Week 3, Weekend in Phaltan

This weekend Jenny and I went to visit two other EWB volunteers, Jack and John, who are working at ARTI in Phaltan. We took a government bus direct from Swargate Bus Stand; it takes 3 hours and costs only 70 rupees, that’s 1 pound! (Just to compare, the 3 hour bus ride from Cambridge to Heathrow Airport costs about 35 pounds.) It was really nice to get out of Pune and get some fresh air. Phaltan is quite a small town (only 50,000 people), and I think the guys are a bit bored there. But I really liked it. First we got a tour of ARTI and the project they are working on. They are converting a diesel generator to bio gas, which people in rural communities can generate themselves.

Then we somehow managed to get into the Palace, which is not open to the public. They said it belonged to one of Shivagi’s wives, which means it’s from the late 1600’s. It was kind of like a National Trust house in the UK that hasn’t been looked after. I guess they never get any tourists in Phaltan, so there is no motivation to keep it in good shape. They were filming a movie while we were there, so we met a famous Marathi film star. Here we are in one of the sitting rooms.


In the afternoon we went over to the house of one of the other guys who works at ARTI. We had tea and snacks (including boiled peanuts, like you can get in Florida! Yum!), and the guy’s wife did henna for us.


On Sunday there was a kite festival, kind of like in Kite Runner (which I haven’t seen or read). We were on the roof of someone’s house, and they had a bunch of kites with string that has glass glued to it. They would launch the kites, and battle with the other kites that seemed to be all over the sky. Most of the time we would cut down the other people’s kite and it would slowly float to the ground, but a few times we got cut down too. There was a drum band on our roof too, and everyone was dancing. It was really fun, but there were no girls except us and a few kids; it’s not fair that the girls don’t get to play with kites.