|
Metro Plus
The ageless, tireless travellers
|
For the 25 American Elderhostelers, it was an exciting and tireless journey of discovery of India. Their stamina was amazing as was their curiosity to learn...
|
THERE WERE two groups of them in the city recently, each group of about 25 tireless travellers spending five days in Madras and its surrounds as part of what was called ``A Passage Through India'', a three-week ``educational experience'' taking in ``study sites'' in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. They call themselves Elderhostelers and consider themselves ``older adult students'' who regularly travel throughout the U.S. and the world ``learning in Retirement''.
I spent a couple of weeks with these Americans aged between 62 to 87 and was amazed by their shared passion for learning for its own sake. They were equally interested in the Trail of Thomas as they were by the Pallavas, Cholas and Pandyas, in Christianity, Judaism and Islam in the South as they were by tea, rubber and spices in the Kerala uplands, in village life alongside the backwaters of Kerala as by wildlife in Periyar. Even more amazing was their stamina, their punctuality no matter how early the hour, their total lack of complaints or grumbles no matter how tedious the journey or how trying the inconvenience, their willingness to try every local dish recommended and their searching questions during the 2-3 hour daily `study sessions' that included lectures, meal-time discussions and on-the-road commentaries. That one couple, whose baggage was mishandled by the carrier in Paris, went the whole journey without their baggage but with their smiles intact, was the perfect example of how well those Elderhostelers travelled.
Another remarkable feature I noted was how they got along together, these widely disparate travellers from across the United States, who'd spent their lives in a variety of occupations and had a variety of interests. There was an 87-year old lawyer, still active giving advice to an international cargo- handling conglomerate. A rather stern-looking 82-year old Doctor of Philosophy had taught Philosophy for years at various seminaries and now was on her 90th Elderhostel study tour. Two medical doctors from Arizona were railway buffs who had spent many a holiday journeying together on long-distance hauls and now were returning to spend a month helping with the polishing and maintenance of a small heritage railway line in preparation for the next `season'.
There was a Doctor of Law who had got disillusioned with the Law and was now a real estate developer while his wife ran her family's hog farm that had replaced their vast cornfields. A couple of retired librarians and a couple of consultant psychiatrist workers gladly doubled up on a trip that had its fair share of former CEOs too. And there was the former president of the American Physics Society, now retired as a Distinguished Professor of Science Education at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, whose seven texts on Relativity Quantum Physics and his Introductory Physics in 37 languages and 15 editions did not find reflection in all the tales out of school about Einstein that he put together for an illustrated talk that more clearly demonstrated why the young and handsome Einstein was such a success with the girls than explained the Theory of Relativity.
Boston-based Elderhostel Inc. was founded in 1975 by Marty Knowlton and David Bianco, the former a traveller and the latter a university administrator. Describing its programmes as ``Adventures in Lifelong Learning'', Elderhostel, which started with study tours in the U.S., began offering international programmes in 1981. Today, Elderhostelers follow programmes in over 90 countries, India one of the newer ones on the list. Elderhostel now has a 9,00,000 membership of Americans over 55, almost all of them with a university education and most of them with an annual household income of over $ 50,000. The average age of Elderhostelers is 72 and not all of them are retired. It's the kind of programme someone in India should begin thinking of; judging from the interest shown by the Indians during a rather similar type of residential retreat recently organised in Chettinad and which I had attended, there could well be great scope for an Indian Elderhostel-type organisation.
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
|
