Weather Update and my trip up north

On sunday we ventured out to a beach in a town called Malpe. We weren't expecting any good weather, but after a little time the sun came out and it was roasting. The sea was warm and pretty clean so we spend a while in the waves. Later we brought a lot of attention to ourselves by digging a big hole to bury Vidyut in...

We stayed the night in Mangalore and managed to watch some of the Olympics- even staying up til 2am to watch the 100m final. 

Since we got back to Ujire yesterday it has been raining. Non stop, seriously heavy, tropical rain. About 24 hours of it! There was some thunder and lightning last night too which was pretty impressive.

I now understand why everyone has an umbrella round here. I find it quite ironic that having lived most of my life in England and never having bought an umbrella, but on coming to India I've got one after less than a week!

So tomorrow I'm off to a place called Gulbarga which in in the extreme north of Karnataka. I'll be doing a needs assessment and observing cooking habits at a small institution. Should be interesting, though I'm not quite sure what to expect. I'll travel up there with Deepti who is doing some different work in the area, looking at trials of solar fencing, and Robin who's going to assist me (especially with translation!).

Its meant to be a 16 hour bus journey to get there, which isn't a particularly fun prospect, but is a true Indian experience :).

16 hours rattling around in an old bus

Arriving in Ujire

It took 7 long hours of zipping along through the countryside to make it to Ujire where I'll be based for the next 3 months. It was almost impossible to sleep in my tiny bunk as the bus hurtled around corners and avoided brave rickshaw drivers on the bumpy road. I think I managed to drop off a couple of times. Unfortunately one of these times the bag containing my laptop was knocked off the bunk, landing on the floor... What I didn't know was that this had happened to it:

poor laptop :(

Whoops. 

So I arrived in Ujire to the shouting of the bus conductor at around 4:30am. I'd already woken up since I was worried about missing my stop. After I hurriedly got off, I hunted for an auto rickshaw to take me to the university where SELCO's lab is situated. Luckily my driver knew where I wanted to go and got me there nice and quickly so I could meet Seb who, bleary eyed, met me outside the staff accommodation where we are staying with 3 other guys from SELCO. 

The next day, after about 3 hours sleep we were heading off to the nearest city, Mangalore, so the others could pick up some supplies that are scarce in Ujire. I met the other engineering interns at SELCO- Vishal, Vijud and Nishal as well as finally meeting Sam who is a previous EWB volunteer who has now gone on to work as SELCO labs mechanical engineer. 

Mangalore is a bustling town with some big malls as well as small vendors lining the street. Its very different to rural Ujire but its good to know that there is somewhere less than two hours on a bus away   that has places to buy more "unusual" items like pasta, or toilet roll. It was another bumpy ride. 

One thing that struck me about arriving in the countryside was the change in climate. Its much warmer and far more humid than Bangalore, which is situated at about 3000ft altitude. Rains can start and stop very abruptly, and soak you through instantly. We've had a couple of days of good sunshine but I now understand why locals always carry an umbrella with them, just in case! 

Back at the apartment later gave me a chance to see around the University campus - SDM Institute of Technology. The students were on holiday when I arrived so it was quieter than normal. After a week here, its a fair assessment that this university is quite different to what I'm used to... and perhaps even quite different to other universities in India.

the view from the university buildings