Satara Adventure

List of Top Ten Adventures That Heather Has Endeavored (Not in any particular order)

1. Boating in the Milwaukee Harbor on July 4^th
2. Orange Revolution in Ukraine
3. Flying Home from London
4. Backpacking through the United Kingdom
5. Kayaking in Okinawa
6. Safari Trekking through SATARA!!!
7. (Adventure yet to be had)
8. (Adventure yet to be had)
9. (Adventure yet to be had)
10. (Adventure yet to be had)

This weekend I spent my weekend with all of my Rotary District students Safari Trekking through the Satara area of India. Originally we thought this weekend would be the most boring shitty weekend from hell! So we went out and bought a deck of cards and a twister board just so we could have some fun… But boy o’ boy we could not have been more WRONG! We conceived this misconception of the most boring weekend from hell from several observations we had gathered in the past

1. The Rotary is sometimes really disorganized and we want to hurt the members all the time because of their beliefs in never being on time!
2. They refused to give us an itinerary, because in the words of our Rotary man (PeeKay) we would “ask too many questions” about the trip and the activities
3. Satara from what we have heard was a shitty village with NOTHING in it! Satara is a village which is not even in the Lonely Planet guide to India, which claims to have every town worth visiting in it.

But we could not have been more wrong!!! Another bad thing about this trip (which turned out to be a great adventure) was we were to take a public bus from Pune to Satara. So out trip began with Lauren, Chelsea (the exchange student in Pune from Canada), Xia pronounced Isha, one of the exchange students from Belgium in Pune), and I, all dragged ourselves out to one of Chelsea’s houses to meet her non-English speaking driver, who had a very remote idea of where we were going (The Bus station of Pune). We all had been warned to be very very careful with our luggage in the bus station because of the lurkers who like magicians like to distract you and then steal your stuff, sometimes you have to be super assertive of your things! So at the bus station we waited around for a time still skeptical about going to Satara but also watching all of our stuff beyond intently. So taking a public bus was a different experience, the trip is about two hours by bus through the hills (which are not like the little hills of the Midwest, no to any Midwesterner these are mountains!) and the busses are old and creaky and well the roads are something to be desired… Sitting there with your window wide open and almost going off cliffs of roads in very close calls is one of the scariest experiences! We almost skidded into a few close calls. We arrived in Satara in the morning and we greeted by the Rotary very promptly and in fashion! They as always greeted us with roses and flowers! Sometimes it is really fun to get flowers almost on a daily basis from the Rotary, if I keep collecting the flowers to Rotary gives me, I will be able to fill a room by around next week! They then gave us the weekend schedule! I was pretty excited to know about the weekend activities! We were to be staying with host families in Satara (all Rotary members). After a quick meet and great, they pulled us off to a park which the Satara Rotary club had created, and there we were greeted like Rock Stars, it was WILD! There was the news crew from the local TV station, there was about five photographers, and a dozen or so Rotary people. They were all there to great us along with give us yet again more flowers (in a flower garden). Also they filmed us and took a ton of pictures, and asked us questions. In the half hour we were standing there we began to notice that just regular people from the street were coming in to the park and watching us, just staring which is always really strange, but because we were outside of Pune we all found it kinda fun. After we were done all the onlookers who had crowded around the park, knowing we were leavening all began to cheer, it was strange but made us feel like celebrities of the town! If you have never felt like a celebrity, well then if you are white go to Satara with a bunch of your friends and just stand around, it is one the strangest feelings you will ever have!

Adventure, Adventure, How I Love thee!

So then we set off on some serious adventuring! We all got to pick Jeeps (or as I called them Safari vehicles) to ride around in all weekend. As a tribute to America (North America not USA because we included a Canadian) Lauren, Chelsea, and I all picked the black Chevy! Also in our car was Xia, Charlotte (both from Belgium) and Pauline (from France). In the car because ours was the lesser crowded, the head of the IYE (International Youth Exchange) Students in the district PeeKay was riding with us. (All the Rotary students in the beginning really had a mixed feeling about PeeKay, well we could not stand him!, but after this trip he may be one of our favorite people in India, he is a really really really cool old guy, that gives GREAT philosophical advice if you just ask, and loves to have fun and be in every picture possible). Driving through the hills in our Safari car was defiantly one of the greatest parts of the weekend! We had a nutty driver, he would take the hills like a race car driver speeding around every turn and embracing blind spots like he could see clearly! We had a ton of close calls in the process, many with cows or dogs. I was just in awe with the scenery, of the entire place, it is hard to describe just how beautifully peaceful and gorgeous it is above the clouds on top of a hill (or a mountain…) it just seams so perfect! Especially the hills that look over the city, you can sit and watch life it seams, also the climb is not so bad itself, you never know what lies on the top of a hill, ruins, an old fort, or even a working village, the intrigue sometimes gets you and the walk is always a blast!

The First Day

We saw on the first day, a natural dam made entirely naturally by man (more of an organic dam, but it did not have an concrete and was made a long long time ago, and still serves its purpose). Then we went down around and through some mountains and hills, to go on a hike. Most of the day it was raining, many of you reading this may think “Wow, that Sucks!” but no, it was perfect! It was the perfect type of rain, more of a mist then a pour, and just enough to make you cool and not sweat, so the heat would not get the better of you. It felt like one of those perfect April days in the spring where it is raining and warm but at the same time you know winter was just a few weeks before. So we hiked for around an hour to see some beautiful water falls. The falls were hidden beyond trees and there we a ton! It is just finishing up the rainy season here in the Indian weather forecast, so is the rain we had was normal, so are waterfalls, which are EVERYWHERE! There were around five at this particular location and these are one of the few that can be scene all year round. You could see them above the cliffs and threw the trees which were like a jungle! Yes, a jungle! There were even monkeys in their natural habitat! It was pretty sweet! There at the falls school kids go to see the falls and learn about biology and there was a big school group there, which was very interesting to watch the dynamics of. Girls and boys were separated and all in line specifically by order, which if you tried to do that in the United States it would never work! But these students when they saw us went NUTS! They started taking pictures of us some with their cameras some with their phones, once again it was like being a celebrity! Just the reaction you get from locals for being in the little unknown places is crazy enough to make you want to go to these places, people are, unlike the city, honestly interested in you and your life, they don’t just want to whistle at you and give you death stares they want to know you, and find you fascinating (see further down to know more about this). So after the many many waterfalls (there are pictures now up on facebook of my trip, if you would like to see the perfect nature beauty), we traveled on to a fort. The fort was not on our schedule and we they just sorta stopped on the base of one of the foothills and we are looking up and up and up and up and cannot see the top (it was above the clouds). So PeeKay, stops out safari Jeep and is like “WHO wants to hike to the top!” We are all soaking wet, it is pouring raining, and we look at the steep path ahead of us and we are all tired and hungry and well want to go back to Satara. So while giving him, “What the hell are you thinking, you are insane!” type looks, we decide to start hiking, why not we all thought. So we start hiking and well we get about twenty minutes up and still cannot see the top and are wheezing because we are way way above sea level and are not used to this. But we keep going and going and going, we really have no idea what is at the top of this mountain, but the Rotary people keep telling us well it is very old, which we know now, the path we are walking on looks like it was built a long long time ago and not to mention is warn out and wet (it is stone and maybe some marble, and really steep) also it is FULL of POOP! We had to be really careful to steep around the poop because if we did we would fall down the cliff then slip in a lot more poop. So we finally get to the top and it is like a village, that has survived on the top of this hill, and there is a perfect temple, which we had to take our shoes off to enter. The fort was the place where a mogul king (I believe, the translation was not that great to me and it is not really something I can look up online or in lonely planet because of the fact that well the Rotary people did not even know the place we were at). So it was amazingly preserved when he lived in the years around 1200, and they still had his original bed, and bedpan too. Along with a ton of other things that belonged to him. It was pretty wild, and the did keep them behind bars but unlike American museums which never have the real thing they not only had the real things (or at least they told us they did) but they would unlock the things and take them out of their cases and pass them around for us to see. Such as the king had a walking stick sort of like a crutch and it looked pretty boring for him, it appeared to be wooden and such, but one of the monks guarding the king’s things goes into the room, pulls it out and shows us that it was really a sword! He pulls on the hilt and out comes one of the most elaborate swords I have ever scene! It is gold and ornate with carvings, and then they passed it around, it was pretty cool! So then they showed us his grave and his body in some caves, way down into the hill, which was kinda creepy, because the guide had good English but we did not really understand a word of what he was saying. After that adventure we ended up going back down the hill (in half the time we took going up the hill, but freaking out twice as much because we could see the steep drops and cliffs that could lead to the inevitable deaths of all the IYE students). In the evening we got to meet out host family at a Rotary meeting, at this Rotary meeting instead of having someone as a guest we were the guest. As usual they treated us so well, with flowers and amazing food! (Which was possibly the only food I ate all weekend other then pauper (this weird cracker like fishy tasting stuff that is dried, well none of the Rotary kids like it but me, and I get everyone’s). Continuing on they had us putting on little performances, a few of us Americans were going to sing the national anthem, but really the American national anthem is pretty hard to sing and kinda embarrassing because the high notes that could kill small animals and so we decided we would do it next time, and when we could practicing hitting the high notes without breaking windows. But because they knew we would all be too shy they invited some of the children of Rotary members to dance for us! THEY WERE AMAZING! There was this one little kid who was about five, who was NUTS! He is going straight to Bollywood!!! They then invited us to join us in dancing which was really funny, all the Rotary Students dancing with all the Rotary members, I will post a video soon either on You Tube (under the Rotary Students account) or on Facebook, because this kid was wild!

The rest of the time in Satara!

Well the next day we were up early off to Rotary events, first we went to go visit a school, in a village (on the way from some water falls) which was just wild! The rotary greeted us like Rock Stars! And the Students of the school went NUTS! They put on this big musical presentation for us in their court yard, and all saluted us in their school greeting (which was sorta strange, the German kids found it very strange and for some reason were reminded of World War Two Germany Nazi which would be very strange, but it was explained to them that is was the school greeting) After this with the help of the Rotary members as translators we all introduced ourselves to the two hundred students of the school, each one wanting to know our names and all about where we were from. I walked down and was greeted by a huge throng of young school boys, and I spoke with one, (with the help of a Rotary member) who said that he also wanted to be an exchnege student, and he asked where I was from, I told him, the United States of America, and he then asked where that was? Though it is very sad that he does not know about my country, it is also downright wild that he does not know about one of the biggest most powerful nations of the world. This was really the point in time, I realized how far away from home I really am. So of the other exchange students realized this too, on this day, because it is hard to look at a child who is terribly poor and malnourished and tell them you are from one of the richest nations in the world. The rest of the day was spent looking at, at every angle possible, a dam. And for the exchange students who we like to think we are funny, we made dam jokes. We visited some gardens that show off the dam, and saw a movie about the dam (which well I have to admit as soon as the lights went off in the fan cooled theater, I was out… and feel right to sleep). We rode a boat around the lake that the dam created, and all got really sun burnt, some of us got a tan, but I guess if you know me, you will know that I stayed whiter then white. So after a few Rotary meetings and hours on the road in our safari jeeps, we found ourselves in the last day of our perfect trip out of Pune.

The Last Day

After a breakfast with the Rotary members (all containing the same thing we had eaten at every meal all weekend except for the first night, and once again all things that I cannot eat because they like to smoother them in butter and ghea). Then the Rotary members took us to the Parle G biscuit factory. Which was pretty cool, because these cookies we found out are number one in India, and are pretty good. At first we could not decide weather or not to eat them (going on a biscuit rant) because at home in Pune, these biscuits are the ones we feed Rocky (our Dog) and so we did not know if they were human biscuits and or if they were really dog cookies they would feed us just to laugh at us (hehehe). So in the end we broke them open and they are really good, and Rocky is really spoiled rotten, because they are really good. The cookie factory was pretty nifty but then our good Canadian friend (Chelsea) after drinking the water all weekend pretty much felt sick and so we ended up sitting in an a/c room drinking pop to calm her suspected extreme dehydration. After spending too much brain power trying to figure out weather or not to eat the cookies, We went to see more waterfalls! Then we went off to Kas field and Kas Lake. Kas Field is a famous field (our plateau) on top of a mountain, that is full of wild flowers (which were not yet in season) but there were a few flowers. Then at the lake we took yet another boat ride, to the other side of the lake, and spent the afternoon well just hanging out in this little village (while the Rotary people ate lunch for THREE HOURS, this was the only frustrating part of the trip, because they made us miss our bus back to Pune). So after getting back to Satara, and the Rotary people finally understanding and realizing we had missed our bus told us to wait around for three hours in the parking lot of the bus station in Satara. So to pass the time we played TWISTER! Yes, a gaggle of white kids from all around the world pulled out a Twister game in the middle of the parking lot at a super crowded bus station and played, was possibly one of the funniest things on the whole trip, until the locals started giving us dirty looks, though we kept played. We had a blast on the trip!!!! It was beautiful and made me love India even more.

So now I am back in Pune, and it is pretty great to be back. School is not going so great, and I will end it with that. Otherwise coming up is the festival in which Pune is famous for, the Ganesh Festival, and apparently Pune goes CRAZY for it! They are already setting up for it and it should be great fun! I will keep you all updated!