Girl Guiding Oxfordshire does Sangam

When the 15 of us from Girlguiding Oxfordshire boarded the plane heading to Mumbai in India we didn’t realise just how memorable, exciting, fun, moving yet tiring the trip would be.

After arriving safely and a quick tour of Mumbai we headed to the Sangam World Centre for 10 days of Celebrating the WAGGGS centenary. Our programme enabled us to be gently introduced to Indian culture, have an Indian experience as well as develop our understanding and thinking around WAGGGS and their work to empower girls and young women.

There were so many highlights during our time there; the Rickshaws into Pune, enjoying an afternoon in the Sangam pool, the camp fire, Sari and bangle shopping, yoga, special Maharashtran meal but two days in particular stood out for many of the group. The first was the day and half we spent working with a selection of Sangam’s community partners. We all worked with one of four partners that support the local communities and those in particular need. Words cannot describe our experiences – they all had a slightly different emphasis but all left us feeling very humble, inspired and certainly challenged us to be flexible and think on the spot. The second memorable day was of course Thinking Day. We spent the morning with the Bharat Scout and Guides – the ceremony was very special and is certainly something that we will not forget for a long time. Following the ceremony we got the opportunity to work with small groups of youngsters from the various Scout and Guide units from the local area. Again this challenged our leadership skills; running activities in Hindi for teenage boys and girls in 32 degree heat in a small area was certainly a little different to what we were used to. That said it was again very special and whilst we had to use different methods to explain the activities, the youngsters enjoyed them in exactly the same way as girls back in Oxfordshire do and there were lots of laughter and smiles around which were very easy to understand!

After 10 days we waved goodbye to Sangam feeling more confident in the Indian way of life and headed on our travels in Northern India. First stop was the capital Delhi where we visited various sites including a memorial to Ghandi, Humayun’s tomb and saw the developments that happened as a result of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. We then headed off on a coach to Agra to visit the magnificent Taj Mahal and the various other forts in that area. The Taj Mahal was certainly another highlight of the tripand we spent quite some time admiring the tomb in all its glory on the very sunny Monday morning. Our final destination was Jaipur; here the highlight was our elephant ride up to the Amber fort at the top of a hill, elephants are not the mostcomfortable mode of transport but it made a change from the coach we had used everywhere else!

As we flew back to the UK, all 15 of us were exhausted but bought with us fantastic memories of Sangam, the people we met and the sights, sounds and smells of Indian life. It really was 17 days of Mountain top moments.

Helen Wynn