A small spark “make a climbing wall. A complicated design to begin with which was rejected by the team of kids. The idea of a simpler design to make it on the existing old bus wall was passed. Kowshik, a climber by passion joined, another visitor at the camps joined and loads of excitement was created with designing and implementation of the climbing wall. Kowshik wrote in his blog the story of the making of climbingwall at Aarohi.
“Ratnesh and I had a conversation and I had learned his plans of building a heavy structure that could have a climbing wall, a squash room, and a table-tennis room. So, I had made a mental plan to at least achieve finalizing the location in the campus and complete the marking of the structure layout. To my surprise in the first sitting itself, the children completely squashed the original plan. Basically, we reinvented the context of climbing inside the campus. The 20ft climbing wall transformed into an 8ft bouldering wall. So, this could be done on any of the existing walls in the campus. After debating the structural stability of the eco-friendly walls inside the campus, we dramatically moved our eyes on the library bus. Coming to climbing holds, we decided to collect all the junk wood from the resources and transform them into climbing holds. There was a fountain of ideas and concerns erupting inside me considering the excitement of having a real climbing wall by the end of my week’s stay and the real challenges of not completing it. As a blessing, we had a guest Shahzad that week who got excited just by the idea of punching climbing holds on the bus. We took close to 8 hours to put up our first climbing hold. Had to set up the wiring for the drill, discover that our government has invested enormous money to slap three sheets of sheer metal rake to build a bus with book racks, super long bolts to be newly procured to pierce through three layers, and scout for holds out of virgin scrap.By the end of Monday, we had a plan on paper. End of Tuesday, we had one prototype climbing hold punched on the bus. End of Wednesday, we had put up about 12 holds but had exactly knew the structure of the bus. End of Thursday, we had a charming 34 holds and our climbing wall ready to get torn by the kids. On Friday, we had a dramatic inauguration arranged by Aparna and Lakshmi with the inaugural speech by Shahzad and a soulful Bharatanatyam performance by Aparna”.
Imagine Aarohi where we all are learners, doers, and innovators. All we do is DO!