The Last Situation Report

Serial Alpha - Date and time of the report

Date figures one nine zero four two zero one two; one day after our venturers were dropped at Bangalore Airport to go back home or travel on to see some more of India.

Serial Bravo - Current Location

Raleigh India Fieldbase Jayapura (latitude 12°11’51” / longitude 076°33’03”), which – after an eventful wash-up, where venturers and PMs celebrated the end of their expedition – is a place of zen and tranquillity again. At least as far as zen and tranquillity can go, now that the PMs face the mammoth task getting Fieldbase ready for the next expedition.

Serial Charlie - Weather Conditions

It is very hot during the day. In the evenings, surprise heavy rain showers may cause power cuts during wash-up parties, emergency anti-flooding measures, last minute kitten rescue actions, and a decent amount of fun-inducing chaos. The sound of raindrops on the dining hall’s tin roof was so loud that some venturers will probably still wonder for what exactly they received a Golden Mess Tin Award...

Serial Delta - Progress to Date

Our venturers and PMs recovered from their Phase 3 projects on 15 April and the first evening at Fieldbase was reserved for them telling us all about it in skit-form. Our Fieldbase high-level jury decided, who did the best job; here’s the final ranking:

6th place: Echo 4 with “The Ultimate Version of the Sock Game” (More people! More socks! More concrete floor!), which soon developed into “The Fully-Fledged Sock War”.

5th place: Charlie 2 with a vivid display of all day issues on projects, such as misconceptions of time, place, and reality in general. The peculiar but very useful “Fake Call”-button on Indian cell phones received special mention.

4th place: Echo 3 with a Gloria Gaynor/Spice Girls/Tenacious D-medley of their Velas experience, crowned with a death metal version of the infamous Phase 1 “Hakuna Maturtles”-song.

3rd place: Tango 5 with some zapping through Kerala’s TV channels. News on horrendous droughts, affecting China in particular, were followed by passionate and detailed Premier League football reporting, Masterchef cooking with (possibly buttery biscuit flavoured) Tang, Location Location Location renting our high class tents for young couples, and Embarrassing Bodies tackling the issues of itchy ass and cycling gooch.

2nd place: Tango 6 with a steamy late night Comms session between Emma and Simon, involving Dom definitely not chickening out, a Bollywoodish version of Grease’s “You’re the one that I want”, and intercultural love affairs.

And the winner: Charlie 1, telling the story of perfect venturer Dan and his A-Grade-Team, settling in the Zombie village of Gandenahalli to build eco-sanitation toilets in slow-motion, which does bring the zombies back to life, but has devastating effects on Dan’s own health due to insufficient three-bowling.

After being all competition, we went all team work and showed our venturers the beautiful result of three Phases of singing a certain classic 80’s song all over Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra.

Evening two saw everyone go très chic, as the ceremony for the renowned Golden Mess Tin Awards, preceded by elegant banquet dining, was held in the festively illuminated and lovingly decorated Dining Hall.

Heavy rain out of nowhere, bringing down the decoration, but lifting up spirits, caused minor delays in the programme of honouring the achievements of venturers (Golden Mess Tin Awards) acknowledging the hard work of the staff, and looking back on the shared adventure with the final expedition slideshow.

T h e  G o l d e n  M e s s  T i n  A w a r d s  -  W i n n e r s

Best WTF Moment - Abigail and Sofie

Global Superstar - Thejas

Most Desirable Male - Shaquille

Most Desirable Female - Christine

Best Couple - Jonathan D. and Sofia

Best Bromance - Jan and Jules

Best BFFs - Abigail and Roosmarijn

Most improved language skills - Yash

Best Action Photo - Sander

Best Emotion Photo / Best Landscape Photo / Best Humour Photo - Jonathan D.
Hardest Working Female - Sally
Hardest Working Male - Haydn
Outstanding Female - Christine
Outstanding Male - Daniel L. 

The Aftershow Party saw DJ Barns spinning the finest tunes until 3 in the morning, the juice bar and soda fridge being plundered, mental circle-dancing and sentimental circle-hugging, and sneaky ice cube fighting.

The morning after, the time to say goodbye had come. The parking lot drowned in a mix of tears, hugs, and travel plan coordination discussions. And off they went...

Serial Echo - Future Intentions

The staff intends to do it just as the venturers and –after the staff party – either leave for their lovely homes (where spring has hopefully arrived) or enjoy this wonderful country a little bit longer.

Serial Foxtrot - Admin instructions

Dear venturers and PMs, to make this expedition a little bit longer, please share this blog and your photos in the respective social fora. And become friends there of course! We would love to know how your stories continue. We hope you had a great time here and will spread the message about Raleigh’s work.

Serial Golf - Risk Assessment

Since their moment of departure, the venturers’ risk of falling victim to the Raleigh Blues has increased significantly. We recommend checking out “The 4th Challenge” and join our alumni network to participate in reunions and other interesting activities.

http://www.raleighinternational.org/raleigh-alumni

Serial Hotel - Date and time of next communications

The next Raleigh India Expedition will start on 26 June, and I am sure they will have some great stories in store as well.

Any other messages

A BIG THANK YOU! First, to you dear readers for being with us on this amazing journey and supporting us with your lovely messages (special thanks to Darth - whoever you are, you made my day). And danke danke danke to all the venturers and PMs that contributed to this blog by writing guest blogs, taking photos, and most importantly by creating unforgettable stories. This was Christiane Schwausch reporting live from southern India, where wonderful people implemented great projects.

This is Raleigh India 12C listening out.

Tango 6 in trekking commentary and list

Aashna Jain and Marjolein Bender deliver the long awaited Tango 6 guest blog, in running commentary. All the list-lovers amongst you can find an outline of “Good Moments” of our pretty-efficient-themselves-Tango 6ers just below. Enjoy! 

The third Phase began and we were all very excited to start the Tango 6 trek. After two long days of travel to southern Kerala, we climbed the second highest mountain in southern India. The trek seemed a bit difficult, but it was all worth it when we reached the amazing views at the top. As a bonus, we won the expedition competition for being the fastest group up the mountain. 

Also our “Survival Day” proved to be great. We had to find everything to cook dinner with and build our shelter. Though we had some mishaps with the chicken killing, the whole group pulled together and created a delicious meal. 

The chicken. Before.

The next day was rafting day: We built two rafts with the help of the guides and set off on our way. There was a slight competitiveness between the two rafts, but that all stopped when we witnessed the three wild elephants coming out of the forest. This unique event was an amazing experience to watch. 

For the next days we fell into a sort of routine. Every day the views were amazing and the trek was made even more incredible by our regular parotta stops. When we reached our campsites we took lots of time to relax, play cards, and swim. Even our fellow Thejas trekker was taught to swim by the rest of the group. 

While our first rest day did actually deserve its name, the second of its kind was a bit more eventful. We ventured into the town of Kumili and enjoyed a day of spending too much money buying clothes and eating to our hearts’ content, which made us pumped to finish off the trek.

New trousers obviously.

Especially on our longest day trekking we were so motivated that we were ready even before our guides were awake and we were the fastest group in the history of Raleigh India. The last three weeks have been amazing with wonderful views, excellent food, lovely guides, and great friends. Being on Tango 6 has been the most incredible experience. 

And now, the list:

Echo 3 to look at

Our final expedition days have arrived and Fieldbase has been flooded with venturers again. We have loaaads of things to do during "Wash-up" and you can definitely look forward to the blog post reporting about all the madness going on right now.

To start, we finally had the chance to collect some photos from Echo 3 to give you a better picture of what Velas was like. If you wish, you can DIY the full Echo 3 story by combining Tally’s blog post with the pictures. I recommend copy-pasting into a word processing programme or a printer-paper-scissors-glue-combination. 

So here are Echo 3's photos on:

Train journeys:

Steve's Halka Fulka ration for the journey.

Turtles:

A lesson on how to deal with turtle nests.

Hatchlings on their way to the sea.

Baby turtle saying hello.

Not only protecting hatchlings, also adult turtle conservation is a big challenge.

And sadly, this is one of the examples.

Path work:

School work:

I'd say it's "nose", but I'm not sure...

Velas life:

The death trap

Ursula on her way to to comms. With high expectations that will be relentlessly testing.

A thank you note to one of the homestays.