TRIP DESCRIPTION

SRI LANKA & INDIA, MAY 2006

On about May 20 a group of us connected with Warren Wilson College and Warren Wilson Presbyterian Church are going to spend three weeks in southern Sri Lanka and northern India. This trip is both a way of establishing a continuing relationship with two very good village development programs in South Asia and a way of immersing ourselves in village life in Sri Lanka and India as a way of understanding and responding to the the way most rural people in the world live. We will take time to get see places of cultural interest as well as to relax and have a good time and to experience as many interesting things as we can.

We will first spend a week in Sri Lanka with the Sarvodaya Shramadana Society. Sarvodaya is a dedicated Sri Lankan wide volunteer village self development movement based on strong and simple Gandhian Buddhist principles. We will focus on finalizing a village development project in the village of Akurala Kahawa, the home town of Winsor Kanakareka, which was devastated by the tsunami a year ago. Winsor has guided trip after trip of Warren Wilson students around Sri Lanka. We will bring $17,000, the money that was raised from the Warren Wilson community and Warren Wilson students who have visited Sri Lanka over the years and was then matched by Warren Wilson College. After a short bus tour of the mountains of Sri Lanka we will spend four days in the village of Akurala Kahawa on the southern coast of Sri Lanka.

Then we will fly from Colombo to Delhi. After a day visit to Agra and the Taj Mahal and a couple of days in the ancient holy city of Varanasi on the Ganges river we will go by train to the town of Mussoorie in the lower Himalayas at 7000 feet to visit mountain villages being helped by Mussoorie Gramin Vikas Samiti (MGVS). We will see several MGVS projects and the town of Mussoorie before taking a bus to the pilgrim town of Gangotri where those who want to will trek from Gangotri at 9000 feet to Gaumukh at 12,000 feet where the Ganges headwaters pour out of a glacier. This gentle climb along the rushing Ganges will take us through and above Alpine forests below snow capped peaks rising steeply above us. After our return to Mussoorie we will again visit mountain villages and talk about ways we can stay connected with and help MGVS. Then some of the group will stay in India and others will fly home with a stop ever in Europe a possibility.