Experience:
Organisation:
Name: Benjamin
Destination: Varanasi, India
Project type: Painting benches
Organisation: Gap Activity Projects (now called Lattitude)
What were your impressions of your destination?
The city was fantastic and an endless source of entertainment. The school I was at was pretty dodgy.
Was the work interesting and challenging?
I was made to paint benches because that's all the school really wanted me to do. I stopped working at that school and started with a handicapped institute that was much more rewarding.
What was your accommodation like? Did you feel comfortable and welcome at all times?
I lived with an Indian family and they were the greatest hosts imaginable. It was a bit of a different situation than many other people had because they had one or two other westerners living in other rooms in the house and they were used to interacting with westerners.
Were you happy with the organisation and the staff that were responsible for you during your stay?
I felt that GAP was terrible. I'm not sure what I paid for because I paid for my own flights and accommodation. Even in Delhi where we landed, there was only a short presentation at the hotel by a non-GAP employee as our introduction to India. I was sort of pleased that GAP was so useless because it gave me a lot more freedom to get a motorcycle and do whatever I wanted without worrying what the organization was going to say.
Do you feel that you got value for money on the project?
I don't know where my money went. The price was somewhere around a thousand pounds but that paid for a few nights in a YMCA in Delhi and that's about it. So that's 40 pounds. I'm not sure what happened to the other 960.
Would you recommend the project to others?
Yes
