Had been hearing about Vigyan Ashram a lot – so last week team Bulls Eye Pune decided that we must spend half a day there. We got in touch with the school principal, Anand Gosavi, who said that we can visit any weekday – so we made the 2 hour journey to Pabal. Pabal can be reached from either the Nasik or the Ahmednagar highway from Pune – but the general preference for Pune residents is the Nagar road. You take a left at Pabal Phata on Shirkapur and then another left 100 m later to hit the Pabal road. When you hit Pabal, almost any villager will let you know where the Ashram is. It sits prettily on top of a small hillock overlooking Pabal village.

With Anand Gosavi

Vigyan Ashram was started by Dr Kalbaug in 1984. Dr Kalbaug did his PhD from the US and came back to India to work with Hindustan Lever. He decided after working 17 years with Hindustan Lever that he now needs to start giving back to society. Charity begins at home, so he went off to his native village, Pabal to start a school there. He built himself a 200 sq ft room and started hunting for kids whom he could get into his school. He was clear that his educational system was for those who were the misfits of society – so the primary criteria for entry into his school was that you need to be a failure in school!

The guiding principle of the school is ‘Learning by Doing’. As the name – Vigyan Ashram – indicates, the school is oriented more towards science and technology. The school curriculum is designed to be completed in 2 years. Each student has to go through 4 modules of 3 months each in year 1. They are:

1. Energy and environment: Basics of electrical wiring, Lighting.
   1. Agriculture and Animal Husbandry
   1. Food Processing and Basic lab work
   1. Welding and fabrication

Every year in the month of May, admissions are opened and 60 students are taken in , mostly boys but about 5-10% girls also. Apart from Maharashtra, students also come in from Uttar Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Gujarat and the Northeast. There are even a few students who come every year from the UK to intern at Pabal. Students are typically school dropouts in age group of 16-21. If they have passed 8^th, then they are asked to appear for NoS exam to qualify for Class X. The class is broken up into 4 groups of 15 each. Each group of 15 goes through rotation in a module for 3 month duration. Each of these modules is also offered as a short term course, which is nowadays preferred by the local Pabal residents.

Most of the buildings on the campus have been built by the students themselves. The school is a residential one – and what strikes a visitor as a unique feature are the hostels. They are semi-spherical. The construction is quite interesting – with a basic structure built out of steel angles which are joined around plates. There are two types of plates: hexagonal and pentagonal. The whole structure requires apart from these two types of plates, 3 lengths of angles. The lowest layer has only hexagonal plates, the next layer requires alternate pentagonal and hexagonal plates. At the apex of the dome is a pentagonal plate. This is Geometry in action!

The Pabal Dome

Once the structure has been completed, a grid is made using steel sariya and this is placed on the structure. A finer grid of chickenmesh wire is placed on this. A 3 inch thick concrete mix is now applied here with small shuttering support from the inside. There is a ventilator at the top, which keeps the room surprisingly cool. Adding to the cuteness factor are triangular windows. These domes are sometimes used as drying rooms, in which case the ventilators are deleted and the wall thickness reduced to 1 inch. Am seriously contemplating building a dome at Saswad. For those who want to check out more details here is the place:

http://www.vigyanashram.com/Inner/InnerPages/Technology_Pabal_Dome.aspx

Here is an interesting documentary on Vigyan Ashram:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7244987184341990763

Parabolic reflector for Solar Cooker

Food is served in a canteen, sometimes with vegetables which are grown on the campus itself. The school uses a solar cooker in the non-monsoon period. The food processing unit also has a solar dryer for making stuff like amla supari. Drinking water supply is through a well on the farm. Pabal is a drought prone area. A tank was made on the farm to store rain water, but the soil conditions were such that the stored water would hardly last a month as most of it would seep down. So now the 2.5 lakh litre tank is covered at the bottom with a special 99 micron thick single plastic sheet.  I asked Anand, the principal, about its cost effectiveness vis-à-vis concrete. The plastic sheet costs about Rs. 1.5 lakh and has a life of 5 years, but still works out much cheaper than concrete. One of the disadvantages though is that being plastic, problems arise when an animal gets into the water – the feet do not get too much traction on it, but the mouth does. A dog had fallen into the pond once, and it took thousands of repair work as a result. After this incident the pond has been fenced around. An ongoing experiment is fish farming inside the pond.

Water Tank

The farm also has a greenhouse. I have always wondered what advantages a greenhouse offers vis-à-vis open farming. My idea was that the water requirement would go down, since the evaporated water will condense on the roof at night and percolate back to the soil. Anand shared two more advantages – one is that the poly sheet reduces UV rays and the other that the greenhouse effect of trapping CO2 is actually beneficial for plants – because CO2 is the basic raw material required by the plant for their manufacturing of food.

The school has a well equipped workshop. The school allows ex students to use this for their projects even after they finish school. When I went over I found an ex student busy working on a slicer for a dry fruit roll manufacturer. Apart from the usual lathes and milling machines I was surprised to run into laser cutting equipment, vinyl cutters and PCB manufacturing using table top milling machines. These are machines gifted by the Massachusetts Intitute of Technology’s media lab!

PCB Milling

Vinyl Cutter in Foreground and Laser Cutter in Background.

Students sell their produce in local markets. In fact they are expected to contribute to 20,000 all inclusive annual tuition fee by selling products that they have worked on in school. We added to their bottomline by buying some til oil which was pressed on a hydraulic press. The remnants get processed into a guilt free oil-free chikki, which was also on our purchasing list.

The Hydraulic Oil Press

As we were leaving, I had an interesting chat with Mira Kalbaug, the late Dr Kalbaug’s better-half. She still continues to stay in the 200 sq ft room that they built when they shifted into the ashram in 1984. She talked about how there are 50 Vigyan Ashrams in schools across Maharashtra and Chhatisgarh today. And also about how Dr Kalbaug was instrumental in getting vocational subjects introduced into the state board curriculum. Today the school gets funding from a lot of private corporates – as also the state government. As we were visiting a new building was being constructed using state government grants. I went there expecting to see the Ashram students busy with construction, but found contractors instead. Tragically, government subsidy comes only when all rules are followed. Pabal domes and plastic lined water tanks are innovations which still don’t come under the government rule-book!

With Mrs Kalbaug

After students finish the 4 modules, they have to intern for 1 year –typically at establishments run by ex Vidyan Ashram students. Today Vigyan Ashram cannot meet the demand from ex-students for new guys. Students get a stipend of 5000-10,000 p.m. during this internship. After the internship, they have a choice to continue or leave. Most of them continue at the same place, some of them join corporates – and a few leave immediately to start off on their own. About 2-3 years down the line, most leave to start off on their own. In the course of the last 25 years or so, the school has made 1500 entrepreneurs out of school dropouts!

Student Art

Vigyan Ashram Visit, 15-Jun-21

We are looking at borrowing templates from Pabal for Peepal Tree, Shirwal. So it was important for Vijay to have a dekko. Giri and Pravin were also interested. VJC and Atul started at 0700 hrs, took the Alandi route and reached Pabal around 0840 hrs. The road to Alandi is good, but beyond Alandi the width reduces and it becomes a 1.5 lane road. You have to cross the Chakan Shikrapur road for a km, which is a proper 2 lane, with good truck traffic. Then there is a 3 km patch of bad road. No restaurants in the stretch from Alandi to Pabal. What was interesting was the presence of a couple of ghats. Should make for a good cycling experience. Yogesh recommended that the return journey would be better via Rajgurunagar. But we still came back via Alandi.

Students usually come to Vigyan Ashram (VA) driven by Word of Mouth. Most students are from Maharashtra. But thanks to networking with other NGOs, they also get exchange students from Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Karnataka. They have a tie-up with the Barefoot college of Udaipur. Yogesh advised us that instead of looking at the original model of taking in 10^th dropouts, we should look at unemployed graduates. There has been a grade inflation – so it is now extremely challenging to fail at 10^th level. My only worry in the graduate model is the unlearning that we will have to facilitate. 

VA has been at a financial break at operating level for many years. But to start new projects, say on EVs, they require funding. The lockdown saw a dip in numbers – as students did not land up in their usual numbers in 2020. In 2021, the Ashram changed its strategy – and decided to follow a workbench design, where students engage with a local workshop, preferably run by a VA alumnus, and come to Pabal for 10 day modules in batches of 10. During their Pabat stay students attend practicals which require capital intensive equipment. Zoom classes are arranged the rest of the time. VA programs are usually residential. The hostel constraint has also been managed well because of remote attendance. Student numbers in 2021 have gone up from the usual 60 to 88. It may be a good idea to adopt at Peepal Tree. Especially for distributed learning. We should tie-up with Vigyan Ashram for online lectures. Must remind Yogesh to send links to the courseware. Each of the students maintains a blog. Links to the blogs are at http://vadic.vigyanashram.blog/ 

There are 3 course that VA offers: 

• Diploma in Basic Rural Technology (DBRT) :  1 year, Entry Criteria: Willing to work by hand, Min 15 yrs age but no academic grades required, willing to stay in a village environment with minimum facilities. Fees for DBRT for one year is Rs 40000 for 12 months including food and lodging. Rs 18000 is tuition fees and Rs 1500 per month is food and lodging. Different modules of the DBRT are also offered as separate short term programs. Watch the DBRT admission film here. Detailed information is available on :  https://vigyanashram.online/admissions/ 

• Design Innovation Center [ Undergraduate / Graduate/PG students] BE / Msc / B.Tech (any discipline) : 6 months Entry Criteria: Graduate / Under graduate students, willing to work by hand,willing to stay in a village. Students have to undertake rural solutions project work. DIC fees for engineers: Rs 5000 for six months and Rs 1500 per month for food and lodging

• The FabLab course, which is offered to folks who have completed engineering. The course trains you to become an innovation center manager. The tagline that they have for their innovation center – ‘How to make almost anything’. The program is run by a MIT prof. In India there are more than 20 incubation centers that have VA alumni working with them.

Following are the methodologies :

1. Online Classes and assignments
2. Nearby ‘Work Benches’ (networked with Vigyan Ashram) near your residence.
3. Students will have their own tool box and Do-It-Yourself kits for doing practical at home.
4. Residential training  
5. Residential training for advanced skills training.
6. Rural campus, health and away from City and crowded places
7. Only 2 students per room
8. Big Classroom, workshop, laboratory to maintain social distancing and all health advisories.

One of the founding principles at VA is service to the community. There are almost 85 services offered: soil testing, poultry house construction, toilet construction, motor rewinding etc. Most of these services are paid services. VA is also a production center, where compost, packaged food etc are manufactured and sold to NGOs in Pune and to the locals. There is an interesting teaching philosophy at  Instructor has to have demonstrable skills. He or she also has to be an entrepreneur. Today, the VA program also runs in quite a few schools, for students of grades 8, 9 and 10. The first 134 schools of the program are directly coordinated by the VA team at Pabal,  including Gyan Samwardhini in Shirwal. The Govt of Maharashtra has rolled it out in another 4000 schools. The model in schools is that a local entrepreneur comes to teach one day a week. He has been trained by VA before commencement of teaching. The scale of services offered by the school to the community differs, since kids are younger in schools. 

We were taken on a guided tour of the campus by Dr Arun Dixit. Arun has done his PhD from NCL – and is doing some interesting work on campus in life sciences and chemistry. Azolla is one area of work. Azolla is an aquatic fern which is associated with nitrogen-fixing blue-green alga (cyanobacterium) Anabaena azollae. Azolla has got good protein content. However most of this protein is not digestible, either by fish or by cattle. In the case of cattle, they are happy to have it for the first two days. But then our bovine friends realise that it’s not working out for their digestive system, so they stop eating the stuff. Cooking Azolla makes these proteins digestible. But it’s very energy intensive. Arun has a PhD intern who is working on developing enzymes to digest Azolla. Arun’s enthusiasm for cycles and EVs matches my own. He has a Revolt and a Montra cycle. He has promised to cycle down to Vetale next week in order to visit 14 Trees. We have also invited two of his students to visit with him.

One building which did not exist when I visited in 2014 is the computer lab. They have an interesting project going on there. They are digitizing Marathi books and loading them onto Marathi Wikipedia. Some of this digitization is funded by the book authors themselves. The government funded this project when they got some hundred year old Marathi books digitized from the Rajgurunagar library. There are also people like Dr Madhav Gagdil, the famous environmentalist, who are funding this digitisation. Girls from the neighbouring schools are engaged in this work. Wikipedia folks were so happy with this work that the Wikipedia foundation has actually donated scanners to VA to help in this digitisation work.   

Giri, in particular, was very interested in the life sciences work, because some of that overlaps with his own experiments. There can be some knowledge exchange that happens in hydroponics, for example. VA has a greenhouse which is powered entirely by solar. The greenhouse was actually white. I guess in India the white serves well to take away heat. But what the greenhouse does best is to retain moisture. Giri was happy to note that they were using fish tanks to fertilise the hydroponics water. What was interesting to note was the experiment of using water hyacinth in the fish tank. The hyacinth is 95% water, so it cannot be used for even stuff like paper manufacture. But it is a good nitrogen fixer. It also absorbs ammonia produced by the fish. And it dissuades kites from fishing expeditions.

We had a look at student projects. Students have built their own STP. They have an air bubbler for their grey water sewage treatment, which is working on solar. They can collaborate with Priyadarshan of Vayu Mitra. I will try to get him along with me in my next visit to Pabal. One more company that VA can collaborate with is Chakan based Felidae. Will try to arrange for a visit of interested folks from VA. The electric bike retrofit can be a good business to set up for our Pabal kids. We had a look at an oxygen concentrator project that was being built by students. Zeolite is used to adsorb nitrogen. Students were able to get 40 percent oxygen concentration. The challenge is moisture removal – to get it less than 10 percent; the Western design that the students copied does not do a good job at the higher moisture levels in India.

Discussion moved on to the incubated companies and collaborations. VA has already seen the  supercapacitor based LED lights that CEEPL has made. Yogesh mentioned that Ashish Gawade, one of VA’s collaborators http://www.bopeei.in/ is also working in a similar area. Ashish is also involved in manufacture of low cost defibrillators through http://www.jeevtronics.com/.    Another person in the solar lamp field is Hyderabad’s Dr Ranga http://www.thriveenergy.co.in/. VJC recommended that we can go in for a 48 V system at Pabal. Electricity bill is minus 70 K for single phase, thanks to solar and net metering. But it still is 10 K for 3 phase connection. I wonder why we cannot have 3 phase solar energy!

We went on to do a session with about 20 students. (Most of them were engineers.) Was disappointed with the lack of curiosity in the students. Arun made up for the lack of questions with his own bombardment. Possibly an open air circular seating would have encouraged more question asking than the amphitheatre style of the classroom. (Interesting tidbit, there is only one classroom at VA, the rest of the buildings are all labs.) Giri talked about his work in lube oil filtration. And how a good lube oil can help reduce energy bills and machine downtime. Vijay spoke about CEE’s work on EVs. Pravin talked about his forestation activity – and how he is using IT to track progress of the forest. Yogesh to share Kadoos, Vetale alumni details to Pravin. Vijay got some traction happening as EV seemed to be the fad of the day. We have invited VA team to visit with us at Shirwal. We interacted one on one with a few students at the end of the session. 

• Shubham is from Shikrapur. He has finished his 12^th science. Was working at a factory that manufactures pistons before he joined VA. Has only got one module to finish in his DBRT course. Wants to be on his own – fabrication shop. Best wishes to him.
• Ganesh Salemtappe is from Pune, but hails from Karnataka. He has a sister who is in 4^th. Mom works in a sari shop. He stayed at a hostel run by Renutai Gavaskar. She is the one who recommended that he join VA. He has found working with food to be what he likes. He plans to start off on his own in that area. Looking forward to eating his eggless cakes soon.
• Om is from Beed. Has a brother who works in a factory in Aurangabad. Dad is a carpenter. He has had past experience at work at construction sites, mostly as a helper. He has worked on creating a terrace garden at VA, where they planted mostly veggies. The garden has now been removed.
• Abhishek Jadhav is from the same village as Om. Has 3 sisters. Dad is a security guard in a school. Seemed more energetic than Om. Will require 6 months more to finish the course. Giri can look at hiring him as a trainee. His number is 83291 24927.
• Abhishek Ingale is from Parbhani. Family has 2 acres of land, where they have planted turmeric this year, as rains have been good. The rains are not always good there. Has a sister who is in grade 8. Is interested in starting his own electrical repair workshop. Is about to finish his course. We liked this boy very much. Have invited him to visit Vetale. Abhishek’s number is 93224 69360.
• Rahul is from Mumbai. He has done his PG from TISS. Had spent some time in Udaipur based Swaraj foundation before coming to VA. He works with the Fab Lab. He seemed a bit unsure of what he wanted to do. My guess is that he will have a good career in communication. He is a good networker. But not a hands-on type. Have invited him to visit 14 Trees. Rahul can be reached on 98672 39219.

Pravin has shared his requirements for Vetale in the format requested by Yogesh.

Name of employer :  14 Trees Foundation 

Place of work : Vetale, Khed

Accomodation provided : Y 

Nature of work :  Reforestation project

Contact : Anant Tayade (98814 82387)

Salary : (starting @ 10,000/- per month); it will grow in six months based on performance.

+ motor cycle allowance

Giri has promised to interview the DBRT students to determine if they are worth employing as freshers. If he does employ them as trainees, he will give them a stipend.. And if possible a place to stay. 

One worry area for Vijay was the lack of energy on campus. During our visits to the workshops, we did not see a single machine in operation. Or any students engaged in project work. We did see some folks typing away merrily on computers – but that’s it. Vijay was also disappointed by the age of the machines in the labs. He felt that quite a few are outdated – and need to be replaced. (Vijay of course has very high standards on machines – his own factories use mostly Japanese machines.)  There is a lot of junk lying around. Case in point is the WLL tower that was sent across by Prof Ashok Jhunjunwala. It has not been in use since 2005 because of mobile internet. 

What worried me personally about VA was the dilution of the original culture and energy of Dr Kalbaug. It took us a lot of persistence to get permission from Yogesh to visit, even though we are both COEP Mech alumni. Yogesh finished his engineering in 1994, 4 years after me and Vijay. VA usually gets a lot of visitors, and they even have an entry ticket for visitors. Visit receipts go directly to student pockets. Yogesh mentioned that this was being done to reduce virus exposure to students. That was also the reason visitors were not offered tea, I guess 🙂 (Was happy about the lack of tea, as I am experimenting with a vegan diet at this time.) Yet, there are still quite a few villagers who were visiting, thanks to the community services that VA provides. So this sounds like hypocrisy. 

But for me the biggest disappointment was to see VA move away from infrastructure being built by students ethos of Dr Kalbaug. VA’s current policy is to not allow students to do any work which requires them to be more than 10 feet off the ground. This is ostensibly to ensure the safety of the student. Most of our students are going to be big risk takers, when they start their own ventures in a few months time. So viruses and heights are something that VA students should be taking in their stride. 

Postscript: Yogesh’s comments on the note.

We only charge direct cost incurred on students. Teachers’ costs are not loaded on students. We believe knowledge is free and society should support it. We look for support from trusts to support teachers’ costs.

Regarding non hospitality : Yes, we do feel bad. It’s the village’s decision to not allow visitors and we follow it since we work for them. But you must appreciate that instead of closing the institute (like many others), we are working throughout the pandemic. Vigyan ashram has done several activities to support community during the pandemic. We will continue doing it by taking care of the safety of ashram residents.’

Safety rules are framed considering the age group of students 15-18 yrs. As a training institute , students’ safety is our responsibility. We do not want to take risk on their youthful enthusiasm and maturity while doing challenging tasks. After course, when they go for internship, they can do such jobs.

Pabal Notes, 30 Jul 23

Action Points

Visit Sunil Bhondge home to check composter

Visit Vijay Kumar at Texol factory at 1300 hrs on Fri, 4-Aug

Started at 6:45. We had Sachin Dandekar with us for the first time. Sachin has two daughters: 9 and 6 years old. Stays in Bavdhan. Sachin grew up In Mumbai and joined Tech Mahindra immediately after finishing his engineering in 2004. Has since worked with Cap Gemini and a couple of startups. Now doing freelance consulting, mostly in cloud related areas. Also teaches Computer Science to 7th standard children at Dnyana Prabodhini. Was using a single speed gear cycle till a month ago, but has since bought a Fantom geared one. Found his stamina to be excellent, thanks to his trekking and running.

We stopped for breakfast short of Shikrapur. Had fruits and black tea. This combination can be repeated in future: keeps energy level and cycling speed high. Reached Pabal at 10:15 hours. Pabal is home to a famous Jain temple. It is also the burial place of Mastani of Bajirao Mastani fame. We visited neither of these tourist places. We were here for our pilgrimage to the tech temple – Vighan Ashram. Had breakfast of bhel, misal and Vada pav. The first rain of our trip came just 100 m short of Vigyan Ashram.

First thing in reaching VA was to locate Vijay Kumar ji. We found him within 5 minutes; he was preoccupied meeting with the team at Vigyan Ashram. The good news was that he turned out to be an old friend of Makarand Sane. As we waited for Vijay to get free, we had some milky chai. Attended an induction session by Arun Dixit. Vijay is a 1985 pass out of IDC, IIT Bombay. He did his mechanical engineering from Chennai before that. Immediately after his M.Des, Vijay joined Vigyan Ashram and worked there with Dr Kalbaug for 7 years. Vigyan Ashram had just been started in 1983. Dr Kalbaug stayed in the tony environs of Juhu, but never once went to Vigyan Ashram by his car, always by ST. Vijay Kumar remembers that in those days there were no pucca roads. And to go to Pune you had to get a lift on the Valu Express, trucks that were carrying river sand to construction sites in Pune. 

Incidentally, Vijay met his better half, a pathologist, at Vigyan Ashram. They got married during those days and even had their first kid vice while at the Ashram. Vijay learned about the spirit of experimentation and remembers with fondness, Vigyan Ashram’s museum of failures. He feels that every educational institution and organisation should have one. VA was the go-to place for any villager whose pump had broken down or whose tractor trailer needed welding. Initially, Vijay was not all that hands on. One day a local villager wondered why, as an engineer, Vijay could not do any welding on his own.

Vijay took up the challenge and he was a transformed man. His amateur welding was seen by his experienced welder – and Vijay got an earful from our friend for the quality of the work. The next day another trailer with a cracked chassis came in. It was repaired by the experienced welder – a neat clean professional job with backing plates. For Vijay it was sweet revenge when the expert repaired trailer chassis cracked again within three days! Vijay’s unlearning had started.

Vijay started his corporate career with Xytel. Worked with UDCT chemical engineer Suhas Mokashi. They were supplying pilot plants to refineries. FCC reactor for pilot plant had 8 ” (200 mm) pipe diameter. Actual reactor size can be up to 3000 mm. After parting ways with Xytel, Vijay went on to start https://texol.in/, a company that he still runs. Texol, among other things, is involved in making pilot plants for the chemical industry. Mak met Vijay during Mak’s Davy Powegas days, when DPG would get some work done from Xytel. We discussed the kid sized Meccano Idea. Vijay had thought about this. His idea is to use bamboo instead of slotted angles. Some preliminary sketches for joining mechanisms have also been made by him. He has an IDC colleague, who he wants to pull into the Meccano project. He will talk to his architect friend to sound him out. We have promised to meet him at his Texol factory on Friday, 4-Aug at 1600 hours. Vijay can be reached at: [email protected]

We bumped into Sunil Bhodge after that. He was demonstrating his composter, which has been designed at Vigyan Ashram. Incidentally, Sunil came to know of Vigyan Ashram when he was commissioned by Doordarshan to make a documentary on Vigyan Ashram in the early 90s. He has been a fan of Vigyan Ashram since then. I found his composting contraption interesting. My apprehension is about the quantum of wet waste it can handle. At our home, we generate about 1.5 kg of wet waste every day. The Greeny machine is designed for 1 kg per day. Need to look at the user experience about odour, spider flies and rodent attraction. Sunil has invited us to his house at Kusum SahNiwas, Model Colony, to check out the composter that is used in his own house. If the Missus is happy, Sunil is going to get an order for three composters, from the three cycling idiots. At 5500, with a stainless Steel body, it looks durable and VFM enough. Another cost saver is the fact that it does not require continuous addition of yeast or culture, only the initial seeding.

We met with a Sadashiv Peth neighbour of Makrand, Mr Bedekar. Bedekar’s career has been in servicing crames. Bedekar saab today is on his own, he deals with a very niche area of busbars for overhead cranes. He recounted his experience at Demag. How the contactor based logic was so much easier to service than the microprocessor based boards that have since come in. Mr Bedekar has purchased an Ola S1 Pro, after seeing PII reviews. He has had a broken TFT screen and paid a bomb to get it replaced. He lamented the use of customised parts in new age EVs, which cannot be supplied by anyone else. We have seen that happening in our E2Os. His recommendation was to go for vehicles that have standard parts, which can be bought from the aftermarket. An interesting point of view. Must catch up with him sometime. Mak has his number. We went on to see some other exhibits. Liked the Archimedes pump, using rubber gaskets. Must make one at our Shirwal school. We started our return journey at 1300 hours. Lunch was in a village midway between Pabal and Alandi. We had misal, Jalebi and ladoos. We discovered that, unlike Nagar road, the Wadgaon Alandi route had more ups and downs and also two ghats. The return journey took us 4.5 hours with a coconut break at Alandi. Managed to get freewheel hub balls replaced on the way back at the new cycle shop at agricultural college chowk. Did a hundred kilometre ride after a long time. The metabolic rate continues to be high, for many hours after the ride. But nothing to worry about, as next morning you are back to normal.