It was my very first time in India but the second time participating in a W_UP Workcamp and i was curious to see if the experience would have been the same in a different location or if it would have been completely different.
We spent the first week somewhere between the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, surrounded only by jungle, at the headquarters of Ruchi NGO the organization that was hosting us.
Around ten people were coming from Germany, Japan, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Estonia and other parts of India and in the beginning we dedicated some time to getting to know each other and each other culture; I loved it. We also took some time to explore the surrounding towns and villages and it was totally clear why it was so necessary there was an organization who wanted to speak about sustainability.
We had some meetings with up-cycling experts and we had a manual project: to create something out of waste that would have been doable, durable, and useful. Super interesting and fun.
The second week we moved to Dharamsala and the experience changed completely. The city was amazing, still up on the mountains but bigger and more colorful, and we discovered that it lives there the biggest community of Tibetans.
Here we met for the second time with the Waste Warriors, another NGO that works a lot in waste management, to clean together the path to the waterfall, but we had also some completely different activities related to Tibetan culture and history as visiting their museum, the manual art school of Norbulingka and the Tibetan Children’s Village.
Returning to the initial question; no, it was totally different from the W_UP Workcamp with Alfa Albona in Croatia but both of them, in different ways, were amazing experiences! Thank you.
