Echo Three - Outdoor Living in Style

First news from Echo Three on-site comes thanks to Hinesh, who kindly wrote and dictated this guest blog to enable you to visualize their ‘home from home’ camp in Gandathur. Thanks, Hinesh.

Hinesh - chilling out during trek training

 ‘Hello, world! Echo Three here writing to you from the beautiful Gandathur reservoir. Firstly, let’s start by painting a picture for you of what our camp looks like. 

On the far left, facing the reservoir, we have the lavishly decorated kitchen / dining room area. These spacious rooms have been constructed by tying tarpaulins on to multiple bamboo poles to provide much needed shelter from the rain - and the cows that visit us on a daily basis. Inside this area we have several exquisite mats and even an inflatable rubber ring, serving the dual purpose of safety and comfort.

Moving to the kitchen, we have a portable gas stove and incredible (seriously) multi-purpose workstation. This is made out of – you guessed it – more bamboo, and serves as a hand washing, mess tin cleaning, vegetable chopping surface all at once.

Moving on to our own personal quarters, we have twelve extremely sturdy (apart from mine), often watertight (though Carline would beg to differ) basha beds. These have been constructed of more bamboo and covered in tarpaulin.

The next area of our camp is our very own personal hygiene area, consisting of a state-of-the-art longdrop toilet and a showering area. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term ‘longdrop’ it is just a hole in the ground – no flushing required - and you just cover up what you have done with dirt, to keep the flies away. The showering area is complete with bamboo flooring and requires one to two buckets of murky brown reservoir water, destroying the illusion that we are actually getting clean while doing this. Despite this, Shivam can often be seen emerging with a comb in hand, perfecting his newly crafted hairdo. 

You parents may be gasping in horror that your poor children are being put through such hardship. With the gusting monsoon-type winds and thunderous downpours, surely your poor babies are being tested to their limits? Pauline for one was tested - after a particularly brutal night she was driven to vent her anger and cause havoc not only to her own basha but to everyone else’s in the vicinity! She’s okay now though. And even Sarah, who threatened that her dark alter ego may surface if times became testing, has remained as sweet and unintelligible (thanks to her wonderful kiwi accent) as ever.

Finally, we have our chillout area, fitted with a Fabian Wood original hammock and volleyball court (though the net has fallen over at the moment). Many an afternoon has been spent with hordes of young Indian children begging us to play volleyball with them, until Mangesh and Carrot finally give in and play, with Dan glowering disapprovingly in the background!

The mood in the camp has always been positive and amicable between the eleven of us happy campers, in part due to Emma’s continuous singing and fabrication of lyrics and Jocelyn’s ability to see the funny side in any and every situation.

All in all, aside from the occasional testing weather conditions (as I write this, the monsoon is just beginning again), our camp is simple but most definitely an excellent home to come back to after a hard day at work. For a full account of a day in the life of an Echo Three Venturer, stay tuned.’


Look out for more news and pictures from both Echo Three and Tango Five at the end of the week…