Category — Journey

When I was talking to my colleague Binayak about my trip to Ladakh, he asked me to visit Tso Moriri lake. I immediately included it in my schedule with full excitement. Already a day’s delay had percolated into our schedule as one of the bikes had developed some serious snag and we had to spend an entire day in Jammu getting it corrected. So instead of 21st May, we headed towards Tso Moriri on 22nd. [Read more →]

In Rajasthan we stayed with Farhad Contractor for three days. He had planned a lot of things for us to see. Farhad has been working for the NGO Sambhaav in Rajasthan and Gujarat for 11 years, and knows what is going on in the water sector in these areas very well. When I asked him about what kind of projects Sambhaav is working on, he immediately cuts me off: they do not “work” with “projects” with a beginning and an end, he told me - “you have to live with the people and then create something together with them”. Sambhaav has done a lot of work on revival of traditional water structures such as beris and talaabs. [Read more →]

Dear Friends,

I intentionally bought a BSNL connection as to get maximum coverage and give as much realtime updates as possible. But just a few minutes from Pathankot towards North, my cell started to display - “Emergency calls only”. I though J&K has poor BSNL coverage. But when we reached Jammu, Airtel and Vodafone phones of Diwakar, Srikanth and Silje started to work. I restarted my phone 4 times. I thought I had ran out of currency etc. etc. No hopes [Read more →]

Today 20th May is Sharada’s birthday. You may be able to reach him at 99805 40111 to wish him ! He is travelling in the heights of the Himalayas, around Ladakh

If you know Kannada, you can read Shree Padre’s article on the journey

K2K trip of Sharada Prashad brought lots of hope and enthusiasm among the people and civil societies of Bhuj and Kutch.  Yesterday evening (6th May), we had a interactive session at Hamirsar Talav ” the 400 year old water point which is still the heart of the Bhuj city”. We were grateful to The Collector, Mr. R R Varsani, who specifically came to meet Mr. Sharda Prashad and conveyed his good wishes to the cause of the trip. Again, The Mayor of Bhuj city, who took the charge on yeasterday only, announced that not single pond / talav will be allocated for any types of construction work. In this meeting several dignetories like Kantisen Shroff, Senior Citizens of Bhuj, Hamirsar Sneha Samiti members, youth, members from civil societies participated. Press was also enthusiastic about K2K trip, they coverd a lot in the local news papers. (I will try to send you some of the news paper coverage to you). After the interactive session, Sharada visited Ramkundh ( a historic stepwell near Hamirsar Talav). Then today morning, Sharada headed for Dhamnka village (55 km from Bhuj towards Rapar) with 14 youth (men and women) accompanied him in Motor Bike and droped him at Dhamanka. There Setu (Setu programme of Abhiyan), organized a meeting with community. Community brought out the water issues, industries taking away water from the same aquifer and why people are migrating from the villages particularly the Traditional Block Printers.  from Dhamanka another 10 youth accompanied Sharada (Motor Bike riders from Bhuj returned from Dhamanka) to Pipriwandh at Samakhaili (Bhachau block of Kutch). There will be another meeting with community. Then some youth from Adesar and Rapar will join Sharada and take him to Gagodar. Balwantbhai of Samerth Trust imformed me that Samerth is arranging a meeting with community at Gagodar in the evening.    Sharada’s trip has motivated us a lot to work on water issues with more conviction and committment….== Sabyasachi Das

It has been a week now…

Day 1 - Pondicherry

Left Bangalore at 9:45am. Reached Pondicherry at 5:40pm. 320km in all. Had a conversation with Prashanth Hedao, Lata Hedao and friends at Auroville

Day 2 - Gandhigram

Left Auroville at 8:30am. Reached Gandhigram at 5:50pm. 320km in all. Interacted with rural community at Kamalapuram

Day 3 - Kanyakumari

Left Gandhigram at 7:10am. Reached Kanyakumari at 5:40pm. 318km in all. Interacted with Mr.Ponnabalam at Nagercoil.

Day 4 - Cochin

Left Kanyakumari at 8:00am. Reached Hotel Sarovaram at 6:30pm. 325km in all. Interacted with Mr.Abhilash Joy.

Day 5 - Mangalore

Left Cochin at 8:30am. Reached Meeyapadavu at 8:45pm. 488km in all. Interacted with Mr.Padre, Dr.Chowta and friends.

Day 6 - Goa

Left Mangalore at 9:30am. Reached Panaji at 8:30pm. 394km in all. Interacted with journalist Frederick Naronha.

Day 7 - Puna

Left Goa at 8:00am. Reached Puna at 11:00pm. 549km in all. We have a community interaction scheduled for tomorrow.

So far we have crossed 5 states and hundreds of water bodies. We have covered about 2700km in 7 days.

Though the intention is to provide real time updates, I have not been able to blog or upload GPS tracks and pictures everyday. There has been issues with travel plans. I have been riding for 12hrs everyday for past three days. But I will update blogs as soon as I find time. I am in Puna now. I have some time free to do all these today. So watch out

It is not as it seems… I am averaging at about 45km per hour

It has been three days and all the three days I have been riding for 8 hours to cover 300 odd kilometers. I am planning to change the schedule from Delhi and introduce some more days and make this almost a 80 day trip. Schedule till Delhi would remain almost unchanged.

22nd April, morning the Water warrior rode into Trivandrum. On his K2K trip, fresh from the southern most tip of India from Kanyakumari, CSP stopped over at Kovalam for an interaction organised by “Zero Waste Campaign” an undertaking of Thanal.

The meeting was organised in the offices of the Campaign, near the beaches of Kovalam and was headed of by Mr. Sridhar of Thanal who introduced the participants and kicked off the discussion. The core group present was members of the Campaign. The first part of the meeting involved the sharing of information, experiences by the Campaign members in the various projects that they had undertaken, were currently involved with. This was followed by introductions all round and the meet was kicked off. A Waste-to-Use thread was visible in all the projects that have been undertaken here. Conversion of tailor waste cloth to beautiful, useful objects of everyday use, creation of banners, in an eco-friendly manner, avoiding plastic flex printing by using reject cloth and a lot of creativity are a few among them! A plan to avoid the pollution/littering of the pristine beaches of Kovalam by plastic mineral water bottles was explained. A handmade bamboo carrier was provided to tourists, who could carry their own bottle, and refill stations for the same were put up. The bamboo carrier is an easy to carry, stylish to use method that was adopted by quite a few hotels who also co-operated in setting up the refilling stations.

Piping hot tea, and more narrations about plans to reclaim the beaches for the local people, to instill a feeling of belonging in order to induce them to actively participate in care and maintenance of resources kept the discussions lively.

The discussion went on to the subject of water availability and conservation. It was a pleasant surprise for CSP when he understood that the panchayats were taking up phased implementation of RWH structures in their locales. The women traded stories of how the RWH storage tanks are used to store tanker water in summer time when there is less rain, and more water is needed. Also the inconsistency in water availability in the Kovalam area came under discussion. The up stream communities are able to get enough water, exploit groundwater resources and sell the same to down stream communities that do not have a stable supply of water. The feeling of injustice that strikes harder when hotels manage to fill their pools with freshwater, but leaves the local people parched also figured in the talks. CSP offered advice to the participants indicating that water from RWH practices should be primarily used for drinking, cooking as it would prevent the use of unverified quality tanker water for such purposes. He also provided some pointers as to the proper sterilization methods with regard to drinking water.

CSP also took time out to sign a protest poster initiated by Thanal against the introduction of genetically engineered crops to India. Silje kept the flash popping as she steadily documented the interaction, intermittently answering queries regarding where she was from, and the reasons for the trip!

Thanal members, CSP and me had a final photo session following which we gave him and Silje a warm sent off. With a whispered prayer and a good luck wave the water warrior rode off.

For me the meet provided a “face” for the India Water Portal and Arghyam. Working freelance for the Portal on a remote basis the meet provided a better understanding of the driving forces behind the k2k initiative and also the need, necessity for evolving a better water infrastructure as we move along. The water warrior came alone, but carried with him the spirit of those who had dedicated their time and efforts to ensure the safe, sustainable, and any time availability of water to all!

-Francis Fernandez
India Water Portal freelancer