The Other Railway Children, Chapter 9 (extract) "The Himalayas and The Irish Contract"

During one of my visits to India, the Methodist Relief & Development Fund (MRDF), of which I’d been a trustee since 1996, asked me to pay visits to two of the projects they funded - one in the far north in the Himalayan foothills and the other at the opposite end of the country in the extreme south near Madurai. I took the train from Delhi to Kathgodam in the state of Himachal Pradesh, close to the Nepalese border and was then taken by jeep up the steep forest clad hills to the Bhimtal and Nainital Valleys where the MRDF partner, CHIRAG, was engaged in a 500 acre reforestation project.

The hill tribal people had cleared many trees over the years for agriculture and firewood and the steep hillsides now had little protection from the monsoon rains and landslips were common causing damming of rivers and flash floods in the valleys. The local people were being taught to replant and manage the forests - in particular the women and children. I accompanied the local project director as he visited a number of women’s groups and schools and saw the children being given tree shoots to plant and nurture on the hillsides.

I was agreeably surprised at the fact that all the children I saw went to school (invariably on the top of 8,000’ hills as I breathlessly chased after my 6’ 6”” long-legged host on our all-day marches!) and I was told that the vast majority went on to secondary school and 4% to university. I only saw one child labourer - a 10 year old girl looking after her family’s cow.

On the last day of my ‘inspection’ visit I was to be treated to a visit to a viewing site from which the high Himalayas could be seen. Unfortunately the night before there was a torrential thunderstorm and I awoke to find ourselves shrouded in thick mist. We went by jeep to the site in case, but it was even worse there - the mist swirling about our faces and visibility down to a few feet only. I was to return to Kathgodam station by jeep immediately after lunch to catch the overnight train back to Delhi, and my driver took me back to the viewing point in case the mist had lifted - we could just spot a tiny patch of blue sky directly overhead.

We arrived at the hill summit to find it still very misty - then, even as we watched, the mist miraculously lifted and there was the panoply of the vast snow-capped Himalayan range in front of me, with the 26,000 feet Nanga Parbat to the fore and the mountains of Nepal towards the Annapurna range far off to the right. After feasting my eyes for over 30 minutes, we turned to get back into the jeep, and as suddenly as the mist had lifted, it came down again until we could see nothing! When I collected my bags from where I’d lodged overnight, a British volunteer, who was teaching weaving to the local women, said she’d been in that area for over two months and had yet to see the high mountains as they’d been lost in the heat haze.

At the other end of the country, after visiting the Railway Children projects in Vellore and Villupuram, I stayed in the Methodist college grounds in Madurai and was taken by the resident missionary, Margaret Addicott who’d been there for many years, to a refuge ‘Arugulam’ for rejected and battered women - many rescued from the sex trade with their children. Afterwards we travelled to Dindigul, 40 miles or so further north, to see progress on the building of an AIDS hospice funded by MRDF - initially a 20 bed facility with the possibility of adding two further floors to give 60 beds. The building was about 60% complete and seemed to be progressing well after earlier difficulties.

While I was staying at the university - my abode a small chalet in the forest in the grounds - I was awoken one night to be taken in my pyjamas to the main building to answer a desperate phone call from the administrator of the railway safety consultancy organisation for which I worked part time. Apparently the Irish government wanted our small company to make a presentation in Dublin, a week after my return to the UK, to officials from the government’s safety regulatory authority and our administrator wanted my assurance that I could attend. It coincided with the AGM of the Railway Children in London and to cut a long story short, as soon as the AGM was over, I was whisked by hired car to London City airport where a light plane had been hired to fly me to Dublin and another car took me straight to the government building where I arrived breathless and desperate for the loo about three minutes before we were ‘on’! (I’d spent most of the Irish Sea crossing in the 2-seater plane with my legs crossed as I’d forgotten to take appropriate precautions in the frantic race to get airborne.) I’m pleased to say we got the contract.