Both families have safely arrived in India, and are acclimatising to the various demands of heat, humidity and honking. To say nothing of curry for breakfast and various devices for squirting ones bum….
The two families are travelling separately for now, and will meet in the city of Chandigagh on Monday morning to share the journey north to Manali. The foothills of the Himalayas are just visible on the horizon from Chandigagh which makes it an inspiring place to meet up for the onward journey.
Although the project hasn’t officially started yet, we are using this time to find some of the props that it wasn’t practical to travel with.
A printer has produced our activity pack for schools, with ring bound pages to make it easier for photocopying the worksheets. They also produced the SEN children’s colouring and activity booklets, though we’re doing the stapling ourselves to save a few rupees.
We are so lucky to have good friends here in Chandigagh, without whom we would never have found this amazing hidden gem of a music shop. Stuffed literally from floor to ceiling with all kinds of musical devices, broken and working. A constant flow of customers ebbed and flowed, squeezing their way through tiny gaps between the stacks of drums and pianolas, under a ceiling of sitars and guitars. A man sat in a tiny workshop at the back, fixing an array of guitars and drums which to an untrained eye looked very broken indeed. It felt like a great place to find a drum for the show, where the staff knew how to make and mend the instruments, a proper cottage industry rather than a showroom.
Sanjay Gupta and his lovely family here in Chandigagh have let us buy strange things on Amazon India and post them to their home. We now have 2 clothes rails for our backdrop, just like the ones we used in England. We also sent them the bubble mixture ingredients, so that we didn’t have to travel with mysterious white powders in our luggage!
With love from The Yak Pack x