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.