Over the next 5 months I will be ‘touring’ India. I write this from a heavily air conditioned internet café on Mahatma Gandhi high street in Pondicherry (Pondi) in South East India. I flew into Chennai (250kms north of Pondi) from London, where I spent 1 day before heading south to Pondicherry.

I should explain from the start that for the first two months I will be volunteering in an orphanage in Vasai, 50 km north of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra. The placement has been arranged through the charity Development in Action which promotes issues of development for young people in the UK. I applied a few months ago, and was selected along with 6 others to work in an NGO somewhere in India. I will be working at the St Gonsalez orphanage with another volunteer, where I will have various roles - mainly teaching, but also the chance to create and promote a sports programme with the children. At this point I don’t know much more about it until I get there!

So the journey began five days ago. I set off along with 4 other volunteers from Heathrow, where I learnt that I have by far the heaviest bag, at 17kg. This confirms my suspicions that I had seriously over packed. I had been told by other travellers to India that I would experience the most extreme heat coupled with the most extreme rainfall. As well as no end of illness! Not easy advice when trying to plan what to pack.

Anyway, the journey here wasn’t too painful. We arrived at 9am in Chennai not feeling too scathed or travel weary. My first word to describe India is HUMID. The big temperature dial just outside the airport tells me its 26C, however the herd of taxi drivers and rickshaw owners that bombard us as we leave make it feel a lot hotter. We settle on a prepaid stand in the danger of getting over-charged due to our very lost and confused tourist like demeanor that surrounds our group. We get into taxis that resemble something that would look at home on the set of Heartbeat. However, surely Nick Berry’s car had seatbelts? Wing mirrors? Or at least a windscreen that allowed you to see 20 metres ahead. Anyway, the driver is momentarily confused as we try to describe the name of the hostel we’ve chosen in our Lonely Planet guide, before we set off for the 40 minute journey into the main hub of Chennai.

It’s difficult to describe that first introduction to India. Obviously I’d had my preconceptions and was feeling very tired from the flight but I remember how surreal it felt. On the motorway (if you can call it that) we were surrounded by no end of different modes of transport. This included pushbikes, motorbikes, rickshaws, taxis, huge lorries as well as the endless stream of mopeds that whizzed in and out of everyone. What also struck me was the normality of it all for everyone simply getting on with their lives, starting their daily routine. From the women in their pink sari uniforms cleaning the road side, the topless men in their white shorts standing guide outside their various shops, as well as the people fast asleep in the street outside those shops, to the young girls creating colourful flower arrangements to sell to passers-by. It was weird to think that with the time difference most people back at home would be still in bed ready to go to their office jobs!

Anyway, we arrived at the ‘Paradise Hostel Lodge’ where, although tired, we managed to haggle the price of down to 250Rs (just under £2 each). Although not exactly living up to its name, the hostel was pretty good – AC, a western style toilet (a blessing I have since come to learn) and a TV! It was a welcome start to the trip after all the warnings I’d had. It seems I’m being given an easy ascent into life here.

After 2/ 3 hours sleep, the five of us meet to go exploring into Chennai. We all looked ridiculously like tourists, with our white faces, silly back packs and camera’s in hand. The majority of this look I am hoping to rid myself of as soon as I can!

So we head down to the beach (which I later learn was the 2nd largest beach in the world) where we are greeted by the slums… Like most people, I’ve seen Slumdog Millionnaire and have formed my own preconceptions of what it would be like. However, although smaller scale to the slums of Mumbai (where I’ll be heading in a few weeks) the extreme poverty of it all is something very intense. It didn’t help that we were the only westerners actually on the beach, and we were heavily accosted by the begging children and the people selling various items from their stalls. Although Chennai was by far the most intense place I’d ever been to, I was pleased we were leaving in the morning.

The next morning we get a rickshaw to Chennai bus station (complete with the obligatory haggle with our driver ‘Syl’ who tells us the 31C temperature is mild). The journey takes 20 minutes or so where we talk with Syl about why we’re here, in between his outbursts in Hindu at the large number of mopeds (on the correct side of the road) he decides to cut across every now and then. From the bus station, it’s three hours down to Pondi, however the journey takes close to five and I begin to understand what people mean by the phrase ‘India time’. We stop off at various chai tea stations on the way, and pass through tea plantations, tiny villages getting on with life, cows watching life go by, as well as a Subway, sitting alone amongst a row of shops selling material or saris… So anyway, I’m in Pondicherry for a week of orientation before getting the train up to Mumbai. Pondi has a much more relaxed feel to it than Chennai. It has a grid style geography to it which makes it very easy to get around and caters relatively more for Westerners. The hostel we are staying in does have a 10pm curfew though, at which time the front door is locked, and all lights have to be out by 10.30pm. So far for our training we are being told about cultural values and what we should expect from the regions where we will be staying. This involved the girls in our group being fitted for Salwas (an Indian dress) and the boys simply being told not to wear shorts. I decided to go to what is called a Government Initiative shop and have some linen trouser tailor made for the equivalent of £8 a pop. As I said, I want to do my best to fit in and not stand out!

Although we have the 10.30pm curfew, we have managed to fit in one alcoholic drink whilst here so far. We decided to visit one of the numerous ‘English Winery’ bars where we were presented with 9% 1L bottles of Indian beer. The place we chose, unbeknown to us before entering is populated by crows and puddles of muddy water. The Indian barman offers to take a picture of our group before hovering at our table in silence while we drink.

I’ll sign off on that note as we have an early start tomorrow for language lessons. Apparently I will be learning Marathi, the native language in the state of Maharastra - a far cry from the German GSCE grade B I achieved all those years ago. I also plan on going for run along the beach… very different from Brighton, i.e. the Hove/Brighton Peace Statue which was a key marker in my training for the marathon I did to raise funds for this trip. We have an enormous statue of Gandhi on the sea front here, which I guess I should use as inspiration or something!