This blogpost is penned by one our German volunteers
As our school girls enjoyed their week off at school – finally holidays! – we were able to go for a hike that has been planned for a quite long time.
The Hope House is established in the green outskirts of Vellore city. When I first looked up “The Hope House” on the internet, I found pictures that were taken a quite long ago. The house itself didn’t look as if it had charming nature around it, but as I got a first glance of the home in September, the green surrounding joyfully surprised my eye.
The children have established a beautiful garden, vegetable plants cover the ground, fruit trees, palm trees and bushes stretch their branches up on the property, - in the horizon, mountains and hills are fully covered in green. From our volunteers room you are able to see the closest mountain, manifested by a palm tree on the very top.
The girls have patiently waited for their school holidays and our hiking trip up on the mountain. As previous graduates have traditionally taken them for a hike, they wanted us to rejoin in the adventure. We selected the 6th of October as a date.
In the morning, the children showed us how to do Gala gala an Indian snack. (A surprising experience for us in itself, therefore read my other article!) We packed it up in big boxes, as well as many water bottles.
At four o´clock we began hiking. We passed the nearby Karigiri Hospital and reached a side path. In the beginning, some of the girls even challenged themselves in running races and we began joking about their probable lack of energy on the top of the mountain (spoiler: we were wrong! Everyone made it brim-full of energy.). Branches of thorn bushes and steep ascent were only a feasible challenge for these girls. With little breaks at nice view tops, we made it to the tip of the mountain (and even reached the palm tree, which we are able to see from our window). Eventually we opened our boxes of Gala gala and sat down for our big break. With a pair of binoculars we were able to see the Hope House in detail. As well as the children’s home you can see the center of Vellore city and the small lakes in the outskirts. The nature is as pleasing, meditative and peacefully green as possible. As far as you can see: green landscapes.
What I enjoyed a lot was the small assemblies of colorful, tiny houses here and there. From hiking trips in the Alpes in Germany, Austria and Italy, I only knew green landscapes (really beautiful indeed, don’t get me wrong, but) disturbed by estates of tall buildings in grey and white colors. As a contrast, the houses in this area didn’t seem to disturb my eye as the colors are bright and joyful. They fit in just naturally with the green landscape and even added a bit of color.
We took a lot of pictures and videos as memories and at last made our way back down. As an alternative, we took another way back down – which was shorter, though also quite steep! By surprise I didn’t slip, but I think I was an exception. When we reached the ground we invented a little happy-adventure-dance. I was surprised to recognize the nearby street crossing, which is only a two-minute-distance from the Hope House.
Everyone was safe and undamaged back on the ground. What a nice trip. Thank you girls!
thank you for the beautiful pictures,
Lisa and Clara <3
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