Today we had a very early start to our morning adventure. Our yellow “magic school bus” took us to our hike up to the beautiful Karla Caves. These caves overlooked the village and have been around for an incredibly long time; they date back to 160 BC, allowing us to step back and just “kick it old school”.

After finally getting up there by bus with a very steep incline, we walked up the rest of the way passing by venders, local restos, and shops alike. Yes this is a tourist attraction, but these caves are and always have been a sacred place. There was quite a bit of activity, which included goats, roosters and humans within the same environment. By this I mean that holy rituals took place, particularly that of Buddhist ceremony. It was nice to see how even though today wasn’t a day particularly out of the ordinary or deemed special, yet these practices proceeded to function as so.

We all had a nice little hike, but once we returned, right back to work we went! We split up into our groups and carried on with our project research. The group working with the Shikshangram Orphanage mainly stayed back at the yellow house brainstorming for their potential project, and the group that I am apart of went to our placement at the Sadhana Organization beside the cantonment area. Today was exciting because we had the opportunity to start taking the first steps to beginning to design with the citizens of the cantonment. We really got intimate and interactive and asked them all sorts of questions that helped us gather information while inspiring us all the while.