Good experiences are very rare and rarer they do come across at an early stage of our life. And one such experience came along disguised as the first international festival of Bio-Technology, hosted by City Montessori School, Lucknow. The festival was organized under the name of "Quest-09" from the 3rd of August, 2009.

It is a matter of immense pleasure and pride that a team of six students headed by Mrs.Sreelatha, Senior Biology Teacher, was selected to represent Abhyasa. The festival, in which 123 schools from 14 nations were invited, held a host of competitions and witnessed speeches by eminent scientists.

"The Quest" was declared open by the honourable former president of our nation, Dr.A.P.J.Kalam. In his inaugural address he enlightened the students about the topic that is close to his heart – "Bio-Technology". Dr. Kalam emphasized on the role of today's youth in expending the realms of this recent development. The great man spoke how other seriously expanding technologies, Nano-Technology and informatics, are intermingling with bio-technology. He expressed that we are discovering new horizons of scientific development and the key of the enhancement is in the young hands. His speech left all the young souls inspired and evoked, triggering a new zeal to excel in the forthcoming competitions.

Mr.Jagadish Gandhi from City Montessori Schools, Luknow, addressed the gathering to convey the message for world peace and global unity. He also stated that spirit of world peace could be inculcated at the schooling stage for the betterment of the world.

Another mind boggling aspect of the Quest was its competitions ranging from web-designing to collage, and from debate to quiz, the Quest had it all. The list of the activities in the Quest, contained – Debate, Seminar, Website Designing, Quiz, PowerPoint Presentations, Collage, Poster Making and Slogan Writing. The competitions were designed keeping in mind, to test both the intellectual as well as the creative part of the participants. The awesome global nature of it, altogether adds the much needed touch of competition.

Apart from all these scintillating features of this festival, one can never forget the amazing universe of knowledge put forth by the galaxy of eminent scientists present there. Some of the excellent speeches were made by Dr.D.Balasubramaniam who touched the complex concepts of Bio-Technology in a nutshell, Dr.Rakesh Tuli on "What Makes Us Human" and Dr.Nitya Anand who addressed the issues of Biotechnology and Healthcare.

The crux of the whole matter being, "The Quest 09" was a one in a million experience which was thoroughly experienced by team Abhyasa. They returned with a worthy experience, precious knowledge and zeal to……. EXCEL.