Le Monde - A Poetic Travail » Madanapalle

Seek admission in Rishi Valley School

Cuckoo — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 10:26:27 +0000

This post is especially written for those who want to seek admissions for their wards in Rishi Valley School. I keep getting innumerable queries about the school and its procedures.

I am in no way related to the school, nor am I promoting it by virtue of this post. I stayed there for a day and I am stating the facts which I saw there or made available to me.

Rishi Valley School – The over 350 acres school, a modern Gurukulam, a self-contained village is founded by Shri Jiddu Krishnamurthy. For detailed information, please refer to my post on this school. Here I’ll only describe the procedures.

How to reach – The school, Rishi Valley School, better known as RVS is near Madnapalle, Andhra Pradesh, 130 Kms from Bangalore. One can hire a private taxi from different points (airport, railway station, state bus depot) in Bangalore or take a state bus. The school has a tie up with private cabs and they can also arrange for you.

The buses for Madanapalle ply every hour. From Madanapalle, Rishi Valley School is another 16 Kms towards Anantpur for which one can take an autorickshaw for RS 150.00 as no cab is available there. For more details on this please refer to this post.

Admission Procedures – The school is from class 4th to 12th. It follows the ICSE Board syllabus. Admission tests and interviews are normally conducted on the Rishi Valley School campus from late February to early April. And generally a full week is reserved for one class’s admissions. You can make an appointment for a suitable date within that week. The schedules are quite flexible.

The junior classes have only interviews (just to see basic proficiency in English and Maths). They are conducted in a very relaxed or play-way manner.
The senior classes have written tests based on their choice of subjects followed by a non-academic interview, all to be completed in a single day.

The school is excellent for branches like arts and music etc. For those students who are preparing themselves for Engg/medical line as career through some coaching institutes in Bangalore, RVS takes them by school bus on such weekend day trips to attend to classes.

I also received feedbacks from ex-students of the school. For example read this “I studied in RV (and loved it). In response to the comment that students wanting to get into Engineering or Medicine might find it difficult to clear the exams…a bunch of my classmates (and kids from other batches before and after me) went on to become engineers and doctors and I don’t know of any that didn’t pass their exams.”.

Stay – You can stay in guest house of the school which has to be booked in advance. It can be done through phone. While in the campus you can also have a look around to have an idea of the school and facilities. You eat food in the school mess along with students and teachers. No special treatment for anyone.

The website of school is http://www.rishivalley.org/

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I would love to be a part of it

Cuckoo — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:32:58 +0000

I would love to be in this school. No, this is not a scene from mythological, historical ruins but an unique modern international school. The school “Rishi Valley School” is a modern Gurukulam based on Jiddu Krishnamurthy’s principles.

Classes are held in open on stone benches. There are no day scholars and the teachers too live in the campus. There are many international students at all levels and a long queue to get into the school.

Isn’t that interesting ? I have written a detailed post about it here and I get too many queries for admission as if I am related to it in some way. But they don’t get disappointed, I guide them suitably.

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Madanapalle – Shantiniketan of South India

Cuckoo — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 19:26:00 +0000

Madanapalle –The official summer head quarters of the Governor of Andhra Pradesh, Madanapalle is an educational and cultural center from the days of Dr. Annie-Besant, the theosophist who chose this town for founding the Theosophical College. The medical institutions like the Govt Hospital, M.L.L Hospital, and Rajkumari Amrutkaur T.B.Research Center and Madanapalle Institute of Technology and Science (MITS) are worth mentioning.

Decades ago, the principal of Besant Theosophical College, Dr James Cousins had invited his close friend Rabindranath Tagore, the chancellor of the college, to Madanapalle town in Andhra Pradesh.

That was the place which inspired Tagore to set the tune for the national anthem as it is sung today. He was so enchanted by the dreamy hills of Madanapalle that he sat down to translate the Jana Gana Mana, which he had written in Bengali. Tagore had called it the “Morning Song of India”.
When Tagore left Madanapalle after a week’s stay, he paid tribute to the town, calling it the ‘Shantiniketan of the South’.

We stayed overnight at Rishi Valley in their guest house which we had booked on phone. Next afternoon took a private cab for Bangalore airport for Rs 1600.00. The rates are different for different parts of the city. The school has a tie up with cabs.

The roads are not good in AP. In my previous post I forgot to mention about vast grape fields and Chamundi wineries & distilleries along the way. Unlike Maharashtra’s black soil here it was red soil everywhere. The wells were quite wide in diameter throughout the route from Mumbai to Bangalore.

As I wanted to squeeze out the maximum from this trip, I suggested seeing some silk factories (Google had helped me with just a single link) on our way back. Others were not keen but seeing my tempo agreed & after visiting the place had all praises for me.

So, we asked the cabbie to take us to some factory.

Within the town of Madanapalle, almost on the main road, there are many small factories weaving silk saris.

Each factory has 10-12 looming machines. The weaving average is two saris per person per day for double bordered saris. For brocaded saris the average is one sari per day. Not going into nitty-grittys here. If you have any query, fire them.

Who says child labour has abolished from the country ?

Reached Bangalore airport by 6 PM but after checking in, came to know that the flight was delayed by 2 & half hours. (

All in all, it was a good trip.

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Madanapalle – Rishi Valley

Cuckoo — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 18:38:00 +0000

Last week I happen to visit Rishi Valley School near Madnapalle on a short notice. Madanapalle is in Andhra Pradesh, 130 Kms from Bangalore. Also known as Shantiniketan of South India and The Ooty of Andhra, it is a lovely place to deserve a visit. Why ? Read on.

In all, it was a three day trip including one day in train. Well, when I am asked to accompany someone, I put my conditions sometimes.
So while going it was my way of traveling (train, bus, autoricksha), the return was private taxi & airplane. Don’t ask me why I choose train over airplane, the reason being very simple.. most of the time I travel by air so whenever I get a chance I want to remain grounded.

It started on Saturday morning 6 AM. We went to VT station to catch Udyan Express to Bangalore. It was my first visit to VT station. Next morning at around 9:15 AM we reached Bangalore City station.

From Bangalore we had kept the options open for onwards journey. We were told that the best way to go to Rishi Valley is to hire a cab or take a deluxe coach from a certain bus stand called Kalasapalayam. But after reaching Bangalore, we found out that Kalasapalayam is around 5 Kms from the station and the private cabbies were asking for whopping Rs 3000.00 !! The reason ? Toll at Karnataka/ AP border being Rs 800.00.

Nonetheless, after having breakfast I literally forced my companions against their wishes to proceed towards State bus depot. I am always keen to see the interiors of any place (India or abroad) and the best way is to travel in the most commonly used means of transport. So was the case here also. The buses for Madanapalle ply every hour and to my surprise they were not that bad as I have seen some other state transport buses. We took the 11 AM bus. The route was Hoskote, Chintamani, and Madanapalle.

The journey was quite comfortable. The bus was in good shape (better than BEST buses), good cushioned seats & no broken windows. The conductor had a ticket vending machine which gives a small printout of the ticket. For us, the sign language spoke.

While others fell asleep, my camera was giving me company. Clicked around 50-60 pictures in that period. It was nice to see some co-passengers like cocks/hen.

From Madanapalle, Rishi Valley School is another 16 Kms towards Anantpur for which we had to take an autoricksha for RS 150.00 as no cab was available.

Rishi Valley School – The school, a modern Gurukulam is founded by Shri Jiddu Krishnamurthy. I should say I was very fortunate to get a real insight into the system of education followed in the school.

The over 350 acres school surrounded by majestic hills with a view of plush green valleys, looks like a self-contained village. It is said that the wonderful location was hand-picked by the founder himself. The climate is pleasant throughout the year and a visit to the school is like taking a vacation in some exotic hill station.

The two aspects that impressed me are that there are no day scholars in the school and so everyone is on equal grounds and the other one is that all the teachers live in the campus. In all, there are around 320 students and 60 teachers. With teacher-student ratio at 1:5, you can very well imagine what kind of attention each student gets. The students live in two-storied houses and for every five students there is one house patron.

There are many teachers who are RV products themselves. No school uniform, no fear of teachers, just happy learning, I wish I studied there.

The classes are not always conducted in class rooms…one can see groups of students and a teacher seated under trees, on stone benches or on long steps that are fixed here and there. Many times teachers are invited from other countries as well.

Importance of recycling and use of biodegradable material is not just a text book topic there and the use of plastic and polythene bags are prohibited.. I was wondering how the kids follow it in a positive way without complaining.

Wild life preservation, environmental awareness, appreciation of nature, kindness to animals are areas which are emphasized upon. Even the snakes that are found commonly are caught and taken away to be left loose in a remote area.

It has its own dairy farm, own ‘dhobi-ghaat’, a swimming pool, a few tennis courts, 2 large sized playgrounds.

This is one of the playgrounds.
More on Madanapalle in my next post. For more on Rishi Valley School, read here.