During our last few days of volunteering in the little village of Shri Timli in the Himalayan foothills, half of the ten volunteers departed to go back to their home countries or go on to some more global meandering. But their rooms were not vacant for long. In the next few days, new volunteers began trickling in. So we had new names to learn, new sets of skills and abilities to be contributed to the mix, new stories to exchange, and new friends to make.

First, Elena arrives from Italy. Then the next day another Italian woman named Paola shows up. And then two days later, two other young women arrive, one from Italy and one from England. They did not know each other previously, but came in together from Rishikesh, since there is only one bus per day from Rishikesh to Devikhet. And that puts us at capacity — or at least at 10, which appears to be the most that can be accommodated comfortably.

At the school where we are volunteering, we are having much better success — which is to say, connecting with the students better — than we did the first couple of days of teaching there. It’s been a challenge, in part because of their very limited knowledge of English.

One day, one of the students has a little birthday celebration. In India, a child who has a birthday distributes candy or sweets to other children — and adults — rather than, as you might expect, the other way around. So this student brought along an adult, an older gentleman who was perhaps a grandparent, to be his official candy distributor. When passing out the treat to grownups the boy followed another Indian tradition of touching a person’s feet as a gesture of respect.

Another fellow who is among those intermingling at the school on this day for some reason or other comes up and talks to Kimberly, having seen her in action. He says that he is a teacher at a government-run school in the village (the present school, like all the others we have taught at, is private), and he invites us to come and spend some time teaching there. He also says that he lives in Dehradun, about 50 miles away (How does he manage to teach school here??) and that he can give us a lift there when we are ready to depart Shri Timli. Dehradun is our next destination, a few days in the future, and that offer is awfully tempting, given that transportation up and down the hill can be problematic and quite stressful. Ultimately, however, we decide against accepting either of his offers.

Most of the volunteers also come to the school to assist with the kids. And on one day, there are almost more volunteers than students, which is a rare situation in schools, even the wealthy ones. Having a week’s worth of experience working with the students, Kimberly takes the reins and gives a teacher training crash-course for the new volunteers who would be taking over after we leave the next week. The students have been having a great time learning the English alphabet by making colorful cutout letters that we are posting high up on the wall. Plus, they’ve been writing them on the tables with chalk; and what young kid wouldn’t love to do that?

After classes, Dennis guides Paola through town, along the narrow footpaths that serve as streets, to the produce stand — which on this particular day has grapes in stock, which have been rather scarce around here so far.

On Saturday, some of the other volunteers go on a long hike in the hills, down to the river — as we ourselves recently had done. They report back later that they had a most memorable excursion, and were invited to lunch in one of the little villages. Which is very typical of Indian hospitality.

Meanwhile, we go to school, even though it’s technically a day off for us. Because the kids are practicing for an event the next day. And as part of that event, they’ll perform a couple of songs in English (“Hello There” and “The Wheels On the Bus”) and a dance to a Hindi song.

In the course of the rehearsal, we make the decision to have them sing a cappella rather than perform to a recorded track, as we practiced previously. It seems to work better — they sing out more loudly and clearly, and don’t get distracted by the recorded music.

After we finish at the school, we take a detour on the way home to check out the little temple where the Winter Camp was held. Those sessions were conducted inside the community room adjacent to the temple, but we never actually went inside the temple itself. This temple, or mandir, is quite tiny, such as Hindus might have in their homes. We go down there and poke around, and we can see that it’s a very intriguing little niche for solitude and quiet, and religious exercise if one is so inclined.

Well, we are not religious individuals, but we have been known to indulge in meditation. On this occasion, Kimberly decides that she wants to do just that. Dennis, however, is not in the frame of mind to do so at just the moment. So he wanders around admiring the structural and decorative detail of the place and mulling over a line or two from a poem he’s been working on while she sits in the little mandir no bigger than an Apollo space capsule and meditates.

After a while, he grows restless and whips out his phone and challenges it to a game of chess — an activity to which, let’s face it, he almost has become addicted lately. Unfortunately, the phone goes into a default mode of making a little clicking noise every time he moves a chess piece (why do the makers of apps feel they have to add on so many sound effects?) and, with everything else around being perfectly still, it’s quite conspicuous and Kimberly finds it irritating and curtails her session. Hey, you didn’t think we went through 35 years of marriage without annoying each other from time to time, did you?

Anyway, we resume our walk home, and stop on the way to pose atop a flawlessly photo op boulder that seems just made for making social media cover photos. On the other side of it, you see the mountains sweeping off into the distance. And seeing someone stand on it (or do a yoga pose on it) you might get the impression that they are on the edge of the world, and if they take a misstep, they’ll go plunging into the abyss. In fact, the other side is steep but by no means sheer, and you could walk down it or up it just as easily as you could on the side from which we approached it.

It strikes us as a sort of visual metaphor for global touring. From a distance, it looks like a steep plunge. But once you get past the first little hurdle, you see that, step by step, the world is within reach. We’ve found it exhilarating to have reached this little corner of it, and we’re eager to see what’s beyond the hills when we soon, like many of the other volunteers, take our leave of Shri Timli.

Events occurred: 1/20 -25/2025