School on Monday morning. Rural West Dorset.

To be in school at 8.30 in the morning meant it was early afternoon Indian time according to my body. That should not have been a problem, except for the fact we had been travelling for 48 hours if you count starting the journey at Shimla on the edges of the Himalayas.  Given the events of the mountain railway and getting in late on Sunday I was a zombie in school.

I was still coming to terms with what had happened over the previous three weeks. Those final days bore into my thoughts and I was not in a position to be able to share them yet.

My classroom was there waiting for me. The cover teacher had done a very good job for me, and she had come in to collect something.

“How was it?” she asked.

I looked at her, “Never again,” I said and I really couldn’t expand on that. Looking at me she knew that I wasn’t going to expand on it.

In time I started looking through the photographs I had taken. It had been an epic trip: the slums, poverty, mountains, lakes, palaces, cities, Gandhi, friendships and laughs.

There was a counterbalance in my head and although it was still in the negative it was shifting slightly.

One of the most cathartic experiences was sitting with my year group during English lessons and recounting the good and bad experiences. Rather than put them off it gave them a taste of adventure. They wanted to challenge themselves and experience it too. And it would be their turn for the next trip. 

My year group, my India, my way. It could work. I would be prepared to go through it again, but only because it was my students, and after all my stories they deserved the chance. 

Six months after our return I knew I would have to go back.  India had hit me hard, knocked me down, but I was going to go back and take it on. If this all sounds melodramatic I’m sorry, but this is how I felt. I rise to a challenge, this was going to be one of the biggest of my life, but I was now able to look forward to the next eighteen months and the three weeks that awaited us at the end of it.

This is how it happened.