Title - Destination desert in the offing for DU girls

When the special train carrying 1,000 girls from Delhi University’s NCC and NSS pulled into the city this July -- after a whirlwind trip that saw visits from the dockyards of Mumbai to the science institutes of Bangalore -- shouts of “V-C Zinda Raho, V-C Zindabad” and other such slogans that rent the air were reported back to Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh who instantly declared the journey a hit and started planning the next journey of the “ Gyanodaya Express.”“This time it will be Jaisalmer, the border where our jawans protect the country. The girls will spend a week with them and see how they live,” said Prof. Singh, adding that studying the geology of the dessert and the history of every fort on the wayside was also on the agenda. “They will do all kinds of activities that is unique to the area and will learn what ever they can while they are there,” he added.

Students bowled over
The Gyanodaya Express is scheduled to embark on her second journey some time in October. “This time also, it will be the NCC and NSS students who will make the trip, last time we could only accommodate 1, 000 of them even though the university has about four lakh students currently enrolled in both theses organisations,” he said, adding that the university will continue planning these trips as long as there were students who were willing. “The students were completely bowled over this July,” he said, admitting that although he was not there in person while the train docked in, there were enough reports confirming the salutations in his honour to declare the trip a success.

The idea behind the whole “ Gyanodaya Express” was to let students to experience first-hand their classroom lessons on the history of the nation, the geology of its landscape, the customs of its people and the changing geology of every landscape because a “train journey in India, is an education in itself.”

A feel of India

At the beginning of the July trip, students were given an orientation session and were provided a couple of books along with instructions of what was expected of them during and after the journey. They were then supposed to read all those books and keenly observe the compartment design of the train, food habits and other sociological aspects of people they saw on the railway platforms along their way. They also had to study the geography, agriculture, language, literature and ethnicity of people of different regions that they visited.

At the end of the journey, the girls who were accompanied by their teachers had to submit two assignments - a two page report of the entire journey and a one page report based on the book collection.

This time round, too, Prof. Singh says there will be no escaping the assignments or the teachers. However, all this does not matter for a journey undertaken in October when it is neither too cold nor hot – just perfect.

Delhi University girls will now head for Jaisalmer on Gyanodaya Express in October