I could already imagine myself touring the Hindu temples and exploring the colorful festival of Holi! But, I forgot about the percentage of poverty in India, and as soon as our team headed from the airport to the hotel by bus, we witnessed the slums and shanties in parts of Hyderabad.

Though it was still our first hour there, who are we to judge? This leads to the question of who we really are? Are we a Saudi delegation? Saudi youth? Or just a group of IT kids interested in India? No, we will not consider ourselves as a regular group! We are a family! A family of young, smart, ambitious Saudi boys and girls that have come to India under the provision of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a mission of spreading cultural and religious peace through this era's most influential method of communication, ICT.

After visiting a number of Indian companies in Hyderabad, the Saudi delegates were amazed at the amount of productivity and commitment Indians put into their business, which they claim, took them to the top of the market.

The forum also visited ISB (Indian School of Business) where the immense care in education they had was baffling, with their dean strictly pointing out how India built such a huge economy with virtually nothing, possibly remarking on Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth?

We later visited InfoTech Enterprises Ltd. where we witnessed first hand the different centers of excellence that serve some of the world’s largest companies all stacked up into one building, this whole facade of a unified entity, was in reality, a group of competing companies cooperating with each other, under the umbrella of advancing the state of ICT in India. We also met the founder and CEO of InfoTech Enterprises Ltd. who has built this international multimillion dollar company from a small project out of his garage, and this remarkable man left us with one outstanding quote: “When you lose your money, you can get it back easily. When you lose your health, you might get it back. But if you lose your values, that you will never get back.

Now let me pose this question to you — Have you heard of the Indian Obama? Well, this Indian Obama fellow is an engineering undergraduate we had dinner with last night; in fact, Obama brought his friends too. A whole group of Indian undergraduate engineers were dining with us, the “Saudi Indian Youth Forum,” or shall I call it, the “family” where all of us were exchanging intercultural values and beliefs. In this peaceful dinner, free from prejudice or hate, tolerance roamed the room as we cracked jokes at each other and shared old folk tales. The dinner ended on a great round of applause and photo op of the whole group, and with no astonishment, two of the Indian girls broke into tears as they said their good byes to the Saudi delegates. And to be honest, last night’s meal was the best…it wasn’t spicy at all!
 
— Mohammad Al-Reefi was one of the Saudi delegates visiting India on the 10-day trip.