WATSONVILLE — While it is common for high school seniors to embark on a trip to cap off their K-12 schooling — usually a trek to Disneyland — Mount Madonna School’s annual trip is different.
For two weeks, 10 seniors will get the ultimate cultural experience when they visit India, see the lives of another culture firsthand, be able to put global issues in perspective and receive a blessing from the Dalai Lama himself.
It all gets underway Friday as the students board a plane that will begin a journey that will run through March 1.
The India Learning Journey is part of the school’s Values in World Thought Program, a two-year capstone humanities program for upperclassmen in Mount Madonna School’s high school, where one of the components is a trip to places where political topics are front and center, usually India or Washington, D.C. Over the years, students have interviewed influential figures ranging from Desmond Tutu to Sen. Bernie Sanders to Rep. John Lewis.
Shannon Kelly, Values in World Thought teacher, was very excited about the trip.
“We have an amazing itinerary,” she said. “We’re going to have a lot of amazing interactive experiences for the kids, wonderful interviews, and it’s just going to be a very full and interactive experience.”
Lisa Catterall, the school’s science chair, will be joining as a chaperone. She said she did a lot of traveling when she was the students’ age, including a year in West Africa, which she called “a life changing experience.”
“The experience of understanding how different their struggles were really shaped what I wanted to do with my future,” she said.
Each year, students select a word to encompass their trip. This year, they chose the Sanskrit word “Yatra,” which translates to “journey.” For many religions of Indian origin, the word signifies pilgrimages to holy lands and can also refer to journeys of self-discovery or rediscovery.
“Roughly translated, Yatra is a journey that helps free us from mental and physical conditioning,” Kelly wrote in a blog post for the students’ trip. “It is a journey of rediscovery of self. This single word, in its complexity, perfectly encapsulates what the senior class hopes to gain from their learning journey.”
Students will be visiting the town of Dharamshala, which has been the headquarters of the government-in-exile of Tibet since the 14th Dalai Lama settled there in 1959 as a home for Tibetan refugees following an unsuccessful uprising against Chinese rule. Students will engage with officials in the government-in-exile and Oracle of Tibet to learn about contemporary global issues, spiritual traditions and Tibetan culture.
“We will be conducting interviews with various folks in India that are doing work supporting social justice and bringing about change,” said Kelly.
Students will also study at the Sri Ram Ashram orphanage located alongside the Ganges River in North India. The orphanage was founded by Baba Hari Dass, a well-known silent monk who played a major role in founding the Mount Madonna Center and its school in 1978.
“(The orphanage) was basically built to give orphans less stigma and (more) human dignity and social equality,” said Catterall.
Along the way, students will be interacting with pupils from other schools ranging from prestigious institutions to those that lack resources. Kelly said her students have been learning about the issues India continues to face like gender inequality, poverty and the lingering impacts of the caste system. Catterall’s science students have learned about the extreme impacts of social poverty.
“We’ll be looking at that firsthand,” she said.
On Feb. 25, students will be visiting the Dalai Lama’s residence in McLeod Ganj for a blessing ceremony. Mount Madonna students have visited the Dalai Lama in the past, and while Kelly said he will not be taking part in interviews as he has in the past, he will do a blessing ceremony. During a visit by Lama Tenzin Choegyal at Mount Madonna School last October, Kelly said he helped coordinate the blessing ceremony.
The ceremony will consist of the presentation of a khata, a ceremonial cloth in Tibetan culture.
“Each student will have an opportunity to present him with the cloth, and he will bless it and put it around their neck,” said Kelly.
Catterall hopes students will return with an increased sense of their place in the world and feel motivated to give back. Kelly hopes they will engage in cultures and ideas different from their own and have a newfound understanding of their own capabilities.
“When we remove ourselves from our day-to-day life and we challenge ourselves to do something that is difficult or that we’re not used to, we grow,” she said. “The ability to adapt and to know that you are capable of doing difficult things is really important.”
Updates on the trip will be posted to Values.MountMadonnaSchool.org/category/blogs/india-2026/.
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