Recovery.

When I woke I was so weak, I had no idea how much time had passed. I was in a basic room where there was a line of beds. My body felt empty, probably because it was, but I did not feel hungry.

I lay under a mosquito net, the air felt different and there was a lack of noise, for the first time on the trip.

Moving took all my effort, but there was bright sunlight outside and the air was warmer, clearer than Delhi. To be honest the next few hours are difficult to recall.

I never did find out how much I slept or what the doctor had injected me with. I could not even tell you what time I got off the train and how long I had been asleep. Piecing together what the others in the group told me they went to the Ashram and had an evening out meeting the team from Women's charity.

They had met Mrs C, our contact, and Dr Sharma. To me he sounded like an almost mythical figure. An aged man who had met Gandhi and then worked alongside one of Gandhi's main 'disciples' to establish the Ashram. The history here is a bit hazy – he was certainly a man who had experienced those great modern moments in the history of this country.

What I thought was an individual hut turned out to be a dormitory, one of four, that had a central area in the middle. Outside it was hot, the blue sky and lack of pollution creating the different environment.

There's a sense of excitement arriving somewhere and having no recollection of how you got there. Falling asleep on a long journey adds to the wonder of a trip. It happened to me as a fifteen year old when we were taken on a school trip to the Isle of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, by our R.E, teacher. Having stayed awake for the whole train journey and transfer to a ferry at Oban - it was on the bus trip across Mull that I eventually gave in to fatigue. I slept for an hour and woke as we were boarding the small passenger ferry to the island. Looking back I could see the highest mountains I had ever encountered, there was snow on the peaks. The warm wind blew in from the sea and the golden white beaches merged from the luscious green dunes.

That sense of mystery looking to the mountains stayed with me the whole week and made the trip more magical. Here I was on another school trip thirty years later. A long way from a small Scottish island.

We were staying in Dattapur at the Centre for Scientific Villages. A quick bit of history here (as I understand it, apologies to anyone if it's not strictly correct).

Gandhi's Ashram was nearby at Wardha (more of that later). He spent seventeen years here and one of the things he wanted to promote was that people should learn to live with nature. Not to exploit it but take what they needed while ensuring it was self-sustaining. From this they set up a centre to study how best to work with the land and then educate villagers as to how to achieve this. From irrigation to recycling this was a project ahead of its time.

One small example: they used to destroy bee hives to get the honey. Here they examined the problem and worked out how to harvest the honey and not destroy the wild hives so that there would be an ongoing supply, plus the bees were not destroyed. Banana leaves were thrown away, here they learnt how to use them to make paper... and so on.

The group had had a good night out and were acclimatising to this new environment. I think I met the doctor again and was given the all clear. I was now on alert about food and although my stomach was totally empty I had no desire to eat.

Meals were taken in a small hut at the back end of the grounds. It was a basic rectangular building, with a large wooden table in the middle of the room. There was a counter at one end where food was placed in large metallic bowls and we went up, collected smaller metal bowls, and took what we wanted. Behind the counter sat two or three locals. They watched us with stern faces, not knowing what we were saying. The food was always basic, no meat, but they did attempt to vary what was served even though potatoes, cauliflower, ochre and dal seemed to be the staple ingredients.

Three times a day we were summoned in, and as we worked harder the meals became more important.

When you have a stomach that had rejected all food it was very difficult. The staff must have thought me greedy or strange. They gave us these small cups to drink the sweet chai from. All my body seemed to want was fluid, so I went in with my green metal mug (with Corporal Jones from Dad's Army on it emblazoned with 'Don't Panic') and filled it and drank, and filled it again and drank. It was life-giving. I tentatively tried a small portion of rice and that was my meal. I was weak, struggling still, but this was the start of the comeback. The air was hot, I was drinking and the longest sleep in my life had reset my body.