Pilani is my college town set in the Jhunjhunu district of Rajasthan, India. With a population of less than 30,000, it’s one of the more quieter towns of the North. Being close to the desert, the weather here gets pretty wild: from summers rising up to a scorching 50 degrees Celsius, to frozen winters with the mercury hitting sub-zero.

In the middle of this quiet desert town is BITS Pilani – a bustling engineering and science institute established in mid-60s. Between 2009 and 2014, I spent my time here, working through my engineering degree.

The first thing anyone would notice about BITS is it’s beautifully designed campus. A clear visual line runs across the center, starting from the BITS tower up to the Saraswati temple. Low rise buildings on the side serve as hostels, academic buildings, libraries and student workshops. A circular rotunda below the tower leads to the new constructed academic buildings (built below the ground level to conserve space). Trees of various sorts line up the roads and gardens. Over 100 different species of birds make the campus their home.

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