The group of students (pictured below) from the Class of 2016 share smiles and memories with the Bike for Kaza students of the graduating Class of 2015.
Flashback to October 2015: Another memorable experience for the participants of the biking trip from the Class of 2016 during Woodstock School's Activity Week. They were chaperoned by Mr. Steve Luukkonen and Ms. Tara Kaplan.
The group of students (pictured below) from the Class of 2016 share smiles and memories with the Bike for Kaza students of the graduating Class of 2015.
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The Pizzeria club at Woodstock School meets twice a week to cook these beautiful pizzas. Teachers and students alike buy their pizzas and come back for more the next week. The sales from all their hard work has made our fundraiser a possibility. We are now looking to purchase a dental chair for the Kaza community.
A big thank you to our Pizzeria club heroes! Update: We have collected more than half the funds needed for Kaza's first dental chair! We appreciate your support for our cause thus far! If you would like to donate, click the button below:
The grand opening of the Kaza Community Centre was celebrated on July 31st. We were able to live through the photos shared on The Spiti Projects' Facebook page. You can gaze through the festive opening of the Centre featuring the harvesting of peas, Tibetan folk dance and the Chief Guest, Ravi Thakur, Vice Chairperson for National Commission here.
The Bike for Kaza team would like to express their heartfelt well wishes to The Spiti Projects for their endless support and efforts to improve living conditions in Kaza. Congratulations for the completion of the Kaza Community Centre! The Kaza Community Centre was a short distance away from where we stayed for the night. A brown building with scattered workers came into view. It was fulfilling to see the impressive construction after months of seeing it on The Spiti Project's website. The NGO’s hospitable team showed us around the impressive two-storeyed building and explained its eco-friendly features, from the mud walls to the layered ceilings. We saw the four-walled skeleton of the dental clinic and could imagine patients benefiting from the facilities provided in the very room. The clinic is to perform basic dental facilities and teach dental hygiene to the people of Kaza. With its completion, they would no longer have to travel the long journey to Manali for dental care.
At the rooftop of the Community Centre, we were offered warm tea. We took in the scenic view of the valley, our biking trip soon to start. Early next morning, we made a visit to the Kye Monastery, a temple of the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism. We were lucky to get a morning view of the entire valley. The monastery stood tall above the other houses, and sat perched on a rocky cliff. The morning rituals had just begun and we could hear the sounds of blaring trumpets and drums.
A monk was cleaning lamps and cheerfully offered to make us some tea at the fire. He showed us around the two altars. On hearing the purpose of our visit, he told our teachers that they were "mad" to bring us to Spiti in this weather. Nonetheless, he gave us his wishes and offered the temple as a place to stay if incase the clouds turned into an angry storm. The Kaza Bikers started our early Traveller™ trip from Mussoorie Manali. Most of us barely got any sleep and instead planned on sleeping throughout the trip. We arrived at Manali at 11PM after multiple stops for chai that our three drivers needed to stay awake for the long journey. At our hotel, we dozed off to sleep on comfy beds, which contrasted with the immovable seats of the Traveller buses.
In just a day, 17 students and 2 chaperons from Woodstock School, Mussoorie will be traveling to Kaza in the Spiti Valley for our school’s annual Activity Week. We will be cycling for 5 days in the Spiti Valley, a sparsely populated region at an altitude of 3,800m in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The Spiti Valley is a high-altitude desert and is the site of multiple environmental projects. Spiti is a truly beautiful site with a community that is leading the way towards sustainable development and travel. Local laborers, planners, and stone masons have come together to build the ground floor; the first step towards a tedious but worthwhile project. This project will be as eco-friendly as possible, and will utilise earth-based resources (i.e mud bricks) and solar panels. Although this project has started off strong, another £70,000 (approx. 36 lakhs) needs to be raised to finish the interior of the building as well as to purchase equipment.
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BIKERSA group of teenagers from Wooodstock School cycled from Kaza to Manali, India, in hopes of raising enough funds to support The Spiti Projects' dental clinic for the people of Kaza. |