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!
