We have just concluded the student information sessions on each campus. Essentially the sessions covered:
- Culture and heritage of India
- Features of the trip, day by day
- Advice on what to bring, how to prepare etc
Thanks very much to Mr and Mrs Chandrasiri for sharing some of their knowledge of India at the TRC session.
Here are some of the key points covered, in no particular order.
Visas
Thanks so much for your patience and support with the visa applications. India’s red tape is well known to all who have encountered it, and the slightest slip in filling in a form will usually result in having to start all over again, as several of you have discovered. After lots of emails, multiple phone calls, a couple of cross campus car trips, and two train/tram journeys down to the visa office in St Kilda we seem to have ticked all their boxes. Most passports were returned today with the remainder due either tomorrow or Tuesday.
Airports
Students must be at Melbourne Airport by 7.30am on Friday, March 14. They must be wearing their blue trip shirts and should dress for comfort with the rest of their attire, as it will be a long journey – three flights and twice in transit before we reach Indore a day later. Students will be issued with their passports and tickets at the airport. These will be collected once we are on the plane and retained for safekeeping by a teacher. Students will also be issued with Ivanhoe group luggage tags at the airport. Ivanhoe shirts are to be worn for ease of identification at all airports.
Phones and Social Media
We are comfortable with students bringing phones, but will insist on the following rules:
- No use of social media outside the specified time periods allowed for phone use
- Only positive comments about India to be posted online
- No phone calls home to be made outside the specified time periods allowed for phone use
- No ‘bad news’ phone calls home – students who are upset or homesick must speak to a teacher or friends who will help them deal with this, rather than worrying people at home unnecessarily
Students who do not abide by these simple rules risk having their phones confiscated until they return home. If students bring phones, it is their responsibility to ensure data roaming is switched off, in order to avoid the high costs associated with phone use overseas. One option to keep costs down is to install apps like Viber and WhatsApp on both student and parent phones to allow free conversations to take place when wi-fi is available.
Spending Money
Here is a rough conversion
- 50 Indian rupees = $0.90 Australian
- $20 AU = 1110 Indian rupees
There is no set limit to how much money a student should bring, so please consider the following as a recommendation only. There are three likely ways in which money will be spent.
- Snacks and soft drinks at tourist venues – these are usually quite inexpensive. Bottled water will always be readily available free of charge.
- One Indian costume (mandatory) for each student – to be purchased at Treasure Island shopping centre in Indore. This will cost approx $20-30 Australian.
- Souvenirs – usually good quality, often cottage crafts (the money will go directly back to the villagers who made them), paintings, jewellery, fabric products such as scarves and shawls, inlaid marble decorative items etc. They vary from cheap to expensive. Students can barter to bring the price down, but the price you eventually pay is usually a good guide to the quality of the item. A customer outsmarting a vendor rarely happens in India.
Students will be responsible for any money they bring to India, so think carefully about a secure way to carry it. I recommend $100 as probably the minimum amount and $250 as the upper limit, but the actual amount is entirely your decision. Travel cards can be used in India, but I cannot guarantee that we will be in the vicinity of the machines that allow students to access cash. Therefore, although these might be worth considering as a backup, it would make sense to also ensure your son or daughter had some Indian rupees in cash when they arrive.
Appliances
Students who are carrying phones, cameras or any other devices which will require mains power to run or charge batteries will need to purchase a power adaptor suitable for India. Here is an image of what it looks like.
Accommodation
At Daly College, students will stay in the boarding house dormitories. The rooms are spacious and clean, though the furniture is basic. The rooms are secure and cannot be entered without a key. While we are away from the dorms, the keys remain with college security staff. We have been informed that room sharing will be for two persons, but there is a possibility that larger rooms might house 3 or 4 students. In Mandu, we stay overnight in a basic hotel with keyed access. While on tour we stay in comfortable deluxe hotels.
Meals
All meals are Indian regional cooking, so they usually include a range of different dishes and ingredients varying from very mild to quite spicy. Students are free to try everything and leave anything that does not appeal. Naan bread is provided with each meal to mop up the curries. Fruit and sweet desserts often also accompany meals. Bottled water and milky tea is also available. On several occasions the students will have cooking lessons and will eat the food they cook.
Some food will include meat, but much of the food is vegetarian, in line with Indian religious beliefs about animals being sacred. Students are encouraged to carry their own hand sanitiser products for use before each meal, so that their hands are always clean when eating.
When on tour during the day we will dine at reputable restaurants and we will dine in our hotel restaurants in the evenings – on most such occasions, students will be able to select from the menu or from a buffet.
Climate
During the 2013 trip, it was often hot and sticky during the first week in Indore. Temperatures were often in the low 30s, though we mainly stayed indoors out of the sun. During the second week, touring the north, the climate was more temperate and quite comfortable – around 25 degrees on most days. Rain is unlikely.
Old clothing
On Monday morning, March 17, we will take part in Holi festivities at Daly College. Holi is internationally famous as the occasion when people throw brightly coloured powder over each other. The college has asked us all to bring a spare set of old clothes for this occasion and has suggested that the clothes will need to be discarded once the event is over, as they will be virtually unwearable after that!
The clothing list for the trip can be found under the Essential Info link (beneath the Taj Mahal photo header of this blog). Where it suggests good clothing for the final dinner, a clean tour shirt and clean shorts, jeans or skirt will suffice. Shoes should be comfortable and pre-worn as we don’t want to have to deal with blisters from new shoes. It is okay to pack a pair of bathers (some modesty required), but swimming may not be an option at any time on tour unless the opportunity arises and a qualified life guard is available.
Beggars
It is likely that we will encounter people begging in some tourist locations. The students have been instructed not to engage with these beggars. They should say No and move away. Teachers will shield the group from beggars if they get too close. The advice from our friends in India is that many of these beggars use the money for alcohol and gambling, rather than to feed and educate their children, and they tell us that little, if any, good will come from handing over money to them.
We do, however, encourage students to reward those who ‘work’ to earn donations – examples include blind musicians, puppeteers, snake charmers etc.
Health care items
Here are some items we highly recommend should be packed for the trip:
- Imodium or similar anti-diarrhoeah medication
- Hydralyte tablets for rehydration following a stomach upset
- Hand sanitiser
- Headache tablets – your preferred brand
- Tropical strength insect repellant
- Sunscreen
Teeth should only be washed with bottled water or Lysterine (or equivalent) – never with tap water.
Itinerary and flight information
All flight times and flight numbers are listed on the blog under the Itinerary link. Please be waiting at the airport to greet us when we arrive home on March 27. We’ll be anxious to see your smiling faces when we clear Customs.
Journal
We would like every student to bring a travel journal. We will insist on students reflecting on the day’s events in their journals each evening – before it gets forgotten in the busy days that follow.
Certificate course
The course we will undertake at Daly College in Indian culture and heritage is a structured certificate course, delivered by the teaching staff of the school. At the completion of each lesson there will be a short test. Students will be expected to participate in lessons in the same manner as they do at Ivanhoe and complete the assessments. Upon completion of the course each student will be presented with a certificate of achievement at a school assembly. The knowledge gained during these lessons will help the students to make sense of the things they see and the places they visit during the second week.
Photos
I will be posting many of the photos I take on this blog at the end of each day. If you would like a complete set of my trip photos, including many that will not be published here, please send a blank 16Gb USB stick to school addressed to me after we return and I will be happy to copy the photos and short movies I take onto it for you.
Team
Despite the short preparation time frame not allowing us to get our entire team together prior to the trip, we have told students from both campuses that we want them all to make the effort to get to know their counterparts from the other campus and enjoy their company just as much as they enjoy the company of their regular classmates throughout the trip.
Ivanhoe to India 2014 