Pondicherry to Trichy

From Pondicherry I take a day trip to Tiruvannamalai to see the Arunachala temple and Sri Ramana Ashram. This place is mentioned in the book I've been reading 'A Search in Secret India' (thanks Aroop!). Written in 1930, the author ends up in Arunachala after searching India for a guru. He meets Sri Ramana Maharishi and is impressed by his philosophy and approach to life. Both the temple and the ashram do have a certain special energy about them - they sit at the foot of Arunachala hill which in Hindu mythology is where Siva appeared as a column of fire creating the original symbol of the lingam. At the temple I meet an Indian family who are taking their son there to be blessed. Both father and son have their heads shaved. Despite stilted English and a complete lack of Tamil on my part we have a good chat.


Also most of the temple vistors are wearing red because it is the 'Om Shakti' festival. I've chosen today to wear a bright green t-shirt, so couldn't stick out more!


On my last day in Pondy I meet up with Raleigh 'host country venturers' Vieni, Manju and Jagad who live in the nearby town of Villapuram. It's fantastic to see them all again.


Vieni cooks us biryani for lunch (those in alpha 2 will remember how good her chicken biryani is!) and afterwards we go back to Vieni's village to meet countless friends and relatives. Someone shins up a coconut palm so we each have a fresh coconut to drink. After that it's back to Manju's house to meet more relatives and a chapati dinner. I'm overwhelmed by their hospitality, it's lovely.


Now it's New Year's Eve and I'm at my next port of call, Tiruchirappalli or Trichy, where I've visited yet more temples - the Rock Fort temple and the Sri Ranganathaswamy temple complex. The latter is massive, possibly the largest in India, with many 'sub' temples surrounding 7 concentric walled courtyards. It's quite confusing. I meet up with a German lady, Anita, so we negotiate the Rock Fort steps and Trichy's bus system together.


Hmm, not sure how I'll be celebrating the New Year - by the sound of it the hotel has some dodgy disco music going...

Christmas in Pondicherry

After 5 hours by train to Chennai, an auto across town and another 3 hour bus journey I arrive in Pondicherry. The best thing about my arrival is my guest house room, which is a sort of French colonial boudoir with Indian touches. It has pink walls, stained glass windows with wooden shutters and a high ceiling with lilac beams and a big old swishy ceiling fan. On the walls are silk paintings of Krishna.


On Christmas morning I visit the Sri Aurobindo ashram which is just around the corner. The ashram has a beautiful shaded courtyard and visitors file round the samadhi (or shrine) where Sri Aurobindo and his disciple 'The Mother' are buried. There isn't alot else to see apart from the ashram bookshop, but the courtyard is a relaxing place to sit and contemplate. Most of the ashram life now goes on in Auroville, a community for 'a new way of living' about 12 km from Pondicherry. It all sounds a bit wierd, but I meet an Italian guy over Christmas lunch who is staying there, so decide to pay a visit to find out more.


Just down the road from the ashram is a Hindu temple dedicated to the elephant god Ganesh. It's quite a narrow street, but outside the temple is a real live elephant who blesses the devotees. For Rs 20 I buy an offering of a coconut, some grass and bananas in a basket and for another Rs 10 a 'fast track' entry ticket so I don't have to join the long queue! Once inside my coconut is smashed and the priest makes a puja for me at the Sri Ganesh shrine. I then get my basket back with the broken coconut and bananas. On the way out I can offer these to the temple elephant who then blesses me with his trunk. I'm not sure what it all means but the ritual is very enjoyable and a different way to celebrate Christmas day...

End of Raleigh

Well my 13 weeks with Raleigh have finised and I'm now in Bangalore having said goodbye to the last of our group, Antje and Jerry, this morning. The final phase sped by and the last few days have been full of emotional farewells - first with all the venturers and then with all the staff members. But I have lots of new friends to keep in touch with! Today has been the first time I've been truly on my own for almost 3 months and although it feels a bit strange I'm quite enjoying the freedom.

Bangalore is a very westernised city, full of shopping malls, offices and cafes, so occasionally it almost feels like London, although it's hot and sunny, so certainly not London in December. I had a pedicure yesterday (what decadence!) with Jo and my hair cut today so I'm feeling a bit tidier - interestingly Bangalore is the first place in India I've come across women's hair salons as most Indian women grow their hair long and don't get it cut. I also braved the Bangalore railway station 'computerised' booking office to book some onward train tickets. This involves the very Indian system of shambolic queuing to make an enquiry and then filling out a paper form with the train details you want before more queuing at another counter to pay and actually get the ticket. In true Indian style I manage to do a bit of queue barging myself to find out the train times - sometimes being female and a foreigner has its advantages ;-)

So tomorrow I'm off to Pondicherry for Christmas and then on to Trichy and Madurai for the temples. I'm also hoping to catch up with Raleigh host country venturers Manju and Siva en route. Then in January it's a full 2 weeks of relaxing yoga in Kerala.

In the meantime a big HAPPY CHRISTMAS to everyone back home!

Kebepura sports day

It's 1 December - it doesn't really feel like December here, but I am sitting in our Mysore field base planning the Christmas menu for when the venturers return. However I won't be back in Mysore for long as shortly I will be going on a loop visit to see the alpha 1 (community) and alpha 2 (environment) groups and after that I'll be on another loop trip to Kerala to see the trekkers. It will be a lot of travelling but I'm looking forward to going back to Kebepura village to see the new alpha 1 and catch up with the school and villagers.


In the meantime, I still have happy memories and photos from Kebepura which I haven't yet recounted on this blog... On our last day we organised a sports day for the village school which was held in the cricket pitch clearing beyond the elephant fence. The sports day was the idea of venturers Amie and Jayshree so credit really goes to them for making everything happen. Races included running, onion and spoon and a school teachers v PMs wheelbarrow race. Winners were presented with garlands.


We finished off with a mass hokey cokey - there must have been about 70 of us holding hands in a ring and dancing the hokey cokey! It was a wonderful moment.

Building an eco sanitation unit

Ready to start work
(L to R - Amie, Muddu (aka Mr Pink head mason), Chinnu (mason), Richie, Guus, Ayesha)


Step 1 - mixing cement


Step 2 - foundations


Step 3 - floor


Step 4 - walls


Step 5 - fitting toilets, almost done!


Step 6 - painting


The finished article!
(L to R - Ayesha, Lucy, Siva, Guus, Me, Helen, Zoe, Rob, Richie, Gary, Amie, Cara, Jamie, Jayshree)

Kebepura

So I have spent the last 3 weeks in Kebepura, a village of about 80 families on the edge of Bandipur forest about 2 hours from Mysore. Our mission was to build 20 eco-sanitation units (eco-toilets), the previous group having already built 15. Each household contributes some labour, e.g. mixing cement, towards their toilet and we work in groups of 2-3 with local masons.


The villagers of Kebepura were originally nomadic honey and food gatherers from the forest, but since the village was created 20 years ago their livelihood has changed to subsistence farming and from what I can see from the surrounding fields, tobacco, cotton and bananas. We live in the local school which serves about 80 children from Kebepura and the surrounding villages. The venturers sleep in a classroom, whilst us PMs (Antje, Helen, Zoe and I) have a tent in the playground.


Arrival in Kebepura is I think a bit of a shock to all of us, as the accommodation is pretty basic and the shower and toilets, shared with the school children, need a good clean. We are a source of attraction to the children from the moment we arrive - obviously we aren't going to get much privacy here!


However once we have cleaned and settled in to a routine of building, life becomes easier and I realise what a privilege it is to be part of the everyday life of this village which is far from the usual tourist trail.






More posts to follow, but some particular memories stand out...

• Puruti - who gives me flowers for my hair everyday, despite the fact I'm often covered in cement


• Playing skipping with the school girls and learning their dance 'Matanara'


• Relaxing in the forest clearing on the edge of the village, just beyond the elephant fence, where the village boys play cricket


• Walking down to the temple on the edge of the village to watch the sunset with Zoe


• Going on an even longer walk with Antje, getting semi-lost and collecting 3 children, a dog and 2 cows en route.


• Working with the masons, particularly Muddu (aka Mr Pink) and Shivu


• Getting to know our Alpha 1 group, learning to step back and let them get on with it, and everything coming together at the end

Next challenge - Alpha 1, eco-sanitation project

Just found out today that for the next phase I will be working with the Alpha 1 community project, based in Kebepura village. My fellow PMs will be Zoe, Helen and Antje and we will be looking after a group of 11 volunteers building eco-sanitation units (or eco-toilets). Antje and Helen have been with me at fieldbase to date, so it will be the first project for all of us. The prospect of being responsible for 11 young people in a rural Indian village is a bit daunting, but I'm looking forward to it! So anyway I will be offline until around 24 November. I will update this blog when I get back...

Back to Kerala

After about 2 weeks of thunder and torrential storms, the rains stop as suddenly as they started and by the last days of October it's back to hot sunshine again, although it's noticably colder in the mornings and evenings.

The food for phase 2 is pretty much sorted and I'm handing over to Ivan as I will be working on one of the project sites for the next phase. This is a bit unexpected, but I'm looking forward to the challenge and hopefully I'll be back in the comfort of fieldbase for phase 3. I will learn on Tuesday which project I will be on.

Before that I have another trip back to Kerala, with Mark and Vijay, to visit Alpha 3 at the end of their trek and deliver the last food drop. We drive the same route as before via some great place names - Nanjangud (temple town), Chamrajnagar, Satyamangalam, down the hair pin bends into Tamil Nadu, Coimbatore, Pollachi, Udumalaipattai, and up again into the Keralan tea plantations via Marayoor and Munnar where we stay overnight.


The whole drive is about 11 hours. Munnar is a busy, if a bit scruffy, hill station in the middle of the tea plantations. Although it rains in the evening we have time to look around and I replenish my own personal green tea stocks with Munnar green tea and visit the local temple with shrines to Shiva, Ganesh and Muruga, Ganesh's brother and a deity popular in Tamil Nadu according to Vijay (also known as Lord Subramanya in Kerala).

The next day we drive on to Hiberia to collect the empty barrel from the last food drop and then on via more team plantations to meet Alpha 3 at their campsite. The group are in good spirits, (if a little dirty and smelly!), and it is good to see everyone again, particularly PMs Zoe and Jo. They seem to have bonded really well as a group.


We camp overnight with Alpha 3 and the next day travel with them to build bamboo rafts for 2 days of rafting. The rafting looks fun, so I almost wish I was going with them...


After 3 hours of raft building we wave them off down river and travel on to Thrissur where we stay overnight before another day's drive back to Mysore.

Rain

The Northeast monsoon has hit Karnataka so for the past week we have had a lot of rain, with thunderstorms and torrential downpours. On a few occasions the quad has started to fill up with water. It's still pleasantly warm however, so somehow getting wet doesn't feel quite so bad. An umbrella is an essential item.

I'm now shopping for food for phase 2, so it's back to Devaraja market and Foodworld. While in Devaraja market the heavens open and the market empties; everything seems to stop in Mysore when it rains as quite sensibly all the locals choose somewhere undercover to shelter and just stay there until it stops.


After the market Pat and I take the afternoon off to visit Mysore palace. Inside the palace is very 'bling' with turquoise, red and gold pillars and stained glass. The Durbar hall on the second floor is the most impressive and overlooks the parade ground where we watched the Dasara illuminations. After our tour there is the option of an elephant ride in the grounds, but it somehow doesn't seem so attractive in the rain. I did like the sign though...

Relative calm descends

The Alpha groups all departed for their project sites yesterday, so only a few of us are left at fieldbase and suddenly it is quiet again.


I still have work to do though - packing food for the 'loop runs' for each group and also taking my turn in doing radio duty. Could also start thinking about food for phase 2 too...

Bulk buying, bananas and butchery

Shortly after Dasara the venturers arrive and since then it has been CRAZY with hardly a minute to spare from getting up at 6 am to 11 pm ish when I crash in to bed. It's all very intense and I think all of the staff are feeling the pressure so there are a few emotional moments in the privacy of the female staff dorm. The venturers seem a good bunch with a mix of roughly 1/3 from India, 1/3 gap year types from the UK and 1/3 referrals from youth development organisations such as the Prince's trust and other charities. I don't get to spend as much time with them as the PMs who directly manage each group, but I get to know the Indian venturers in particular as they arrive a day early.

While the PMs are team building and trek training with their 'Alpha' groups, I start on the mammoth shop for phase 1 - feeding 3 Alpha groups of 13-14 people for 3 weeks. There don't seem to be any reliable food wholesalers in Mysore, so this involves multiple trips to local supermarkets to buy up their entire stock of porridge, powdered milk, rice, pasta, tinned tuna, biscuits and noodles. I'm armed with my rather splendid spreadsheet of menus, calorie counts and portion sizes to ensure the rations are correct. My preferred store is Foodworld on Devaraj Urs Road, where I do a full on supermarket sweep with 6 trolleys assisted by 2 members of staff and the store manager who are eager to help such an enthusiastic shopper.


Another memorable food shopping experience is to buy 20 chickens for the customary BBQ before the Alpha groups leave for their project sites. The supermarkets don't stock meat, so it's off to the meat market with fellow staff Hamish and Helen. The meat market is tucked behind the main Devaraja covered market and is certainly an experience...


Our chickens start off alive in 2 wire cages and are slaughtered, skinned, gutted and chopped up before our eyes while we wait. It's all done very efficiently and the whole process takes about 40 minutes for 20 chickens. The air smells of raw meat and strangely burning hair (they burn the hair off the sheep heads). Discarded feet, guts and other bits are sorted in to different buckets. Hamish used to be a butcher, so is used to the routine. It's all a bit macabre, but at least we know the meat is fresh. And it's something I think everyone who eats meat should witness - when buying a pack of chicken breasts from Tescos it is all too easy to forget the reality of how it got there.

Next to the meat market is a wholesale yard full of banana branches. I've never seen so many bananas! The yard slowly empties while we wait for our chickens as the street vendors collect their stock for the day.


I've since been back to the market, so I've uploaded some pictures.

Dasara

The festival of Dasara comes to a climax on 8th and 9th October. Dasara (or Dussehra?) celebrates the goddess Durga's victory over the buffalo headed demon Mahishasura and is particularly big in Mysore which derives its name from Mahishasura. Here celebrations have been going on for over a week, with illuminations and events every evening at the palace, lights on Chamundi hill and culminating in an elephant parade.

At day break on the morning of the 8th our drivers (Girish and Manju) perform a special Dasara puja to bless the cars, office and camping equipment to ensure auspicious travels and working environment. Even my computer monitor gets a garland of flowers and coconut and saffron tikka marks.


Today also marks the end of our Raleigh staff training, so we are now theoretically competent to manage our groups of 'venturers' when they arrive on Saturday. For me as Logs manager, this also means planning and obtaining all the food for the first 3 week phase including 48 bags of porridge, 600 rice bags and 300 peanut crunch bars... Hopefully I've got the numbers right so folks don't go hungry.

Kerala whistle stop tour

Next is a 4 day round trip with the trek PMs (Dr Zoe, Jo and Ivan) to recce camp sites for the treking and adventure project. We start with a 12 hour drive through Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to reach our first stop at Marayoor in the Keralan hills. The journey (not to mention road driving!) is spectacular and as we leave the plateau of Karnataka the road descends through hair pin bends to the flat plains of Tamil Nadu. It gets hotter. We have fun with our risk assessment for the journey - possible road hazards include lorries, buses, autorickshaws, cows, elephants, chickens...


We stop for lunch at the Indian equivalent of a roadside cafe en route and Manju our driver helps us decipher the menu. Manju interpreting the menu and explaing the subtle differences between appams and dosas will turn out to be a continuing theme of our trip... We tuck in to vegetable thalis.


After lunch it's another 6 hours in the car to the Kerala border. At one stage we pass through a vast plain of paddy fields tended by women in saris and oxen carts, dotted with wind turbines for electricity. The juxtaposition of the old and new is striking. As we reach the Tamil Nadu - Kerala border the road climbs again into the hills and we enter the Indira Ghandi wildlife sanctuary. Just after entering the sanctuary we see our first wild elephant (a male tusker, but not fully grown) by the side of the road.


We stay overnight in Marayoor and the next day drive on via Munnar to check out camp sites. One camp site in the hills is in a family's back garden. There isn't much space but it's full of lush tropical plants, banana, jack fruit, pepper and coffee.

The drive through the hills is even more beautiful - woodland, waterfalls and endless tea plantations. It's so green you would hardly believe it is India. Wild poinsettias grow several feet high at the side of the road.


Our plans change so we don't actually end up trekking or camping (hey this is India), but we stay overnight in Kumily before another long journey to Kochi to meet the trek guides. After that it's another long drive and overnight stop before returning to a warm welcome at fieldbase - it's good to catch up with the rest of the team again.

Treking and tribulation

The rest of the staff arrived in the evening on the 27th and since then life at fieldbase has been very busy - no time off from now on. Very full on as predicted!

We have just returned from 2 days trek training which involved walking up and around Chamundi hill in blazing sunshine and 30 degree heat with a 17 kg back pack. Surely only mad English people would trek in the midday sun in the name of personal development... The uphill was tough and I am a breathless, sweaty mess by the time we reach the Nandi bull half way up.


I swap sun hats with Jerry our trek leader from Kerala, I think his hat is much cooler (at least in style terms) than mine.


On the way up we see a snake, at least a metre and a half long, sashaying up the road. It narrowly misses getting flattened by two buses that swerve to miss it and the car behind screeches to a halt with inches to spare. Oblivious to the traffic, the snake continues across the road and into the bank on the side. None of us have seen a snake as big as this in the wild before. After more walking and map reading we make camp and spend a hot and sticky night in tents. We all end up with mild dehydration headaches. Ros my tent partner is sick so I have a tent to myself - what luxury, although not for Ros. The next day we trek back up and over Chamundi hill again. At the top is the Sri Chamundeswari temple where we see the goddess Chamundeswari being transported in to the temple. Feeling pretty exhausted and low on sugar after another hot and sweaty climb, I buy a Coke and a picture of the goddess to help me on my way - the combination works.

When we get back I find out that despite being hopeless at treking in the heat I will be joining the trek team PMs on their project planning trip to identify where the food drop off points will be. So I will be spending the next 4 days doing a recce for the trek route in Kerala...

At work

After my last post, just to prove to everyone that I am working, this is a picture of me in the stockroom, with laptop and wireless broadband no less!

Arrival in Mysore

The 10 hour flight to Bangalore goes quickly, despite not sleeping, and at the airport we meet up with Pat, another member of the advance staff team. From Bangalore it is a 4 hour car journey to the Raleigh 'fieldbase' at Mysore. Fieldbase is actually pretty smart - a single story building around a quadrangle surrounded by palm trees on the edge of the city at the bottom of Chamundi hill, which has a temple at the top. Pat and I quickly settle in to beds in the female staff dormitory and it is really quite cosy...


The next day it's back to work and my task is to get to grips with the food stock room, do a stock take and start to plan food rations for the upcoming projects. This involves a lot of Excel spreadsheets, so it's just like being back in the office... Amanda the permanent logistics manager already has things highly organised which makes my job a lot easier.


As a group we take a whistle stop tour of Mysore and check out some of the main shops for supplies. In the late afternoon we visit Devaraja covered market. Devaraja is everything I love about India; stalls of fruit, vegetables, flowers, powder paint, wooden spoons, tiffin tins all arranged in alleyways by type. It's all so wonderfully photogenic and I take lots of photos whilst being pursued by hawkers selling wooden flutes and coral necklaces - all 'very good price!'. I need to practice my Indian head wobble in order to say no and fend them off politely...

By the time we leave the market it is early evening and starting to get dark so we walk back to Mysore palace to see it lit up for the festival of Dasara. This is a big occasion and we queue with crowds of Indian families to see the lights. 97,000 light bulbs illuminate the building!

At Heathrow T5

At Heathrow Terminal 5 with Robin (Raleigh Programme Manager). Check in very smooth, so far so good...

Packing and preparation

Well, I am out of work mode now, but it's been a strange limbo week of packing, sorting, last minute panics and catching up with various friends before I go. Had leaving drinks and curry after work on Friday and Liz came round last weekend to collect the keys as she will be flat sitting for me while I'm away. Met up with Sian on Sunday for a 'shopping and sushi' session in Kensington (all I bought was insect repellant) and had downed a few glasses of rosé last night with Alex in the SWC.

It's funny but knowing that I will be away for a while has really made me appreciate all the friends and life I have in the UK; or perhaps I'm just getting sentimental in my old age? However I will certainly not be missing the British weather! It may be the end of the monsoon rains in India, but I am so looking forward to some warmth and sunshine.

Also thanks to Aroop for lending me Paul Brunton - 'A Search in Secret India', which I will be taking with me. Paul Brunton was a journalist who visited India in the early 1930s and was one of the first people to introduce the ideas of Indian philosophy, yoga and meditation to the West. The book chronicles his journey through India where he meets various gurus and yogis - some genuine, some not. His writing style comes across as a bit old fashioned now and perhaps sometimes a bit pompous, but I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1844130436/

Thoughts on leaving

Final few days at work before I start my sabbatical, so everything is starting to feel more real now. Strange to think I will be 'out of office' for 5 months! Last Friday I met the other Raleigh staff who I will be spending the next 3 months with and they seem a great group, so I'm looking forward to working with and getting to know everyone better.

Anyway before I go, I guess it's worth thinking about what I hope to achieve whilst in India or in PM speak to define my objectives (oh dear, must get out of work mode)...

• To partipate in the whole Raleigh experience, help develop the volunteers I work with, and hopefully gain something from it for myself
• To help build some eco-toilets
• Know where to source the best expedition food/hardware/tents/tools in Mysore
• To survive without a hair dryer for 3 months!
• Visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry
• Revisit the massive Sri Meenakshi Temple in Madurai (memorable from my first India trip 15 years ago)
• Travel to the lands end of India, Kanyakumari, and the visit the Vivekananda memorial
• To keep on updating this blog