Thinking back to my freshman year as a Flinn Scholar, I remember feeling that one of the most exciting aspects of the Scholarship was the opportunity it afforded for international travel. I recall asking several of my new Flinn classmates at our first Orme retreat, "Where do you want to go?" It was during one such conversation that my Flinn classmate Steph Hartz and I discovered our common interest in exploring India and half-jokingly made a pact to visit it someday. Last summer, we were finally able to make good on our agreement.

Our trip took us from the Himalayan Mountains of Northern India to the ancient temples of the South. We began by flying into New Delhi, an overwhelming experience. After 12 hours of accumulated jetlag we found ourselves greeted by a city with daytime temperatures of 115 degrees, where legions of crooked rickshaw drivers offered to take us to family members' hotels, jewelry shops, "travel agencies" of dubious character, and any other place where they thought they might coax us to give them money.

Thankfully, our stay was short and three days later we stepped off a bus in the small hamlet of Kasol, the starting point for our Himalayan trek with the Youth Hostels Association of India on the Sar Pass Route. This path took us over a mountainous and snowy pass overlooking an elevated, frozen lake at 13,800 feet. We were fortunate that the top of the pass last summer had received seven times more snowfall than an average year because it meant that large portions of the descent simply consisted of laying down and sliding on slopes of packed ice and snow.

After 11 days of breathtaking scenery, we returned to New Delhi and immediately set off on a tour of the "Golden Triangle": Agra, Jaipur, and New Delhi. These three cities house the ancient forts and castles of the Mughal Dynasty, including the Water and Wind Palaces and the Taj Mahal. After our tour we traveled by train to Bombay, and from there to the beaches of Goa. These beaches are reputed, with good reason, to be some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

After we left Goa, we joined up with my other friends Sanjay and Eric, with whom I am starting a nongovernmental organization to do volunteer work in Chennai, India. Our NGO, the International Alliance for the Prevention of AIDS, aims to bring American volunteers to Chennai to teach classes about HIV and AIDS in local schools. While we were in India last summer, Sanjay, Eric, and I set up our NGO and made local contacts in school districts and village councils. Our plan was to build up our infrastructure in India and establish our organization with other local NGOs dedicated to the same cause. We hope to take our first group of volunteers to India this summer.