All the 27 teams, comprising a total of 84 students who undertook the Explorer Fellowship of this summer, recently presented their journey experiences and learnings with the community through short video documentaries, on September 21, 2019.
Explorer Fellowship is one of the flagship summer programmes of IITGN which aims at encouraging students to explore and absorb different aspects of life in order to increase their societal connections. The institute supports its students in travelling for six weeks across the length and breadth of the country during their summer break so as to get them introduced to diverse cultures, lifestyles, peoples and places of India. As a part of this adventurous fellowship, the students must travel to at least six states and cover at least one state in the northern, northeastern and southern parts of the country, on a budget. The entire trip is to be planned frugally; the students have to travel by sleeper class on trains or by state government buses and stay at low-cost accommodations such as youth hostels, homestays, and dharamshalas. Each team also decides a theme for their exploration trip.
During the summer of 2019, student teams travelled around the themes viz. modern art v/s ancient art, tourist attractions, cuisines of India, dams and water resources, handicrafts and visual arts, fishing communities, Geographical Indication (GI)-tagged products, rivers nurturing India and so on.
The students covered various states and some of the remotest places including Agra, Varanasi, Mirzapur and Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh; Jaipur, Alwar and Makrana in Rajasthan; Delhi; Mcleodganj in Himachal Pradesh; Datiam and Indore in Madhya Pradesh; Jalgaon, Ajanta-Ellora caves and Khed Shivapur in Maharashtra; Kolkata, Jalpaiguri, Siliguri, Malda and Sundarbans in West Bengal; Konark and Puri in Odisha; Guwahati, Majuli island and Sualkuchi in Assam; Cherrapunji in Meghalaya; Gangtok in Sikkim; Kohima and Khonoma in Nagaland; Gaya, Bhagalpur and Muzaffarpur in Bihar; Borra caves in Andhra Pradesh; Hyderabad in Telangana; Mysuru and Hampi in Karnataka; Thiruvananthapuram, Idukki, Kottayam and Kumarakom in Kerala; Aliyar, Coimbatore, Kanyakumari, Thoothukudi, Rameshwaram and Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu; and Puducherry, among others.
Team CatamaranWe covered six states of varying social relevance, their indigenious techniques, their origin myths, their experiences and the waters that they lived in. Though they all differed from each other in all these aspects, they came together in their implied sorrow. We noted their plight against climate change-induced regulations, their sadness over their invisibility and their pathos on the struggles of everyday life. In hindsight, this expedition changed the way we looked at the waters that surround us. We have learned intricacies of living next to the waters, and we have understood fishing as a craft and the perils that destroy their lives, even in the absence of a storm.”
Befikre BackpackersWhile travelling, we came across a diverse variety of cultures, people, food, clothing, transportation and weather; and realized that India is indeed a unity in diversity. The variety of food that we ate was just overwhelming and the type of food almost matched the culture and climate of the place.
The TriumvirateWe gathered knowledge on 15 GI-tagged Products from grassroots workers and production units. Describing their journey experience, the team said, “We would like to thank IITGN for giving us this wonderful opportunity memories of which will be cherished by us. Through the Explorer Fellowship, we learnt about the rich and vibrant heritage of India. This journey also taught us time management, people skills, ground research, contacting officials, etc. We can now be sure that wherever we are in the future, no matter how far, we can survive ourselves, and the credit goes to IITGN Explorer Fellowship.
