Travels through Konkan and Education

Part 1

Many people are mighty pissed off with the Great Indian Education System; (GIES for short) which pretty much sucks. And it is my good fortune that some of these people happen to be my friends. What is special about their pissed-off ness against GIES is that it has led them to do some crazy but important things- make films, take their kids out of the conventional school system, join or even start alternative education centres and tour the countryside making more and more people understand why actually everyone should be pissed of with GIES.

So being the tag-along friend I am, I gate-crashed one such tour and ended up in Dhamapur, Konkan.

(Yes, this is another travelogue. I guess that’s all I feel like writing about nowadays. )

The Yeshti journey:

Front row seats, right behind the driver, in full blast of his horn (you sickos! I mean, the horn of the bus…. Gosh!) - 1^st half expressway-esque and 2^nd half picturesque

Via Satara and Kolhapur, we reached the shadiest, dingiest, dirtiest lodge-cum-dhaba I have ever seen, at Gaganbavda. (I mean seriously, that place had questionable character. Especially because the ST driver (State Transport driver, guys…. Uff, you can’t be this finicky.) stopped at this private joint and he and the conductor mysteriously disappeared into its dark depths, leaving most passengers standing around looking around for loos.

My friend and I ate bananas standing outside the bus and made cheap comments on the surroundings for fun.

After Gaganbavda, starts the ghat.

Konkan is the ghat-champion. She really knows what to do with people who are silly enough to blast mountains and build roads through them. She twists and turns roads at unbelievable arcs and scares the shit out them.

Our driver was pretty confident though and took every super- sharp turn in his stride with deft twists, twirls and wringings of the wheel. Along with the landscape, even I was slowly turning greener and greener (one irritating weakness I have is bus sickness) but soon enough I was totally entranced by the view outside the window, diverting my thoughts and bile from the view inside me. We reached Kudal which was where we got off.

From Kudal, after a wadapaav which was strangely dry and oily at the same time and some initial confusion in finding the bus stop, we hurriedly boarded another bus to Dhamapur which was our final destination. We made our ‘ignorant, city slickers’ status amply clear through our frantic questioning and high tension to reach our stop (Dhamapur khalchi waadi) and so eventually, the whole bus threw us out with many further landmarks, directions and a roar of relief, continuing on its way to Malwan.

to be continued...