Back to India!

Hello to all,

I'm once again using this blog to serve as a travelog - with some students of my engineering school (INSA Rouen), we are soon to fly to India on a study trip whose programme has been prepared by them (check here - don't know if you can access this FB page publicly) ever since last September, when we started looking for Indian University contacts in order to make sure that the French students would meet some Indian counterparts. First we liaised with IIM Indore, but after some procrastination, we took advantage of another contact, and a connection was established with JNU in Jaipur! They've accepted to host our group of 20 for three days, between Feb 25 and 28th! Thanks to them! They have organized our stay, with activities, industrial visits, academic sessions, and discovery of the city. We're hoping to make the most of the time, and perhaps establish contacts which could continue with them after our return to France: who knows, invite some of them, start a partnership... All this is still rather vague.

The rest of the time has been planned during the fall semester by India-hungry students, 15 of them (+ 3 who are joining us for the trip). In order to make the most of our time there, they had to organize an itinarary, book hotels, find the prices of visits, think about the trains, the connections... We hope everything goes according to plan, but... we'll see! In Delhi, we should be meeting up with former INSA student Dhruv Lijhara, who's involved in a publishing firm, and our time of arrival will be that of the Delhi World Book fair, so he'll be quite busy! Still we hope to have some time with him, and maybe he'll show us his country in a way ordinary tourists can't see it!

The rest of the time, after the first 3 days in Delhi and the subsequent 3 days at JNU will consist in a tour of Rajasthan which will resemble what I had done back in 2010, but not to worry, you never bathe in the same river twice.

We're off on Friday Feb 21st.

So... The few upcoming posts will be in French for family and friends back home!

We all had a meal together in December at the Indian restaurant in Rouen, Le Maharaja!