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...