experience for us.

We caught up with a young Indian guy we caught the train to Goa with and went out to dinner. Turan and his mate have an internet and advertising business in Pune as well as study at university here as well. They took us to some of the trendier areas of Pune and they treated us to dinner at a very nice Asian Restaurant, Malaka Spice, well worth going to.

Firstly, happy Australia Day to all our Australian friends and relatives, but in India it is also the celebration of India day and they also have a long weekend. So happy Republic Day to our Indian friends. We took the opportunity to get away up to the hill station village of Mahabaleshwar. Knowing that it was a long weekend, we booked a room ahead a few days prior to our departure. We took local buses up there, which was adventurous as well. After our 6 hour bus exploration of the countryside we arrived and found our hotel room had been given away, probably to someone who bribed their way into our room. So I don’t recommend the Hotel Mann Palace at all as the person at the counter was rude when we tried to ask why our reservation wasn’t kept. Being a long weekend we wandered the streets looking for a room, but it was heavily booked out. We did eventually find a room elsewhere at an exorbitant $70 a night for a room we would normally pay about $15 for, we stayed 2 nights.

That aside the town is quite pleasant, although very very busy on this weekend, but it had a good carnival atmosphere, everybody was there for a good time. The area is similar to the Blue Mountains in Sydney in a way and it is close enough to both Pune and Mumbai to attract crows for weekends and holidays. At 1.3km above sea level it has some very scenic views to be seen. There is also a fair amount of tackiness with horse and camel rides, shooting arcades, try your luck type games and slot machines. There are vendors of all types selling snow cones, corn on the cob and all types of food. One of the big attractions is the strawberries. You can get huge mugs of strawberries and cream for 50 cents.

All the best Ric & Louise