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.