It was an easy start, with a big breakfast of fresh fruit, spicy tidbits and lots of tea. Then the team meeting.
Alex introduced us to the team. Abi as expert biker and the mechanics, Dharmendar, who helps me on numerous occasions, every day and Lovely, who is.
They are busy maintaining the bikes which are Royal Enfield Bullets. Designed in the 1950's they are stalwarts in India.
Of course my bike did not start properly, which means I still find it hard to start. The fuel mix was wrong or something and the mechanic had to fix it in the middle of the bustle of roadside India. So now I do not expect it to start and it fully lives up to expectations. Of course the standard method of teaching is 'watch me', which is pretty useless, especially when you are supposed to closely watch the kick and then find you should watch the throttle hand at the same time. Of course all the other bikes start up and you have no idea in the general noise of whether each bloody kick has worked. And if it doesn't you have to reprime the compression chamber, or something, then try again, but at the same time get the throttle right, just as the engine fires, which you can't hear with all the noise. So it is all rather stressful.
A lunch which Will took seriously!.
The return journey was a lot more fun as we got to know the bikes better. One surprise was how good chai is, even on a hot afternoon. The other surprise was seeing a family of three on a moped with the unhelmeted wife breast feeding her baby.
There was a bit of a group debate about seeing the other Odenadi home, where they raise girls they have rescued form human trafficking. Luckily the others were happy enough to go so I manned up and went along.
It was good to get a tuc-tuc with Fritha, who is the only full time employee of Adventure Ashram, that way I could understand more of the people and the projects. The two inspirations of the project and the guys who very much run it were journalists. A couple of decades ago they interviewed prostitutes in Mysore for an article. Apparently one of them told the guys that she was effectively a slave and begged them to do something about it.
They had a serious think and ended up giving up the staid paid job and entering the labyrinth of crime and pain and downright evil.
And so we got to the girls home where the greetings were again full on smiles and lots of bustle but we sat in a semi circle of chairs in front of the house for the introductions. We passed pleasantries while the girls settled themselves on the porch which doubled as a stage.
And there they were, smiling and shuffling like kids do and I was hit by an emotional shock wave. I had to fight back the tears and look away.
So many of these girls, the victims of human trafficking, were 5 or 6 years old.
Kindergarten or primary school age.
To think of the evil that they had seen and suffered.
And they could be playing with dolls, or handpainting or dancing badly.
But we heard the introductions and got led around the house to see the learning rooms and library, the sewing room, the TV room' the accounts and the 24 hour social carer, the main office for Stanley and Parashu and the 24 hour surveillance.
Footage from the four cameras are recorded. The external cameras are for the safety of the girls and the internal in the main office for the safety of the managers. They are questioned by the government and often sued, so they have taken the precaution of recording all meetings.
How awful to face the physical threats of criminal gangs and then legal threats as well.
But it is hard to imagine any government happy to accept that human trafficking is going on in their country and impossible to see any sanctioning efforts to combat it. Maybe, beyond the charities, the churches of the world that talk of good and evil, could help.
We saw the building they want to turn into a bakery management training centre. They see a gap in the market for high end bread, selling it to the growing number of high end hotels in Mysore and they want to train girls and paying students in baking.
After the tour we were offered cake, biscuits and coffee then displays of yoga and tae kwon do.
We listened to Stanley and Parashu speaking about the happy side of their work. They have such happy smiles. They must need a consistent positive outlook to lock out the evil they see and look at the good they do.
An interesting taxi ride back was a scrummage of opinions on charity, mainly the good of Adventure Ashram but it rapidly degenerated into the bigger picture of people and a lack of money and attitudes to charity in general.
There was a highly respected book to help people give up smoking where the author broke down the reasons for smoking and excuses to not give up. There must be room for a book breaking down the defenses to giving.
It is quite hard for me because everyone comes from completely different backgrounds and everyone has different views of what is most important. Despite (or maybe because of) their noble motives and sincere desires, I have never been entirely comfortable with charity people.
There is something about stridency for a cause and making me feel guilty about not doing enough, about letting bad things continue to happen that of course makes me feel uncomfortable, and comfort is a rare commodity for me. But they make a living from it so you can easily justify not giving for them to make a living, but that makes you feel guilty about not helping the underlying cause and that makes it complicated. So for me these people have been best avoided.
But we are here and the cause is noble and worth getting to know about and Fritha explained it well.
I'm not sure what I can do to help as I have a truckload of other priorities, which may be a convenient excuse and may be true. But someone will always be unhappy you don't do enough.
Back at the hotel the evening rounds of beers were interrupted by the need to buy some traditional Indian garb for a final dinner at the end of the trip. Since the shops in Mysore were close to the hotel it seemed logical to suffer the least pain by interrupting our beer drinking while we were there.
Since the Boys' decision making process was not firing on all cylinders and we were not looking forward to the prospect of shopping in India, I took the opportunity to go with two other adventurers, Ian and Marguerite. We popped out and dodged the traffic to the nearby shopping street and found a shop very quickly. 15 minutes later I had my smart gear and, abandoning the other two, got back to the hotel feeling proud of being back within 30 minutes. Of course the boys turned up 5 minutes later having done the dirty deed in 10 minutes!
There are complex dynamics involved in a group of middle aged men getting to know each other. Verbal jostles, insecurities within jokes and jibes and japes. Luckily the others are not nearly as sensitive as I am.
We have all been brought together by Michael Hobbs, who knows us well individually but we did not know each other. I had met Chris and Steve briefly during the summer as Michael was still marketing the adventure, but only Michael had not met Will before Dubai. And they had known each other since school, back in the 70's.
So each evening was a delicate manly dance of getting to know each other, knowing we would probably be friends: We just had to establish our masculine territory and get some respect and figure what we could and couldn't do without getting into too much hassle.
Super was late and we stayed in the dining room late enough that they stopped serving booze. Alex then had to have a nose to nose discussion with the barman to get him to keep the bar open after 11.
We had a long day ahead of us the next day, involving tigers, mad bus drivers and a finish on the Arabian Sea. So, looking forward to this with trepidation, we voluntarily curtailed the evening revelry sometime in the early hours...typical.
Alex introduced us to the team. Abi as expert biker and the mechanics, Dharmendar, who helps me on numerous occasions, every day and Lovely, who is.
They are busy maintaining the bikes which are Royal Enfield Bullets. Designed in the 1950's they are stalwarts in India.
Of course my bike did not start properly, which means I still find it hard to start. The fuel mix was wrong or something and the mechanic had to fix it in the middle of the bustle of roadside India. So now I do not expect it to start and it fully lives up to expectations. Of course the standard method of teaching is 'watch me', which is pretty useless, especially when you are supposed to closely watch the kick and then find you should watch the throttle hand at the same time. Of course all the other bikes start up and you have no idea in the general noise of whether each bloody kick has worked. And if it doesn't you have to reprime the compression chamber, or something, then try again, but at the same time get the throttle right, just as the engine fires, which you can't hear with all the noise. So it is all rather stressful.
Sleep has been a real problem, so that doesn't help.
My roommate Steve has trouble sleeping, so I have tried to be extra quiet, but we have to have the air-con off and no lights and I worry about snoring, and and and...So I have taken a sleeping tablet most nights but unfortunately today we need to be up at 7 and I woke up at four. Since the tablets work for four hours I have to suffer the demons of the night. But after two hours of failing to sleep, at least I can write.
So now I am a bit sleep deprived and worried about too much; money, saying the wrong things, not thinking of other people, not being able to speak to my kids for a few days, lots of nots.
The plus side is being on the road where the fears are normally realised, you know that van will do a u-turn to come the wrong way up a dual carriageway, you know that bus will not give way and that man will leap in front of you, so you can plan for that stuff.
Plus there has been the emotion of seeing the children's homes. The particular nuclear topic of human trafficking is brought home when you visit these places. The boys home was a bit out in the boonies, but the new buildings are very clean and tidy and full of boys who were very happy to see us. Lots of beaming smiles and handshakes.
We were taken round the main building and the new dining hall that they now have the money to finish.
Behind is the new house that Adventure Ashram had paid for a couple of years ago.
My roommate Steve has trouble sleeping, so I have tried to be extra quiet, but we have to have the air-con off and no lights and I worry about snoring, and and and...So I have taken a sleeping tablet most nights but unfortunately today we need to be up at 7 and I woke up at four. Since the tablets work for four hours I have to suffer the demons of the night. But after two hours of failing to sleep, at least I can write.
So now I am a bit sleep deprived and worried about too much; money, saying the wrong things, not thinking of other people, not being able to speak to my kids for a few days, lots of nots.
The plus side is being on the road where the fears are normally realised, you know that van will do a u-turn to come the wrong way up a dual carriageway, you know that bus will not give way and that man will leap in front of you, so you can plan for that stuff.
Plus there has been the emotion of seeing the children's homes. The particular nuclear topic of human trafficking is brought home when you visit these places. The boys home was a bit out in the boonies, but the new buildings are very clean and tidy and full of boys who were very happy to see us. Lots of beaming smiles and handshakes.
We were taken round the main building and the new dining hall that they now have the money to finish.
Then we saw the old building, which would not be out of place as a run down farm outhouse.
Bare earth floor and a wiring system that you know would produce sparks in damp weather....but from that came our superb lunch, served on banana leaves as plates and lots of spicy dishes, some of which were hot.
A lunch which Will took seriously!.
We had arrived late as Steve had got lost in the chaos of getting out of Mysore, so we did not get to play cricket, which Chris was really looking forward to. The rest of us would probably have suffered the heat, but there was no time to test our lack of skill because there was no obvious cricket pitch.
Given our lack of knowledge of the charity it was a good idea to learn more but we did find it hard to stay awake during the talks.
Given our lack of knowledge of the charity it was a good idea to learn more but we did find it hard to stay awake during the talks.
However important it was to know more about the people who are working so hard on this project I had not learnt the story behind it, so it was hard to feel connected or emotionally involved.
It was great that the huge amount of money raised especially by Michael, Will and Chris was so much appreciated.
There followed lots of photos and smiley faces,
and answering lots of questions about the bikes and hydration packs, and how things worked.
which were good to answer and the boys deserved more, but for me it was all going through the motions.
We had a list of very sensible requests on behaviour which meant any spontaneity was impossible, so it was easier to shut off the emotions and smile and get on with trying to ask the right questions and say the right things, because this meant an awful lot to people who were trying hard under a lot of pressure.
The route back was a bumbling affair only broken by the fun of seeing Alex having to skirt around a van that started a u-turn. That would have been fine but I was next in line and its u-turn meant it was coming towards me, the wrong way up a dual carriageway. Luckily my bike training was in Italy so I am used to unusual manoeuvres on the roads.
The evening was relatively sedate though we had en early supper so we could go to see the famous illuminated palace of Mysore.
Having heard several different opinions on when the 100,000 lights would be turned on this Sunday we went with Alex's advice and got there for lighting up time at 7pm, they had been turned off 10 minutes before.
Oh well back to the hotel in the same tuc-tuc. Driving in Mysore seemed almost sedate compared to the first night in Bengaluru, only a few near misses and we were back in the bar.
The next day ago was different. We had a fairly full run out on the bikes, some 80 kms to visit the Golden Temple, site of the largest Tibetan community outside Tibet. Lots of weaving in traffic and open roads and coconut milk and spicy soup for lunch, with a return journey of weaving in traffic and open roads and chai!
Our visit to the temple involved leaving our big boy sized biker boots at a stall designed for the job, with large laundry baskets for us foreigners. We admired the massive Buddhas and then took silly selfies, but we had to leave this holy place early as we kept laughing.
It was great that the huge amount of money raised especially by Michael, Will and Chris was so much appreciated.
There followed lots of photos and smiley faces,and answering lots of questions about the bikes and hydration packs, and how things worked.
which were good to answer and the boys deserved more, but for me it was all going through the motions.
We had a list of very sensible requests on behaviour which meant any spontaneity was impossible, so it was easier to shut off the emotions and smile and get on with trying to ask the right questions and say the right things, because this meant an awful lot to people who were trying hard under a lot of pressure.
The route back was a bumbling affair only broken by the fun of seeing Alex having to skirt around a van that started a u-turn. That would have been fine but I was next in line and its u-turn meant it was coming towards me, the wrong way up a dual carriageway. Luckily my bike training was in Italy so I am used to unusual manoeuvres on the roads.
The evening was relatively sedate though we had en early supper so we could go to see the famous illuminated palace of Mysore.
Having heard several different opinions on when the 100,000 lights would be turned on this Sunday we went with Alex's advice and got there for lighting up time at 7pm, they had been turned off 10 minutes before.
Oh well back to the hotel in the same tuc-tuc. Driving in Mysore seemed almost sedate compared to the first night in Bengaluru, only a few near misses and we were back in the bar.
The next day ago was different. We had a fairly full run out on the bikes, some 80 kms to visit the Golden Temple, site of the largest Tibetan community outside Tibet. Lots of weaving in traffic and open roads and coconut milk and spicy soup for lunch, with a return journey of weaving in traffic and open roads and chai!
Our visit to the temple involved leaving our big boy sized biker boots at a stall designed for the job, with large laundry baskets for us foreigners. We admired the massive Buddhas and then took silly selfies, but we had to leave this holy place early as we kept laughing.
At least we got out before being thrown out. Going back to the boots was a Hansel and Gretal type trail of 
footprints, considerately left by Chris who had liberally doused his boots with talcum powder to reduce the pungent effects of heat and feet.
footprints, considerately left by Chris who had liberally doused his boots with talcum powder to reduce the pungent effects of heat and feet.The return journey was a lot more fun as we got to know the bikes better. One surprise was how good chai is, even on a hot afternoon. The other surprise was seeing a family of three on a moped with the unhelmeted wife breast feeding her baby.
There was a bit of a group debate about seeing the other Odenadi home, where they raise girls they have rescued form human trafficking. Luckily the others were happy enough to go so I manned up and went along.
It was good to get a tuc-tuc with Fritha, who is the only full time employee of Adventure Ashram, that way I could understand more of the people and the projects. The two inspirations of the project and the guys who very much run it were journalists. A couple of decades ago they interviewed prostitutes in Mysore for an article. Apparently one of them told the guys that she was effectively a slave and begged them to do something about it.
They had a serious think and ended up giving up the staid paid job and entering the labyrinth of crime and pain and downright evil.
And so we got to the girls home where the greetings were again full on smiles and lots of bustle but we sat in a semi circle of chairs in front of the house for the introductions. We passed pleasantries while the girls settled themselves on the porch which doubled as a stage.
And there they were, smiling and shuffling like kids do and I was hit by an emotional shock wave. I had to fight back the tears and look away.
So many of these girls, the victims of human trafficking, were 5 or 6 years old.
Kindergarten or primary school age.
To think of the evil that they had seen and suffered.
And they could be playing with dolls, or handpainting or dancing badly.
But we heard the introductions and got led around the house to see the learning rooms and library, the sewing room, the TV room' the accounts and the 24 hour social carer, the main office for Stanley and Parashu and the 24 hour surveillance.
Footage from the four cameras are recorded. The external cameras are for the safety of the girls and the internal in the main office for the safety of the managers. They are questioned by the government and often sued, so they have taken the precaution of recording all meetings.
How awful to face the physical threats of criminal gangs and then legal threats as well.
But it is hard to imagine any government happy to accept that human trafficking is going on in their country and impossible to see any sanctioning efforts to combat it. Maybe, beyond the charities, the churches of the world that talk of good and evil, could help.
We saw the building they want to turn into a bakery management training centre. They see a gap in the market for high end bread, selling it to the growing number of high end hotels in Mysore and they want to train girls and paying students in baking.
After the tour we were offered cake, biscuits and coffee then displays of yoga and tae kwon do.
We listened to Stanley and Parashu speaking about the happy side of their work. They have such happy smiles. They must need a consistent positive outlook to lock out the evil they see and look at the good they do.
An interesting taxi ride back was a scrummage of opinions on charity, mainly the good of Adventure Ashram but it rapidly degenerated into the bigger picture of people and a lack of money and attitudes to charity in general.
There was a highly respected book to help people give up smoking where the author broke down the reasons for smoking and excuses to not give up. There must be room for a book breaking down the defenses to giving.
It is quite hard for me because everyone comes from completely different backgrounds and everyone has different views of what is most important. Despite (or maybe because of) their noble motives and sincere desires, I have never been entirely comfortable with charity people.
There is something about stridency for a cause and making me feel guilty about not doing enough, about letting bad things continue to happen that of course makes me feel uncomfortable, and comfort is a rare commodity for me. But they make a living from it so you can easily justify not giving for them to make a living, but that makes you feel guilty about not helping the underlying cause and that makes it complicated. So for me these people have been best avoided.
But we are here and the cause is noble and worth getting to know about and Fritha explained it well.
I'm not sure what I can do to help as I have a truckload of other priorities, which may be a convenient excuse and may be true. But someone will always be unhappy you don't do enough.
Back at the hotel the evening rounds of beers were interrupted by the need to buy some traditional Indian garb for a final dinner at the end of the trip. Since the shops in Mysore were close to the hotel it seemed logical to suffer the least pain by interrupting our beer drinking while we were there.
Since the Boys' decision making process was not firing on all cylinders and we were not looking forward to the prospect of shopping in India, I took the opportunity to go with two other adventurers, Ian and Marguerite. We popped out and dodged the traffic to the nearby shopping street and found a shop very quickly. 15 minutes later I had my smart gear and, abandoning the other two, got back to the hotel feeling proud of being back within 30 minutes. Of course the boys turned up 5 minutes later having done the dirty deed in 10 minutes!
There are complex dynamics involved in a group of middle aged men getting to know each other. Verbal jostles, insecurities within jokes and jibes and japes. Luckily the others are not nearly as sensitive as I am.
We have all been brought together by Michael Hobbs, who knows us well individually but we did not know each other. I had met Chris and Steve briefly during the summer as Michael was still marketing the adventure, but only Michael had not met Will before Dubai. And they had known each other since school, back in the 70's.
So each evening was a delicate manly dance of getting to know each other, knowing we would probably be friends: We just had to establish our masculine territory and get some respect and figure what we could and couldn't do without getting into too much hassle.
Super was late and we stayed in the dining room late enough that they stopped serving booze. Alex then had to have a nose to nose discussion with the barman to get him to keep the bar open after 11.
We had a long day ahead of us the next day, involving tigers, mad bus drivers and a finish on the Arabian Sea. So, looking forward to this with trepidation, we voluntarily curtailed the evening revelry sometime in the early hours...typical.
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