Namaste

exult

Hi everybody,

Just back from a short travel in India, where I found out about Indiamike via Thorn Tree. Not easy to understand how it all works, but I read very interesting comments here. I am French speaking (Belgian, actually) and I do not express myself very easily in English, but feel the need to communicate on this forum.

One question : WHERE should I post a comment about a remote West Bengal village that I visited recently, which inhabitants (especially the ones who are part of the "Birds and Environment Protection Samity", recently created there) wish to get the visit of foreigners, specially since migratory birds are coming in their small place in sheer numbers each year between June and October ? That message, that I first posted on the Thorn Tree, is rather long... Thanks for your answer(s) in advance.

Apart from that, to introduce myself : I spent more than 3 years of my life in India during different travels, but mostly between 1979 and 1997 - after that, I feared a lot returning there, as during my last long travel there (some 6 months, not including Pakistan and Bangladesh which I also visited that year), I found out that I could not bear any more many sleepless nights in a row, and I have now lots of problems sleeping when there is no total silence (= a real luxury in India, specially in the cities, big or small).

After 1997, as I had worked in Turkey and studied Turkish language in the past, my interest shifted towards Turkik-speaking countries and I travelled more in central Asia, then started studying Persian language too (with the hope of returning in Iran soon and discovering Afghanistan one day), - and last month in India, listening to people speaking there, I found out that Hindi and Urdu have many words of that origin (wish I had time to study Hindi too !).

So, just returned from my last travel in India, and enjoyed a lot seeing how things have evoluated there and loved to visit various primary schools in the remote countryside, discovering in the same time the life of some adivasis, for instance in a small isolated hamlet where the 3 first literate children go each day together to the nearest secondary school, which is 15 km away, by bicycle...

Jai India, India Zindabad !