It's up and down at field base (but mostly up)

The Maharaja’s Palace


After a hard day’s graft and finally getting over the jet lag, last night the advance team ventured out in to Mysore for the first time. The first stop was the Maharaja’s Palace. Every Sunday night the Palace is lit up between 7 and 8pm by 97,000 light bulbs. We got slightly wet taking photos of the palace, something you will be familiar with in the UK – I heard its raining there too . Then we were treated to dinner at the Park Lane Hotel where we sat in a cave inside (it was a bit like an Indian version of the Rainforest Café) and tasted the lovely local curry. Yum!!

This morning it was an early rise for the advance team and for Sixty-Sixty (one of our drivers) as we tackled Chamundi Hill. You can see Chamundi Hill from outside the front of field base and those of you who are coming out to India will be testing out how quickly you can climb the 1100 steps!! That’s five and a half times more steps than Covent Garden station, where incidentally you are advised not to walk and to take the lift…wimps!

Above: Margaret (left) Miriam (right) Sixty-Sixty and Kath (behind) all look a bit tired!



Once we reached the 800th step we came face to face with a 5 metre high Nandi statue (the bull mount of Shiva). Only 100 steps later Margaret declared ‘900 already well that was easy’…she’d slightly changed her tune from earlier when she wanted to stop at 200 steps!!




Holy cow





We all made it to the top, 1062m high, in about 40 minutes; we’re working on beating the record set by a venturer in the last expedition who managed 13 minutes….quite a way to go then! At the top of Chamundi Hill we visited the Sri Chamundeswari Temple where we met lots of monkeys, cows and a statue of the lady herself.

Above L-R: Jess, Nicky, Miriam, Margaret and Kath at the top!

The rest of the day has been taken up with planning, planning and more planning, a bit of preparation a lot of counting, and a little bit of cricket.

Don’t forget your waterproofs if you are coming out here…we can’t wait for you to get here!

And...don't forget to keep checking the blog for more updates, the project managers will be arriving later this week and we’ve still got lots to do before then!