Dornakal

Dornakal is a town in the state of Telangana, South India, situated east of  the Indian Deccan. The language of the state is Telegu. Telangana is a semi-arid area and has a predominantly hot and dry climate with the monsoon bringing heavy rain from June to September. Telegana is predominantly a rural state with rice as the main food crop.

Dornakal developed in the late 1800s with the advent of the railways and coal mining. It  has continued to grow as a railway junction with connections to all of south India being on the main line through from New Delhi to Chennai and having connecting branch lines to the surrounding areas. The current population of Dornakal is around 20,000.

In the early part of the twentieth century the Church Missionary Society and the Indian Missionary Society formed the Diocese of Dornakal in 1912 and Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah was consecrated as the first Bishop of Dornakal. He was also the first Anglican Indian Bishop and went on to design the Dornakal Cathedral, a truly Indian cathedral with elements of traditional Hindu and Islamic architectural design alongside Christian symbolism.

The Cathedral, consecrated in 1935, still stands at the heart of the Christian compound which also houses a hospital, schools, colleges and hostels as well as the Diocesan offices. It was to one of these schools, the Shriver Memorial School for the Deaf, that Joyce Ross came to volunteer in 1978.