The Trek!

And so the real 'Challenge' begins as we head up into the Western Ghats for the trekking section of our adventure. Leaving Fort Cochin early in the morning we were taken by minibus to the beginning of our trek. Stopping on route for a traditional India breakfast we arrived at around 11am for a 'short' 5km walk - supposedly our warm up for the subsequent days.

Traditional Indian breakfast - Ummm!

Our minibus to the trek

Where are the elephants?

The trek begins!

Unfortunately short doesn't equal easy! Several hours latter we trudged into our first camp - exhausted and thinking 'how are we going to survive three more days of this?'! However the high point was seeing two elephants roaming in their natural habitat.

Nearly there!

The camp site was also interesting. With high winds blowing (something that was going to become a feature of the next few days) it was thought too dangerous to pitch tents so the girls was ushered into one big room belonging to a local family to bed down for the night. With staff in tents outside (apparently we were expendable!) a not very comfortable night was had by all.

It's a sleepover!

Staff city!

Day 2 begins!

After breakfast the next day we headed out for what proved to be the hardest day of trekking. Beautiful scenery but very step climbs that exhausted everyone. The highlight of the day was stopping at an Indian school where the girls interacted brilliantly with the students. Because we were up high in the hills these were children from the local tribal communities - Cranford this certainly wasn't. We made a lot of new friends that day and left the school reluctantly to continue our trek.

New teachers in the making!

Heads and shoulders, knees and toes...!

Several hours later and very tired we arrived at camp two. This time tents were pitched and we were superbly looked after by the staff from Kalypso Adventures. With bucket 'showers' and the luxury of western loos this was almost home from home.

Day three was more of the same as we went up hill and down dale through Cardamon plantations and forests. This was the longest distance and we covered around 18 km. By now we were all getting use to the format and our strength - both mental and physical was building. Another day another camp site, again with the by now compulsory bucket showers and great food from the Kalypso team.

Tent City

With the best restaurant in town!

Ready for anything Kalypso can throw at us (except leeches!)

It's a jungle out there - our back garden!

Waking up to the first fine day of our trek we breakfasted knowing that this was to be our final day walking - also that it was going to be the most difficult. Not only did it contain two big climbs but we were also introduced to a new and very unpleasant danger - leeches!

These horrible little creatures came out of the undergrowth everywhere and it wasn't long before they were crawling all over our shoes and legs. For the most part our special leech socks did their job - until one managed to crawl up Mr C's walking pole and decided it would lunch on his blood! Slightly strange sensation looking down to see this creature getting fatter at your expense! Some salt carried by our guides soon removed the offending bug!

Back at camp another one was found on Harrie G's leg just above the protection offered by the sock! She was very brave as it was removed in a similar fashion.

Back to the trek and a certain amount of near hysteria had set in - we were so worried about these little vampires that we really didn't notice the steepness of the climb. We just wanted to escape so we scuttled up the steep slope at quite a rate!

Concern!

It's a long way down

At the top with a gale blowing!

The view from the top was worth it though and even a rope supported decent didn't faze us. Last night at the campsite and we were actually on cooking duty ourselves, under the strict guidance of the Kalypso chefs. A good last meal was had by all and sleep soon followed as we thought about the next phase of our challenge - the project!

Learning to cook Indian style!