Essendon young gun Dyson Heppellrecently returned from a trip to India as a part of the Red Dust Role ModelTour. Over the next week, you can follow his incredible journey via a dailydiary from his life changing trip to the sub-continent.

Dyson’s diary:

""The seven day trip to India was an incredible experience. On ourtravels we saw many weird & wonderful things, amazing places and culturalexperiences. We also witnessed first-hand the very real challenges faced by athird world country...”

Day Six – Wednesday 12^th October

“Today was the last day of formalRed Dust activities and one of the most memorable. The first half of the day was runningactivities back at DY Patel Stadium.

Will and I took the AFL activity and really ‘upped the ante’ with thegroups. They enjoyed kicking,handballing, marking and bouncing drills.They also really enjoyed learning how to tackle. We finished off with a game of Britishbulldogs and the entire group got right into it laying some tackles that wouldhave made even Heath Hocking proud.

The day was anotherabsolute scorcher. 35 plus degrees and90 per cent humidity in the shade. Afterlunch we took a group in the pool - many of whom could not swim unaided. This turned into an impromptu swim class forthe youth. It was a great experience andI really appreciated being in the pool myself in that scorching heat.

During the afternoonwe made an impromptu visit to a large slum on the outskirts of Mumbai to playcricket with the local children. We setup stumps and began playing cricket and soon enough we had an enormouscrowd. The local children played withgusto, enjoying the opportunity to play some sport with real equipment.

There were some real express bowlers and every batsman wants to be the next SachinTendulkar. Again, we were welcomed bythe local community who are living such trying conditions. What an amazingexperience. At the end we left behindall the sporting equipment for the children to use in the future and headed forour hotel.

Once we got back tothe hotel we did another gym session, followed by a spa, sauna and plunge pool.This was a great way to finish our time in Mumbai.”

Click here to purchase your case of the limited edition Dyson Heppell commemorative wine.