Day 1 - 02 Oct13, Wednesday The Travel

   Yes, this is the day we started from Bangalore, last night was hectic packing, meeting the seniors, Convocation, last minute checks…I was excited & also a bit nervous about being on time. We had the plan and were prepared for this. One of our team members offered to provide a free ride to Railways station her Father’s cab & also we ordered for our food to be packed. We got the cab at the right time & the breakfast packed up neatly. We went to station early. Well began is half done, inside the train compartment we planned for the budget for the coming week. We sat comfortably and things were all set. For…? All set to fall asleep.

        Slowly one by one people started to fall asleep. I made people near me not to fall sleep. It became warmer and warmer when the train reached Tamil Nadu; I bought a t shirt when I reached near Tirupur – a city famous for knitted garments then finally we arrived in Coimbatore. It was then we realised that we are a bit too heavy on our luggage. We somehow managed to have our lunch & got ourselves dropped at Gandhipuram bus stand where moffusil  through two share autos.  From there we boarded the bus to Anaikatty.  Anaikatty is the border place between Kerala and Tamilnadu. One side of the bridge in Anaikatty is in TN other side is Kerala. If you cross a small bridge you reach Keralam. Ente Keralam. Here I am come




(photo Bridge)  

     We got the Aana (Elephant) bus Kerala State Bus which is old and red coloured to Goolikkadavu. We filled more than half the bus with our luggage and reached Goolikkadavu. We had a nice Kerala style coffee,Vada and Pazhumpuzhi – fried Banana fruit. And about half an hour later Gautham came, we had our initial and brief introduction, and boarded two Mahindra Jeeps to reach Sarang Hills. The Roads at some places were really scary, the tree branches were hitting our Jeep. We finally reached our cute little cottage, which we have to share with a young couple for the next 10 days. (photo Anai Bus)

By the way, did I tell you about the ‘P’ things? Our girls, ofcourse boys also were worried about the restroom facility at the place. Girls happen to hear from Anuradha Sarang w/o Gautham Sarang, that for nature’s call we will do like the locals do. And when we saw just a deep pit surrounded by 4 walls made by Bamboo sticks & leaves for both pee and poop things we got really scared. I expected a big revolt and cancellation of field immersion for the P thing. 

Thankfully, people were really tired and it was dark already to have any so called productive discussion. We just already started to explore places and observe the things in & around the Cottage. A small room built by mud brick surrounded with small room like place made with leave thatched roofing.  (Photo of Cottage)

We had our briefing about how our plan is going to be for next 10 days.....