One of the most interesting days I spent in Delhi began in a forest that used to be a mine. Restored, it has let nature and wildlife return — caves scattered through the area, and animals still roaming. They mentioned a monitor lizard had been spotted just around the time we visited.

After the forest we toured a mud house — traditionally built, but checked by engineers to make sure it was sustainable and met the necessary guidelines. The indigenous solutions were the part that really stayed with me.

Instead of windows with nets, there were holes in the walls plugged with dry branches — letting air cool the house while keeping bugs and birds out.

It had a rainwater harvesting system and a nearby pond where water was collected, then filtered and boiled to purify it. Overall, the house barely relied on the outside world — and actually helped nature thrive around it.

Later, we made things out of clay in a ceramics workshop, each piece representing our own creativity and our relationship with climate change and adaptation. It was fascinating to see how differently everyone expressed the same idea — a whole table of imagined futures, shaped by hand.

On the 23rd we fought through Bengaluru’s famously terrible traffic to reach the Reap Benefit team — and arrived to find ourselves reintroduced. New roles: government officials and citizens of different countries, handed one very real problem to solve together — El Niño — with a $100 budget and a real-time tool to test whether each plan was actually feasible and effective.

Over a samosa-and-chai break we kept wrestling with it, and closed the activity with reflections. Somewhere in the role-play, two lessons had landed at once: El Niño as a phenomenon, and leadership — the kind that looks completely different depending on the role you’re wearing.

A day of new roles, responsibilities and challenges that slowly turned into lessons — and a lot of gratitude towards each other.

After a yummy, authentic lunch at the Reap Benefit office, we spent the second half of the session reflecting on our whole 360+ journey — and turning the morning’s energy into something real. We committed to actual initiatives: a youth-driven Sunday drive for cleanliness, and longer-term plans for the two weeks after we each get home.

We ended the day with heartfelt shout-outs to the people we wanted to appreciate — and a photograph where we each stood in the part of the room that matched our country, together forming a living map of the world. New roles, new potential we didn’t know we had, and a whole lot of gratitude.

The day began at Adani Group’s cybersecurity centre, where we saw the machinery of digital defence up close — isolated servers subjected to simulated attacks, a small-scale replica of a working power station, and the control room from which the tests are watched. A staff member walked us through a simulation of the 2015 cyberattack on Ukraine’s power grid.

Then we stepped into the real thing: Adani’s control centre for its power grid, a single room from which the company’s entire energy portfolio across India is monitored and managed. The lesson was hard to miss — the corporate world shapes daily life on an enormous scale. Adani controls roughly half of India’s energy needs, and reaches into ports, airports and much more.

The company’s contribution to sustainability is undeniable — and the corporate field is extremely grey.

Many of us held both of those thoughts at once. Almost half of Adani’s portfolio is solar and wind; the other half leans on large-scale coal mining in Australia. Students raised the unethical labour used to build some solar plants, the disregard for regional biodiversity, and — inside the cybersecurity centre itself — the heavy use of AI-generated content where a person could have explained things, and the certainty with which our guide denied that Adani had ever been attacked. All of it fed a genuine debate about the power corporations hold in the modern world.

The day closed at Dada Hari’s stepwell. It felt a little rushed, and more than a few of us wished less of it had gone to group photos — but the structure, and the story behind it, were impressive and beautiful all the same. Cool, quiet and centuries old: a very different kind of engineering to end a day that began in a control room.

Our morning on the 24th began early, at Infosys. It opened with a detailed session on the sustainable infrastructure of the campus, and after a quick snack break we toured the grounds and learned how the place actually runs — a scale of operation most of us had never seen up close.

Somewhere between the architecture and the numbers, it quietly reframed an assumption a lot of us had carried without noticing.

Not all success costs you the environment — some companies, like Infosys, grow with it.

The evening belonged to Adda, a community event where people shared songs, poems, dances and every other talent they had. Everyone cheered everyone on. Watching people from so many different cultures celebrate one another — and show genuine respect for each other’s traditions — was the kind of thing this whole trip keeps quietly teaching us.

There was a talent show, and yes, some of us got up and performed. In the simplest possible terms: it was so much fun.

Our day began at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment — ATREE — where the relationship between ecology, biodiversity and conservation stopped being an abstraction. Walking through the centre, we learned how researchers work to protect ecosystems and manage natural resources in sustainable ways.

The part none of us expected to love was the insects. We learned their names, their quirks, and the outsized roles they play in keeping an ecosystem healthy — then saw the scientific equipment that turns curiosity into real environmental research.

It was amazing to realise that even the smallest creatures have a significant impact on nature.

In the afternoon, the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) showed us the other half of the story. A conversation about why conserving art matters as much as conserving nature led into an exhibition built entirely around the environment — paintings, photographs and installations that made us see climate from a completely different angle. Art, we realised, reflects the history, culture and identity of a community — which makes it part of the environment too.

The evening was the softest landing. Sridar handed each of us a little money for the museum shop, we ate an Asian dinner that broke our long streak of Indian food, and we chased it with ice cream beside a tiny playground. The bus home was all music and singing — tired, happy, and already nostalgic for a day of ecology, art and friendship.

Today, we officially graduated from 360+, and it was a moment overflowing with emotion — everyone saying out loud how genuinely happy they were for one another.

After everything we’ve lived through together — the deep reflections in Ahmedabad, the Taj Mahal, the big late-night conversations about our futures — reaching this milestone felt completely surreal. There were tears, laughter, and so much joy as we celebrated how far we’ve come, both as individuals and as a tight-knit group.

Graduating from 360+ isn’t just the end of a programme; it’s the start of a whole new chapter for all of us.

Looking back on the whole journey, it’s amazing to see how much we’ve grown — through every challenge, every nature walk, every late-night discussion.

Saying goodbye is tough. But leaving with these lifelong memories, shared lessons on climate and culture, and an unwavering belief in what we can achieve next — that makes this moment endlessly special.

The day before, we’d turned inward — writing personal essays about our journey and where we want to go next, then walking it off beneath the trees. Reflection has a way of preparing you for something bigger. The next day, that something was the Taj Mahal.

The very first thing that hit us in Agra was the heat. It humbled us — walking across the open grounds under a beaming sun, there was nowhere to hide.

We truly saw the beauty of ancient architecture — not just in how it has stood the test of time, but in how it didn’t fight against nature.

The architecture is breathtaking, from the massive white marble dome to the detailed inlays. But it was learning the message of love behind the monument that gave the whole place its energy — a building raised not against the landscape, but in harmony with it.

Experiencing something with that much history, purpose and natural harmony was easily one of the most unforgettable parts of our journey.

Today taught us the importance of a climate-ready environment the way this programme teaches best — hands-on, not in theory. But the real work of the day was quieter: we sat down to write personal essays reflecting on our journey through Ahmedabad so far.

It was, honestly, a challenging day. The assignment made us think deeply about our place in the world — what we bring to the table, and what we can actually do to make a positive impact from here.

It was clear how much seeing things firsthand changes your perspective.

Heading out on a nature walk at the end of the day furthered that reflection. After an intense writing session, it gave us space to unwind and take in the surroundings — the natural world we’d spent all these days learning to protect, now simply there to be enjoyed.

We closed the day in conversation: our future careers, our goals, and how everything we’re learning here connects to where we want to go next. A day of looking inward — and finding the view surprisingly clear.