Discovering India: One Step At A Time: Week 4: Vacation

VACATION TIME!

Yes,this is a very exciting post for me.I've got to do some very cool things during our 4 day vacation. So basically the 14 of us split into different groups and headed our separate ways.One group headed to Andhra Pradesh, which is north of Bangalore, Karnataka and the other group headed to Kerala, which is south of Karnataka.

Logically speaking, I should have gone to Kerala and visit my half Keralite roots there(my father is a Malayalee. Hence, I have a Nair as my last name). Instead, I decided to visit the SVYM organization in Mysore, Karnataka. Mysore is about 2 hours away from Bangalore but we were planning to visit the tribal school, which took an additional 2 hours.We stopped at a kamat, a restaurant at the roadside and saw many, many monkeys.

Masala dosa. Dosa wrapped around seasoned potatoes.

This is called gulab jamun.It's an Indian dessert made of milk flour and deep fried.It is then added into syrup to sweeten it. This is the best Indian dessert hands down.

Baby monkey!

After having breakfast, we continued our journey to Mysore.We had a really pleasant driver who showed us the countryside of Mysore since he is from Mysore. Here are some pictures.

Our first stop was Viveka Tribal School. This school was specially built for tribal school children. Education here is done a little differently. Instead of following the mainstream, 1st to 12th standard, the students here are categorized by their abilities in class. The children were very excited to see us and it was nice talking to them and answering all their questions.We were shown around,and I was surprised to discover that this school is equipped with a Biology and Chemistry lab, and it's very much like our labs in the Malaysian high schools.Students here have shown improvement in terms of their SSLC pass percentage, something this school prides upon.

Our tour guide's Innova

Then, we visited the Kenchanahalli Hospital, where a combination of allopathy and ayurveda is used to aid patient recovery. Read more about this approach here Integrating Different Forms of Medicine to Lower Cost. Also,be sure to read the rest of my classmates' thoughts on social entreprenurship on the Global SE Blog.

Then we visited the SVYM Hospital is Sargur. This is a 90 bedded hospital with multiple specialty.Patients who cannot be treated in the Kenchanahalli will be sent to this Sargur hospital.We also had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bala, who is the CEO of the SVYM organization.He was very humble and he told us that SVYM have had many failures but it did have some sucesses and the sucesses are what we see now. He also was frank with us when he told us that the founder of PremaVidya, Mr. Naresh Bala is ill with leukemia and they are trying to multiple medical opinions before they decide to do anything.

The next day, we visited the Mysore Maharaja Palace and the St.Philomena's Church.I was forced to pay 200 rupees since I was a foreigner while Indians only had to pay 50 rupees.Bloody unfair.Anyhow,the palace was extremely beautiful except for the annoyingly rude officers.I think I don't do well under authority.Oh well!