We arrive at Gandhidam, terminus for us. This station is situated in a desert. Nothing around this station and its city dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi, born in the area. We look for taxi or we should say we select our taxi to join our destination, Nilpar. After 15 minutes of negotiation (we are used to it now), here we are, gone for one hour in the road of the gujerati desert. During the way, we attend to a spectacle of large trucks going helter skelter. It makes me think of the old truck driven by Lino Ventura in film "wage of fear ". The earthquake which took place on last 26 January destroyed 80% of the infrastructures and the houses of the area. Everything has to be rebuilt. Today, 6 months after this drama, we can easily come to the conclusion that the situation is far away from before. The villages are rebuilt little by little but you can still see the effects of the earthquake. Poor houses are mixed with ruins. The tents are mainly used. You can also see the inhabitants acting to repair this injustice.

After a chaotic course, the center of Indian association, Gram Svaraj Sangh is finally there. That seems like a camp-site, some remains of stone here or there, some houses and a majority of tents. The place seems to us very well organized. We meet the director of the center, Mr. Dinesh. We present ourselves and he accompanies us with our guesthouse, small house with 6 beds, ventilator on the ceiling and electricity. Simple but functional. The inhabitants of this center of course are estonished to see these 2 new occidental persons.

During this time, the director prepared us a complete program: to visit a score of villages and schools in 3 different places and all that in 4 days. To help us in the mission, he organized the company of a translator Englishman-Gujerati and also a driver. The first 2 days are captivating. We meet many persons in charge of village strongly implied in the education of their children. Those children are amused to see themself in the screens of our video and digital camera. We took 2 hours of video and a hundred of photos. Scenes of life are very impressives. Children work in the fields or the rebuilding of the houses, or these women washing their clothes in water where the children bathe and where the buffaloes and other wild boars wash themselves.

At the end of this 2nd very exhausting day when we visited 10 schools, a professor of the center invites us to come to the spectacle that the residents of the center organized in our honor. A court with two courtyards around is illuminated by only one powerful spot. 250 children, witnesses, dancers and singers, arrive by small groups. The adults sat in front of the scene. The musicians grant their instruments: will tampura (the body is made of a pumpkin and a length hollow handle + 4 cords), tablas (kinds of small cymbals) and the pakhawwaj (percussion with a wood barrel). And the spectacle starts. Girls from 4 to 15 years old, all equipped with their coloured skirts offer us folk dances. Photographs and images of this unforgettable moment are engraved in our memory and in our reports on internet.

The 2 following days seems like the 2 first ones : visit of several villages and schools in the town of Rathanpur and its subburbs. Some villages marked us by their simplicity, the majority consisted of sheets, wood and ground. That seems like slums but in the countryside.
These days tired us because of heat, of the long trip, the rigidity of our military translator also. Indeed, this charming Mister imposed us a Spartan program :
- 6h30 Wake-up with tea with milk, the tchaï (from English colonization origins),
- 7h30 Breakfast (tea + "dosais", kind of crepes) + shower (small hut at the end of the garden)
- 8h30 Guided visit of the villages and schools
- 12h30 Lunch (dosais + chutneys, vegetables and macerated fruits bitter-sweet + pickles, same thing but in preserves)
- 13h00 nap
- 14h00 visit of the schools and villages
- 18h00 Return to the center + nap (or another activity, reading, washing, meditation, etc.)
- 19h00 Dîner (dosais + chutneys: bitter-sweet vegetables and macerated fruits + pickles + desert : fruits or dahi, natural yoghourt)
- 19h30 Freedom

And it's necessary to stick to this program otherwise the director will be angry...Directed by our translator, ex-military person : it's not holidays. Fortunately, we have Friday, Saturday and Sunday as days off to have rest and prepare the reports quietly, without an officer behind us.

But, saturdays and Sunday, all the stores of the nearest city, Rapar, are closed, including cybercafé. We just have one evening to make our job. Because we only have one computer, 2 shifts are necessary. Selection of the photographs being simplified with the camera with picture monitor, I have the ladtop and the long work of selection of video (2 hours of rush) with the problems inherent in the borrowed software (transitions are not visible on the screen of recording, I know it's hard to understand but a little bit of technic never killed anybody). It is midnight, JC has just finished the selection of photographs and needs the ladtop. I only finalized 1H30 of preparation of video and I still have to gather images and to prepare sound. I finish the selection of the sequences and I will gather images tomorrow morning early in the morning. Here we are, it is 2 o'clock in the morning and the choice of the images is made. I awake JC so that he continues.

When waking-up, as forecasted, I begin to do gather sequences. It's not not easu because we hadn't enough time to elaborate a scenario for this first subject. I then decide to put one after another the sequences showing the situation of the various villages and schools. Then, the sequences showing the life of the local populations and finally the images of schools being rebuilt with the children studying. I still have to include music. With JC, we already had an idea of a song heard during the festival. But why make simple when you can make it complicated ? Our numerical recording reader erased all the sounds which we had recorded during our arrival in India. The solution was to take the sound of one of the filmed scenes.

Finally the reports finished, we go to Rapar to put them on line in the sole cybercafé of the city. Rapar is a city which, to give you a cinematographic reference, would look like a village in "the return of the Jedi" when Luke Skywalker will try to come out Han Solo of the claws of Jabba the Hut. We see a village with dust, the rickshaws, the 4x4, the buffaloes, the cows, wild boars (it there are everywhere) and even dromedaries with carriages!!

Reports on line, it remains only 2 days of relaxation in the center. So we wash our clothes, write our journal, …prepare the interview of the radio Europe 1 for Sunday. To finalise our journey, we are invited to a religious festival, the festival of Teej (in the honor of Krishna). After a quarter of hour of walk to join the village of Nilpar where the spectacle made up only of songs takes place (in the large cities, there are also dances), we arrive in the front of a small temple with inside a statuette of the divinity. We sit down ready to listen musicians who start their songs. The atmosphere is very special. One black night, a dilapidated village, the children and the men sitted behind us, musics create like a mystical environment. By closing the eyes, we would jump to the skies, to Nirvana…