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I just returned to Canada from visiting India after that country reopened to tourists after November 20 and one of the places, I visited was the Central Khalsa Orphanage in Amritsar. Even though the institution is a Sikh orphanage for boys, it does admit orphans regardless of caste, color, or creed. The orphanage director told me that around 4% of boys who are admitted to the Central Khalsa Orphanage are non-Sikh, Non-Punjabis from other parts of India and abroad. One of the four percenters that I met was an 11-year-old Russian boy named who was brought to the orphanage at the age of eight. He told me a Sikh businessman who was living in Russia arranged for him to be sent to the Central Khalsa Orphanage after he was being abused at the orphanage he was living at in Russia. I asked him if he suffered from any culture shock after being admitted to the orphanage and he said he did. He said that after he arrived, he was greeting by a bunch of Patka wearing boys who wanted to be his friend. He was shocked when he was told he will have to look like them and that he was no longer allowed to cut his hair as long as he lived at the orphanage.

I am 14-years old and I have been corresponding with an inmate who lives at the Central Khalsa Orphanage in Amritsar by snail mail for the past year and he asked me if I could come as an exchange student to India and stay at the orphanage as a long-term guest for free. I am not sure if this is a good idea or not.

Do any of you know a list of Sikh orphanages. I would like to go to India to volunteer.