I’ve a little over two days left before I head south to Mumbai to catch a plane home. I’ve made this journey to and fro enough times for it to feel like little more than a bus ride. There at least used to be the novelty of getting food and drink in your seat on this bus ride, but in India every time the bus stops hawkers wave peanuts wrapped in newspaper and oranges in the windows and children climb on selling ice-creams and fresh sugar can juice so that novelty is gone.

I’ve been thinking whether I’ll be sad to go. There will certainly be a Hunar Ghar shaped hole somewhere in me, and it will be odd to go from spending each day with 80 little spirits to none, but I don’t think I’ll be sad. I face none of that comingback from some kind of surreal adventure or cooky gap-year experience, I’ve just spent 6 months doing what I love doing, then I’ll be in the UK for two and a half doing what I love doing there, before coming back to India in June to continue doing what I love to do in India. It’s pretty ace really.

In these 48 hours we’ve 2 new people visiting the school. Madan is a miniture painting painter, which is a traditional Rajasthani style of painting (I almost said miniture painter, but that could be a bit ambiguous!). He will hopefully be coming for a few months to share some of his skills and learn some new ones from us. Suhendra is coming for a job interview to see if he wants to work with us for the next three years, which would be our minimum contract time. It takes 12 – 18 months for people to learn and settle into Hunar Ghar properly, so they need to stay for a fair amount of time otherwise rather than making less work from us they actually would end up making more.

After those 48 hours are up, I then have another 48 to be shared between a train to Mumbai (10 hours), a flight to the the UK (a further 15), and between those I’ll be meeting Indira as I’ve previously mentioned, with regards to another school, and a new name on my list Caroline, who is also nearby Mumbai and interested in seeing the school and gettting involved. That all successfully done, I’ll get to settle into the sofa with a cup of tea and me dogs!