Searching for the Sharmas

The hills of Solan. These hills strech for hundreds of kilometers until they reach the Himayala.


As many of you know, I spent three months in India in 2000 with a group of students from my alma mater, Gonzaga University doing volunteer work for two months and then a month on tour around Himachal Pradesh. Half of our group of ~18 spent our volunteer time in a smallish 'hill station' called Solan, the other half in Delhi. Thankfully I got to spend the two months in the beautiful town at around 5000 feet, mercifully avoiding the heat waves that hit Delhi that summer.



Our friends Erin and Jean Marie walking through Solan's central market.


The group of us lived with a wonderful family, the Sharmas, who were expanding their British Raj era home which sat at the edge of the Forest to be a guesthouse. Our volunteer work (which for me mainly consisted of attempting to teach English and computers) and stay with the family was an amazingly magical time in my life. And I believe for everyone else in our group too.



Some of my adorable students packed like sardines in their school at Rabon village in Solan.



One of our school and Solan housemates, Brian Krembs, laughing over a perpetually amazing meal from our live in chef, Anita, who is a member of the Sharma clan.

I've always wanted to go back to Solan to see the family and all their children, the oldest of which, Bietu, is 18 and 10 when I met him!

None of our groupmates had a working home address or email for the Sharmas. I've been scouring the Internet to try and find some sort of Indian whitepages or Solan directory to try and find them. After emailing my friend Drew, who also stayed with the Sharmas, I was reminded that Reinu Sharma (the wife) worked at a private boys high school in Solan. I figured if I could get the contact information for the school, I could track down Reinu - assuming she still worked there and the family was still in Solan.

Attempts at finding a number for the school produced an obscure five digit number which may have worked at one point, but no more. Thus I've been asking many of the nice Indian people we meet if they have any ideas on how I might find the Sharma family. None have worked out, but I kept trying.

A few nights ago we got to see Alicia's little sister, Carolyn, who is spending a semester here and living for a number of weeks with a host family. We stopped in to meet her host family (who are amazing) and had a nice chat. My story comes up and lo and behold... the host Mom (who turns out to be from H.P.) knows that Carolyn's Hindi teacher is from Solan!

The next day Carolyn talks to her teacher and it turns out that she used to work at the very school in question, and knows Reinu! She was sure that Reinu still works at the school and somehow dug up the school's number for me.

Utterly amazing. There are a over a billion people in India. The chances of this really are somewhat small...

So I'm going to call the school tomorrow morning (Monday) and see if I can talk to Reinu and line up a visit in Solan before we leave India at the end of the month. So very amazing!

-Jonathan