During the summer, I spent 4 weeks in India, with 12 other students from Knutsford High School, with an organisation called 'World Challenge'. As the name suggests, this was to be a challenge by trekking in the foothills of the Himalayas but also to complete some project work at Leh in the Ladakh region. The whole experience was to help us to develop team-working skills, management, budgeting and leadership skills. As part of the challenge was to fundraise for the total cost of our involvement, I did various activities to gather together the money I needed. I would like to thank everyone who supported me in my fundraising efforts and helped me experience this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Thank you to all of those who came to my socials, gave donations or supported the 'car-boot' type sales.

Now let me tell you a bit about what we did. We travelled to Delhi where we then caught a bus north to Manali and then further on up to Leh. We took a bus the whole way in order to aid acclimatisation, as Leh is situated over 3500m above sea-level. During the 4-day journey we drove along the second-highest motorable road in the world, at 5330 metres!

In Leh we were introduced to 'the project' - painting and tidying a local school. When we arrived, the school was nothing more than three rooms with dusty floors and plain walls and an outside area covered in rocks and debris. Within a week we transformed it with colourful classrooms, including educational images of the times-tables and the water cycle as well as sunflowers, rainbows and graphics. We also flattened out the rocky yard, and made a cricket pitch where we then played with the children on the last day once everything had been finished. One boy was very good - I should have got his name so I can keep an eye on future Indian cricket teams. This part of the trip gave us the opportunity to learn about day-to-day Ladakhi life away from the areas that most travellers visit.

For the next 11 days we trekked through the Markha Valley, with its desert-like weather reaching 40 deg. C during our longest day of 9 hours' trekking! The trek is the second hardest that World Challenge offers, and is graded 'strenuous' and recommended for 'the fit enthusiast who has had some prior trekking experience in the Himalayas'. Considering most of us had only done the occasional long walk and one back-packing weekend, I think we did pretty well, especially as we had lost our trek-leader during the project-work after he was flown home with suspected Dengue Fever.

We then enjoyed our final few days in the country, travelling around Delhi and Agra, visiting places such as the Red Fort, Ghandi's resting place, India Gate and, of course, the amazing Taj Mahal.

This was really fabulous, and the help of all who supported me has been so very much appreciated. Thank you so much.