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CTC - Ainthinai Green Day @ Kambarajapuram (near Walajabad) - 4 Sep 2016

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CTC - Ainthinai Green Day - 4 Sep 2016






Chennai Trekking Club along with our Green Team Ainthinai is proud to announce yet another signature event of the year Green Day 2016 - a special annual event dedicated to Mother Earth to celebrate the cause of Environment and Sustainable living. This event will be our big step forward to create awareness by planting trees on a larger scale and to understand the necessity to have a Greener Ecosystem.

Over the past 4 years many of you volunteered selflessly in our ongoing green events to plant an amazing 7000+ saplings in and around Chennai with a significant survival rate of 70%. We can all be proud of this amazing accomplishment which is a small effort to make our city a greener and better place to live in. In the past years our team has initiated numerous green initiatives including major cleanups, lake restoration, setting up nurseries, fabrication of tree guards, corporate green drives, segregation & recycling efforts, green workshops, rooftop gardening, source segregation initiatives, collaboration with farmers, kids tree walks, etc. Most of this was done seamlessly owing to the fruitful collaboration that we have with TN forest department.


In November 2014 which was CTC's first Green Day we planted around 900+ saplings in Thenneri village near Kanchipuram. This was followed up by various maintenance events over the past 2 years with the help of our regular volunteers.

Last year for the second edition of Green Day we chose a reserve forest area near Padappai and planted around 1500+ saplings along with Forest Department. This was followed up several maintenance drives over the past year with the help of our CTC volunteers who have spent their several weekends here especially during summer bathing in the scorching heat. Results have shown here with about 90% of the saplings survived.

This year for our 3rd Annual Green Day, on Sunday September 4th, we are planning to plant around 1000+ saplings in a place in Chennai outskirts with the main theme of afforestation. We need help of minimum 300 volunteers to make this event a grand success.

It's gonna be fun.

It's gonna be green.

And as usual it's gonna be another wonderful CTC style volunteering event ;)

So go ahead and register yourselves to be part of this wonderful event !!!


When : Sep 4th 2016 06:00 am - 12:00 noon

Where : Somewhere in Chennai outskirts [Stay tuned for updates on location ;) ]

Agenda :
- Assemble at a pick-up point of your choice (on time).
- Group together and reach the plantation spot before 06:00 am.
- Planting 1000+ saplings ( or as much as we can plant, planting them proper is more important than the count we plant :) ).
- Do some mulching and watering to the saplings that we planted.
- Pose for a group pic :p or click a selfie.
- Leave from the spot before 12:00 noon with satisfied heart.

Must Carry :
1) Comfortable Clothing, Shoes/Sandals.
2) Reusable, Filled Water Bottles.
3) Cap, Sun Screen - if required.
4) Camera - if you have ;)

CTC - Ainthinai Green Day @ Kambarajapuram (near Walajabad) - 4 Sep 2016

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Planting a tree
A tree is planted with lots of passion and the joy of connecting the roots to mother earth is matchless. It is the birth of a new green life on soil to support the animal and human life-system. There are various activities that are carried out before, during and after the plantation (A.K.A: Giving Life to a Tree) of the tree sapling. We have tried to summarize them below.


1)      Procuring Tools
Crowbar and Garden Hoe are very important tools to plant saplings. Crowbars are used to dig the pits and loosen the soil bed before planting the sapling and Garden Hoe is used to take the soil out from the pit. Apart from these tools, small iron rods are also used to dig small pits in case of seed sowing activities.
2)      Procuring Saplings
Saplings of 5-6 feet sizes are procured from the TN Forest Department nurseries through appropriate approvals from the forest authorities. We choose the saplings according to the place of plantations, its soil texture and water source availability. Various plants we plant include Vengai, Illupai, Naval, Magilam, Fig, Kumil, NeerMaruthu, Thaanrikkai, Poovarasu, Pungai and Mandhaarai
3)      Transport Saplings
Transporting saplings from nurseries to the plantation venue is done through small goods carrier vehicles. The saplings are carefully loaded taking into consideration of its size and growth, and then unloaded in the plantation venue. We get the help of TN Forest Department vehicles to transport the saplings locally.
4)      Digging Pits
The growth and survival of the plant saplings depends on the way the Plant Pit is made. An average of 1.5 feet to 1 feet are dug depending on the size and variety of the saplings using the tools. The pits are widened with the width of 2-3 feet circumference depending on the type of plants to form the soil beds and water the plant once it is planted.
5)      Planting Saplings
The sapling cover that holds the root is cut open carefully, without damaging the roots and the sapling is planted inside the pit with its original soil that held the roots, then filling up the pit with the soil which is dug out. The soil is packed closer and stronger to hold the root and stem of the sapling to be firm and upright. The soil bed around the sapling is then widened and made a bund like shape to hold water and manure.
6)      Mulching
Mulching is the process of packing the root-soil bed with dry organic materials like grass husk, dry leaves, coconut shells, coir and sugar cane husks after planting the sapling. This process ensures the young root which connected the soil retains water content and moisture for the growth. This is very important for the survival as the root needs to be taken care to not get dried during the initial growth phase of the plant.
7)      Watering
Watering the saplings is the process of filling the soil-root bed of the plant with water and ensuring the water stagnation around the roots for the plant. Watering the newly planted sapling is very essential for the survival and strength of the roots which connects the soil bed firmly.
8)      Fixing Tree Guards
One another very important method to protect the planted saplings. Tree Guards protect the plants from being eaten away by domestic animals and broken by heavy winds and ensures its growth to be a fully grown tree. We make our own tree guards by cutting the iron mesh, reuse the tree guards which are cut from a fully grown tree, make a natural tree guard by combining thorns and tree barks and by wired meshes.
Apart from all the core activities, 
* Giving preference to Native trees is always best approach which is capable enough to withstand natural disaster like flooding,cyclones..etc and these plants survive in environment and soil even during peak summer and life time of the these trees are more than 100 years easily. 
* Identify the sapling which is suitable for the place, How to do it ? It is simple, Look around the trees grown there already which can be chosen for plantation. For example, If lake is chosen for plantation, It is best to have the trees which attracts birds to nest  and kind of fruit bearing saplings to birds and the sapling that withstand even high amount water poured around the roots. Understand the bio-diversity and plant saplings accordingly. 
* Obtaining permission from the official/local/groups which is key factor to be considered before doing any plantation and also make sure somebody from the locality would take care of the planted sapling and monitor its growth and survival on a regular basis. It is not just about plantation, one has to maintain the planted sapling till to grows into a tree. Keep in touch with the locals periodically and conducting maintenance drives on the planted areas would also yield better results. 
* Tree guard is MUST for any open area/street/roads plantation. If there is no scope to fix tree guard for saplings then pick the saplings which will not be eaten by cows or other animals. 
* Applying manure periodically on the planted saplings is also best way to make the trees grows faster and healthier.
Come join us on our annual Green Daycoming Sunday Sep, in which we are planning to plant 1000+ saplings near Walajabad in association with the Tamilnadu Forest Department - sign up here

Thanks,Team Ainthinai |Refuse |Reduce |Reuse |Recover |Recycle

First Moderate trek to Nagala SE to NW – August 20,21 2016

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Written by: Padmanabhan S.

Prologue
We all have dreams. Sometimes we go get them, sometimes we don’t even try but most of the times we take half ass’ed attempts and just leave it hanging in the middle. As a kid, I remember, that I used to gaze outside the train windows and see those uninhabited mountains. I fantasized climbing on top of them one day but I never knew when.
I attended and passed fitness test last November itself but I never registered for any moderate treks. I always thought, maybe next time and the next time never seemed to come. I did some voluntary work, snake walk, easy treks etc. and did some treks with friends to Nagala west but the moderate trek was still a daunting task I never attempted. The closest I did was the boot camp final assignment in Nagala where we had to make an early exit, after getting exhausted and scared in the unknown mountains.
When my friend and teammate Preeti asked if I would register for the moderate trek I thought, If not now, then when? And immediately registered. Optimistic for the journey, I started shopping a week before, bought new trekking shoes, sleeping bag and a lightweight shoulder bag from Quechua brand. The fitness test to qualify for the same was scheduled on Wednesday August 17th. If anyone don’t know about the fitness test. It involves, carrying a 10 KG bag and climbing on top of a steep slope for 100 meters in the Pallavaram mountain, in 10 minutes or lesser time. I had just tried two weeks back and finished with 11 minutes. I went in with some preparations but was still scared. I didn’t do that bad since I climbed in 8 minutes. While my friend did the same in 7.
Start from civilization
I took leave the day before to take some rest and did shopping for all food items mentioned in preparatory mail. I bought extra but in last moment took everything out since I had to choose between the bag weight and hunger. My final inventory included two Jam buns,2 snickers, 2 apples, two natura bars, 2 Maggie packets,1 tang powder, 2 soup packets and a fruit cake. Though I took leave, I never slept early owing to the PV Sindhu medal match that day. I slept around 11:30 pm and I woke up around 3:15 am and reached Guindy by cab at around 4 am. I found few folks in shoes and backpack and quickly realized they were from Chennai trekking club. I went and got introduced to everyone (I forgot most of their names). There was Dinesh who seemed fit of the bunch, Cyril who was having a round hat, Rajesh who was in the PG hostel trade, a guy straight out of college with a heavy back pack and few others. My friend also came there in a few minutes’ time.
The van that would take us came an hour late as one of the drivers slept off and Peter came out to welcome us in our van. I entered inside the van and found loads of yellow tarpaulin sheets. I found a place to sit along with my friend and we made a stop in Koyambedu and picked many folks making the van full with not an inch to spare. We reached Utthukottai at 7 and had breakfast. There I got introduced to Mithun and his friend who asked us if we were first time. They gave a friendly advice to keep moving forward while our mind would think otherwise in the first few hours itself. I was kind of hoping for a tough challenge so it didn’t scare me much.
From Utthukotai we took a right and again a left after few kilometers and passed through two villages. The road turned scenic and we were slowly able to see the mountains. Close to the foothills was a tiny village and I was happy to see a school there and children waving at us. As we almost reached the destination, the last ten minutes was a bump ride with a rough road and a struggling cab.
Let the trek begin!
shiva temple
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 We parked all the vans near a Shiva temple and Peter and Jaweed weighed our bags giving approvals. Peter mentioned that the difficult part was not the trek itself, but the weight of the bag. I saw people all around getting ready, adjusting their shoes, rolling the tarpaulin sheets, cutting ropes etc. We gathered around finally and Peter gave instructions like not to leave the group and about the sweeper and how we might be split into two groups based on our stamina.
I stayed close to my friend and we started to walk towards the mountains and first came across a small dam which had a smaller temple in the center and some dead trees. We walked around it and slowly started to enter the forest. We walked on a flat trail for some time and came across the first stream. Peter asked us to drink up. I heard him say, “I thought you were the younger ones!” to a fellow trekker who was already looking tired.
From there we turned left and walked not too far from the stream and came across a big pond formed by the stream. Again we had some water there. By this time I was very glad finding water stops every 15 minutes and some rest. I wondered, maybe this trek won’t be that difficult after all! From the pond we turned right away from the stream and climbed a small distance. (Last time I came, we went straight along the stream to reach the dead pool). What do you know? We got to another stream in no time and the stream took a small nosedive and had a pool in the end making a perfect spot to slide. When I reached, the people before me where already playing there. I just took my shoes off and placed my foot in the water next to a frog that was swimming casually near my leg.
sliding pool
Peter came behind almost immediately and instructed everyone to start moving as we were already running an hour late. Vishal who was acting as a sweeper quickly came behind and I heard him speaking to Peter that already one girl had dropped off and someone else has gone to return her to the cab.
By this time I quickly put on my shoes and we again started walking forward near the stream. In a short while we made another stop and the stream was flowing very slowly here and formed a small puddle. Here we had nearly half an hour stop and Peter instructed this was the last water point for next three hours.
People were sharing biscuits and dates. But I was not able to share anything as I feared if the food I had brought was not enough!
After taking rest here, filled my bottle to the brim, drank as much as my stomach would carry and started walking. Though it initially seemed all fine, we soon took to a ridge and started walking upwards and I started to lose my breath. The climb made the Pallavaram mountain climb, seem easy like picking daffodils. Along the way I was able to see people in groups starting to sit and try to rest but I was determined not to stop expect for once when my shoe lace came off. After almost losing all steam in my body and my legs begging to stop we came across a clearing where someone had constructed what I would call a tall bed made with logs on all four ends and put together by ropes and leaves. I placed my bag on top of it and took rest for a minute. At this point I saw even some of the organizers out of breath. There were voices from experienced trekkers around to keep moving and not to stop. My friend told, let’s keep moving, while I was still not fully recovered. But I started anyway trying not to lose momentum. After a hell a lot of climb, reached the top of a mountain to an amazing view surrounding us. There was short grass and few small fern trees on top. Many went to a protruding cliff and took cool pictures with nothing but a deep valley behind them, while myself and my friend stayed in safer distance and took photos.
Dry Stream
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We again started walking and they took a head count to make sure no one is left behind. I heard Peter mentioning something about a dry stream but didn’t get the full context. The walk turned little comfortable. Soon the forest became thick and dense and the light slowly reduced to a dim glow. Saw some beautiful butterflies fluttering their wings around me and we came across what looked like a small pit, we crossed it and walked forward while people behind shouted for us to stop. We back tracked and found that it was not actually a pit but part of the dry stream that Peter was talking about earlier. We took a left now and walked upstream while many people went ahead of us. I must admit that walking up the dry stream took every bit of energy I had. It became very taxing and seemed never ending. I was getting a reality check on my fitness while the bag which was around 4 KG started to seem like 10. My friend was climbing a little better than me and she stopped in multiple places for me to catch up. At that point Peter said, now you all would appreciate the importance of a lighter bag. I climbed catching hold of all the vegetation I could find and that included many thorns that started to scratch me with no mercy. We even got a chance to have a view of one of the peaks in a distance. We then found a clearing and sat catching breath again while Peter came and said, the actual resting spot was just few meters on top and we might also get good wind up there. Taking his word, we started again and we did reach the spot he mentioned about, where everyone settled below a big tree’s shade. Experienced guys asked us to eat something and try to hydrate ourselves. I sat along with my friend and we shared an apple and plums that was delicious after all the hard work. During this time, I tried to fold my leg and felt a severe spike of pain in my thighs. I stretched my legs out and felt little better.
We were told that the next stop would be lunch and we might get an hour rest there. It seemed like a great news to me. So we started again on a trail which was mostly downhill and we caught up with a stream. In a place where the stream widened we all settled for lunch. Many went quickly and found flat rocks to lie down. My friend went left and found two great spots to sit. Everyone started to eat their lunch and I saw most of them eating sandwiches. We planned to have the two Jam buns that were in my Bag when Cyril offered a packet of tamarind rice to everyone which was for his friend who dropped in the last minute. Me and my friend took a chuck of the big packet and it felt very satisfying to eat rice. We also ate a 5 star that my friend gave while I saved the bun for later. Then we decided maybe we can rest for a while. Already many had started to sleep.
lunch rest 2
I tried to sleep leaning back on a tree while sitting on a stone. It felt not so comfortable but I was able to get short spans of sleep, but woke up to a strange stinging insect and constantly falling leaves. Involuntarily I folded my right leg too much and I got a severe unbearable pain in my thighs that left me hoping in pain. I was not able to rest my leg down and I feared it was going to spoil the whole evening. Constantly I rubbing my thighs I got little better in 10 minutes. Slowly all woke up and again we started downstream now. I lost my friend in a bottle neck situation involving horrible thorns and a cramped leg.
Skip Hop and Jump
I prayed for an easy trail but all I got was some huge boulders. I had to jump a lot and my leg was taking a toll on me. I prayed God for strength. Once I had a situation when I had to jump from a sliding rock to a tree with a rough surface that was split in the middle and jump down from the tree again to the rocks. And once entered a hole, that was a bent cave and jump from there to the ground after making some crazy foot work. Well it got little interesting I could say before I got down successfully from those situations. I constantly got tired and the rocks got challenging by the minute.  The old French couple who came with us was in front of me and they were struggling a little with their heavy bags. I drank the water coming from the stream flowing around me as though it was a magic potion that would cure my pain. With some determination and elbow scratches (didn’t find any grease :p) I caught up with the group.
french couple
post lunch water falls
It did not take me too long to realize the most difficult part of the whole post lunch routine was starring right at my face. I saw my friend standing on the comer of a big boulder saying she was scared while people were counting to three to make her jump. So the situation now was like this, the stream was flowing down from a big boulder to a deep pond. The way down was to walk to the right facing the rocks and skim left for a while completely blind of where the foot would land and after that part of the course, we have to jump from one boulder to another with stream running some 20 feet below hiding the sharp rocks beneath them. Great news here was Peter standing there and holding us. I remember saying to Peter I was very scared as I took each step carefully. He held me tight all the way. Else I would have never made it.
Then I took the jump which was a small dose of adrenaline rush and a kind soul caught hold of me in the other end. But the challenge didn’t end here. We had to make a rope descent again down the stream with slippery rocks. I saw my friend to my left doing voluntary work along with people who were passing all the bags down. I sent her my phone to take a snap which later was used to take video of all of us brave souls. I removed my shoes and put them around my neck like all others and started to descent down.
boulder jump
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As usual was little scared. I was not able to keep my legs as wide apart as others as my leg was hurting and with some hard work and great help from people around I got down in one piece (while the bro shooting my video was crying out loud asking me to tell a ‘hi’ but it all fell in deaf ears J.)  I dropped my shoes in the water and it got fully drenched along with my socks. Then I walked along the chest high water to reach a clearing where the passed bags were placed. I tried to get my bag, then later became a part of another human chain to pass the bags further along the stream for some more distance.  I realized few bags were more than 10 Kgs. I wondered what people had brought and most importantly why? After passing all the bags I jumped down another set of rocks to a pool but it was less deep and went to a clearing. I sat down a rock keeping my legs in the water, which I later found was infested with centipedes and cockroach like insects. One of them even managed to get on top of my T-shirt. Quickly got of the water and I put on my wet shoes carefully checking for any insects. Sundhari who was one of the organizers, got her ankle twisted from the sharp rocks below the stream and was in great pain. I felt real pity for her and thought these mountains could get to even the best of us! I waited for my friend but she was very busy, still volunteering in the back. She started almost last from the place and after I got her eye contact asked her to come quickly and I started giving myself a 5-minute head start considering my leg. I was instructed to just follow the stream and my friend soon caught up with me. There were not many people surrounding us and the pack was distributed far across the stream. There were two more guys behind me and Mithun and his friend were before me. Mithun’s friend also took a slip and fell hurting her leg. We wished them luck and proceeded forward. The soggy leg with wet socks gave me an odd sense of comfort for my sprained leg. But I also had my part of bad luck with wet rocks and fell hard on my butt. Determined to not stop, rubbed myself hard and started walking slowly while my friend patiently accompanied me.
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Then with my friend and another two guys behind me we reached a water falls and a stunning view that I can’t describe in words, of another mountain cliff standing there in front of us. One of the guys tried to climb down the falls but later we decided it was very risky and we took a roundabout and reached the second level of the falls. There was a deep pool formed by the falls which again continued deep down to the forest. Almost all the people started swimming in the deep pool while I along with my friend stayed out as we didn’t know swimming. People showed their skills jumping from cliffs above to the pool and it was fun to watch. By this time, it was starting to get dark and the clock started to slowly move from 5 to 6.  We ate the jam bun we had saved from lunch and ate some mixture other people shared. Again I didn’t contribute anything back! How selfish! We realized we had not yet reached the base camp and it was really starting to get dark. Even Peter who was mostly pushing people forward, sat comfortably and showed no signs of getting up. We enquired around and got to know the camp was just 5 minutes from there. One of the experienced folks, with specs (I forgot his name) said he knew the place, so we started along with him and few more folks joined with us, while many were still interested in swimming.
falls phase 2 efalls phase 2 d
We climbed down the steep falls along the side and from the third level of the falls walked left and got down to discover a hidden falls flowing, which sounded like a melody. Again I took a right turn and came completely down to the forest. Here we saw another small cute falls taken right out of a magical poem and forming a shallow pool. It was almost dark and we walked little down the stream and found a small clearing in the right. We all opened the tarpaulin sheets and I found a place to sleep. I changed to the dry clothes and hung my wet dress in the branches nearby.
We all started collecting twigs as instructed to create camp fires and Peter asked me to accompany him to find some stones as we walked further right and the steam caught up with us. I went along and I was happy to find two stones and then I went to fetch water. By this time, it was completely dark and with help of flash light and some spilling a couple of times I returned back successfully. To see the water in the dark, with fishes glowing in my flash light was an experience of its own. Later I went to call my friend and others to bring the Maggie packets. There were totally 3 stoves set up in 3 different locations. I helped collecting more twigs as possible while my friend helped in cooking. I was surprised and inspired to see her know what she was doing with the stove. (I finally gave my contribution to the group with an extra packet of Maggie J) I ate to my stomach full with the bowl I took with me and then we went to wash them in the same stream. I bid my friend good night and went to sleep by 9 pm.
While I tried to setup my place to sleep I found a lot of spiders. Thankfully I had a sleeping bag with me. I slept inside my sleeping bag, though I had a constant feeling of something crawling in my legs. The roots and plants in the ground, below my tarpaulin sheet made it tough to sleep for me as I was a person who always slept on beds and even would feel uncomfortable with coir mats. The temperature was quite high and It was quite sweaty taking also into account my sleeping bag. But I was not ready to take it off! Waking up every 1 hour to change sides I managed to sleep for 9 hours.
Sunday Morning
I woke up around 6 am to see some people already moving around while others were sound asleep. I thought it was better for me to make a move as soon as possible, (to make it less awkward) and find a good spot to you know use the open forest bathroom.
base camp morning cooking.jpg
So I came back to the camp after successfully locating a spot and breakfast preparations were already in full swing. So I took out the soup packets we had and gave them to the guys cooking. While it was taking time to boil I thought maybe I will take a small bath in the stream as I was stinking head to toe. Problem was The dress from last night was still wet with water and dress I wore in night was wet with sweat. Anyways I took a bath reducing my odor output by half. I returned back and my friend was holding my share of the soup along with some corn flakes. It was then I realized the amount of food that was present surrounding me. There was Upma, Milk and tea, Cornflakes, soup, more Maggie and what not. It was mind blowing and It explained all the heavy bags I found the previous evening. (A big salute to all the awesome souls.) I heard Raghul, one of the organizers say, “who wants to quit please let me know. The exit is just 5 minutes away!” I saw people laughing and I initially thought it was a joke. Then even Vishal said the same. It seemed we could follow the stream and walk north east to exit to village. Those who were exhausted, had cramps, tired were requested to take that path. Though it would not take just 5 minutes but rather a few hours, it was a real route to get out. I thought for a moment about my leg but decided not to immediately. I wanted to do it completely!
We slowly started from the camp and I helped fold some tarpaulin sheets, packed all my dress in my bag. (I was hoping a significant weight reduction today but what I lost with food got added by wet dress.) I took my T-shirt and tied it to my neck to reduce the weight from by bag and started along with all others.
Now having some rest and a long day ahead I started bravely. We first reached the stream down the camp, while around 5 folks bid good bye to us and took the early exit. We were instructed to drink as much as possible as there was no water point for the next 3 to 4 hours! I tried to drink as much as I could, filled the water bottle completely and started as we cut perpendicularly across the stream and began to climb up some rocks. The start of the trek itself showed sample of what laid ahead. Giant rocks in an old, not so used trail. The elevation was steep with a challenging terrain, dead trees, webs, and dead composting leaves in the floor. There were endless possibilities to take in all directions and all seemed scarily silent. I found Sundhari in front of me struggling with her hurt leg. Again here I lost touch with my friend in a bottle neck where she climbed pretty well forward while I struggled and Dinesh and few more folks helped me climb up. I faced similar challenges in few more occasions where people literally pushed my ass up on certain occasions. I got little worried as I was not able to see my friend for a while, I wondered if is she might get lost in the forest going ahead. The hard climb got harder and harder and we reached a spot which had a beautiful rock formation with a big gap between the rocks. I went inside and walked on few slippery ridges with help of the vegetation to catch hold of, to finally find some sunlight. Then I came across some people taking rest and I asked them If they saw my friend. They said she came long ago and would have reached the top by this time. I gave a sign of relief and climbed to the top. I reached the top to find a great panoramic view of all the mountains and my friend welcomed me. The view was a great compliment from nature for the hardship we went through to reach the top. We took a group picture here with Vishal climbing on top of the lone tree for taking the shot. The greatest surprise here was there was mobile network on top the mountain.
sunday morning peak
Literally we were in the middle of nowhere. Vodafone for working but my phone didn’t get any reception. So I called with my friend’s phone and It was totally strange to get in touch with my family in that location. The organizers then said, those who feel you might need more rest, start first from here so you can get more rest in the next check point. People told water was still 3 hours from here. So I felt I had to preserve the 2/3 water I still had left. As people started to move, my friend was still busy in phone with her family. I told her I will take a head start again and started. Bless the Gods for the trail from here was cool with flat trails and steeps that were easy compared to the first morning trail. We were surrounded by short grass and lots of fern like trees. The sun was starring right at me and sometimes it went behind clouds and hid itself. But again it didn’t take me too long to go out of breath. I found many people, who had started in front of me, taking rest in many places. My mouth got very dry and I was breathing hard with my mouth. I realized I was losing lot of oxygen and energy by doing this and controlled my desire and tried to breath with my nose while I was completely sweating. I then sat down on a rock and drank some of my precious water. One of the guys asked me water and I was not brave enough to say no to a tired soul. So I gave him and said, “please drink little.” Then with some more will power I started to walk with steepness slowly increasing. Peter waited in the middle and said, just few more distance and we can take a rest. I was pleased to hear that but didn’t know how long that actually was as he always calculates with his own metrics and they were all totally different. Jack one of the experienced guys, who wore an orange CTC T-shirt and had a good sense of humor, was walking behind me. He advised seeing my shoe, that I had tied it wrongly and I have to use the hooks or whatever he called them so I don’t get any ankle pain and shoe lace won’t go out.
 Finally, we reached a resting place. I was very thirsty by just took a sip since I was worried about how long we had to go without water. Peter said he would go down to search for some water. Jack bent down and helped tie my shoe lace tightly and after that It never came out and it did feel strong on my ankles. There are no words to thank him for this help. By this time my friend came along. Peter returned back with everyone eagerly waiting to hear him say water. He conjured his magic again and said there was water. He called who were still going strong to accompany him with the empty bottles. I quickly drank my bottle in one gulp and passed along the bottle and sat comfortably there itself. I ate a whole snicker as I felt very hungry while my friend said she was not hungry and just thirsty. We rested as much as we could and after water came I drank a little. (Jack even shared Gems with me. What a cool guy J)
So again we started and made a head count. I asked people around when would be the next water point and they said again it was 3 hours. I wondered when this 3 hour will ever end. But thankfully the terrain seemed good and flat with constant changes from bare lands and bright sunlight to dense forest and dim light. After walking a short while, Peter asked all of us to stop and spread out and sit. Some ate the upma they packed from morning while others ate from the endless supply of bread coming out of their heavy bags.
sunday afternoon 2
Peter now told everyone there is an optional trek for 40 minutes each up and down. My first thought now was let me skip it! Then he added, we would go for some ancient British ruins followed by a view point. The ruins part of what he said excited me and I asked my friend. She was more than energetic to go and so we started.
Ruins
We again walked on some flat terrain but sun was beating down on us on as it was 12 o’clock. I saw some dark clouds in the sky and wished they would give some shade soon. About forty of the sixty people came along. It didn’t take long to realize that we were walking on a long forgotten road made with stones. There were even small channels made intersecting the roads to let the water flow. I thought about the sweat and blood of our ancestors in building the roads in British time, while it was difficult only to walk on the roads. In a half an hour time we reached the ruins that comprised of three buildings that were run to the floor and what might be a well or something. I even saw chunks of many old asbestos sheets there.
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Peter then said the view point was a walk for 30 more minutes. Me along with 8 more folks decided to stay by the ruins and wait for others to go and come back. After all the exploration we all regrouped to the place where we initially started.
Adventure time
Taking some rest and with a low supply of water we again started. Now Peter said our plan was a little adventurous where we were to search and find an old trail that used to connect the east and the west part of the mountains. We all followed Peter who tried to find the trail with the help of his GPS. We used to walk for few hundred meters and stop and take another route as Peter would shout out U-Turn. Initially It all seemed funny moving back and forth and felt very similar to how I was running about in my navigation boot camp few months back but soon it started to take its toll. We all sat while Peter few folks were moving around. Finally, they decided on a direction and we started to move. The sun was beating down and we had to do some climbs.
adventure to find old trail.jpg
 With water too scarce I decided to eat an apple slowly for quenching my thirst. You should have been there to feel the taste of the apple that day. It was the most delicious apple I have ever eaten in my whole life. The path was very interesting, it was one of the roads that lead to the ruins, it was in good shape for some distances, with steps laid out from neatly placed stones, while some parts of the road was taken over by the forest making us take a roundabout. The location seemed like it was taken right of an Uncharted series video game. The roads made me feel proud of our ancestors every second!
We walked forever and reached a cliff marking the end of the flat mountain top. We had lost the actual trail somewhere along the way! There was still no water to be found but the good news was now we could follow a dry stream starting from the top (for what they said as half hour) to reach a stream. People were all desperate for water and tired. Taking some rest, we again started as usual but now on a mission., to find water! I had just a few ml of water almost hitting the bottom of the bottle. We mixed some tang in my friend’s bottle to get some energy.
We climbed down a small dry stream again laden with dry trees, old leaves and webs. The ambience seemed different from all other places for the past two days with an old look and feel to it. We walked and walked down descending a never ending dry stream but there was no water to be found. Occasionally we heard people in front of us shouting that they found water but it was all a prank, that acted as an acoustic mirage. After walking for nearly twice the time they said when we could find water, there was still no sign. It even started to get dark. Then as hope was almost lost we saw Peter sitting on a rock saying we would find water in next 10 minutes. But we walked for nearly 20 minutes and there was no water. We came across a small dirty puddle of water once but it was not potable. We sat down and drank all the water we had left. We had no other go as we were really tired. We then found water seeping from a rock but that also was very dirty. Then after walking for nearly just 5 minutes we miraculously found water. The sight of water was very relieving. We drank as much as we could and filled our bottles again and started. I thought by that time the base was soon to come but it never arrived. The forest slowly started to get dark and we rushed forward even though I was tired, since didn’t want to climb down when it was totally dark. After many minutes of walking found Peter jumping on a pool of water and exclaiming, “Oh la la!” It brought a laugh to my tired self. We asked Peter for directions as he told to go a couple of meters forward to regroup and then again we would start. We all ate the remaining amount of food we had remaining and took some rest.
I was completely exhausted by that point and wished for the journey to end soon. It was easily the most difficult thing I had ever done till that point. Mentally I was a little tired as well.
Then we were told we had to take another trail for at least 5 kilometers to reach the foothills of the mountain. One more catch was van was available in the exit only for only the first 40 members. Other 20 had to wait for one more hour. We all rushed to hit the trail first and come in the top 40 of the head count. With nearly 10 people near me I started to walk along with my friend hoping for exit soon. The trail now also had few steeps but was manageable. I remembered after a while that I forgot to fill my bottle to brim and it was less than half full. I struggled a lot now with shortage of water and took a few rests along the way. The trail was filled with some tall grass on either sides. Finally, the trail that was still maintaining an altitude started to dip. The trail looked as though it was used daily by the villagers and I even found some bricks occasionally. But the worst part of the trail was it was too steep in going down and it took a lot of effort on my lower legs to stay balanced. Legs started to pain like anything and the gravel was insanely slippery. Took rest in couple more places and many people overtook us. Then after a loads of hard work we came to a place where we were still in some altitude but we were able to see the valley below. At this point I met with Peter and asked him about how long it was for the Village. He said, just another 5 kilometers minimum and pointed at a lake far away that glittered in the dipping sun light. The view was breath taking and so was the journey. He comforted us saying in few minutes we would reach the foot hills and from there it was a walk on a flat road. Peter then over took me went down from even a steeper path. He felt like he was from another planet at that time.
We reached the foot hills and they asked us to wait for all to regroup. I laid down and closed my eyes feeling my heart beating so fast. Slowly my heart calmed down and I regained some energy. We stayed there for nearly 45 minutes for everyone to regroup and take some rest. Actually I was not that far behind after all! Having got some energy, we started to walk for the village. Great news was It was still an hour away with the 5 kilometers still valid. We walked and walked with the sun slowly setting down. It felt like a road to redemption, a road to civilization, a road to salvation. A link from this world to another to save this exhausted soul. All spirituality and philosophy was flowing out from my mind. Peter and few folks went jogging to reach the village earlier. I was mind blown by their stamina! At a point of time it went completely dark. We walked with the help of our phone light and by around 7 :10 we reached the Village. The village was lighted with colorful bulbs and music getting ready for a carnival. Wow what an entrance back to civilization!
village
The Vans to pick us up were still on their way and we used that time to get water from the villagers. We were even lucky to find a shop to get some cool drinks.
I felt a sense of accomplishment to have finally completed the trek.
We got on our Vans and as fate would have it, the van that me and my friend were on was the same we traveled a day ago and it broke down in just half an hour. (the driver never changed his faulty belt from yesterday!) We got down in a village and my legs refused to move. With great difficulty walked about and found something to eat. The van was beyond repair and we had to take outside bus which was at 9:30, an hour from that time. The last van carrying remaining 20 members came to our rescue and all the girls and people with emergency were asked to take this other van. Since I had to drop my friend I took the van and there was no place for me to sit. After a stop in Utthukotai I arranged a small place in the aisle and rested courtesy on a fellow trekker’s legs, came till Koyembedu after which got a seat. Then I got down in Kattipara with my friend and reached home after dropping her in Ola cab at around 1 pm.
I came to know we traveled nearly 30 Kilometers in two days. IT was like nothing I had ever done before. Words could not explain the experience I felt. The pain, the joy, the magical moments and the low keys. IT is something we have to experience on our own to truly understand. My respect for nature, my respect for my friend, my respect for my fellow CTC trekkers and organizers and most importantly my respect for my life that I live only once, increased to a whole new level. I will never be the same person again and I am waiting for my next journey and excited to where life would take me!
After all this story I told I forgot to tell about a most important person or I could say a four-legged companion? A dog accompanied us for all two days travelling the entire distance, eating with us and sleeping with us. You are the best Girl! You are the best!
dog 2.jpg
Pic Courtesy: Dinesh Dinu, Harish Karthik, Karthik Manikandan, Jaweed, Preeti

Chennai Trail Maraton 2016 - Finisher Timings / Rankings - Ultra Category

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Ultra Male Open

BIBNameStartFinishTime
U1175Bipul Kumar4:018:464:45
U1777Sanjeev4:019:004:59
U984Viswanath Harikumar4:019:225:21
U1019Balaji TT4:019:465:45
U1176Vadivel4:019:465:45
U1011Shashwat4:019:465:45
U1003Vinothkumar4:019:485:47
U983Andy Stephens4:019:555:54
U997THOMAS HABEL4:019:585:57
U1008Kanagasababathy4:019:595:58
U968Arunandhi Chelvan4:0110:046:03
U1004Sachin Tiwari4:0110:106:09
U980Rasmivan4:0110:246:23
U1015Sathya Dev4:0110:396:38
U1172K Selvam4:0110:396:38
U985Vijayaraghavan4:0110:446:43
U988Chandramowleeswaran4:0110:536:52
U971Vivek4:0110:576:56
U1021Kunal rawat4:0111:057:04Grace Time
U1009Kamallakannan Sekar4:0111:067:05Grace Time
U975V Sunil Kumar4:0111:177:16Cut-off
U1020Manickaraj4:0111:407:39Cut-off
U1171A Mohamed imran4:0111:407:39Cut-off
U1025MANIVANNAN P4:0111:507:49Cut-off
U1014Lakshman kumar4:0111:527:51Cut-off
U979S. Vignesh Prasanna4:0113:059:04Cut-off

Ultra Male Veteran

U1026Karl Furthmaier4:019:335:32
U970Suresh4:019:365:35
U1013Sridhar Venkatesh4:019:585:57
U995V.Seeranthaiah4:0110:146:13
U1174S.Elango4:0110:536:52
U1010NEVILLE J. BILIMORIA4:0111:006:59
U973M KARUPPHAIYHAA4:0111:117:10
U992Karthik4:0111:137:12
U1024T PARTHASARATHY4:0111:157:14
U974Subramanian M4:0111:187:17
U1173S Jaya Jaya Raman4:0111:227:21

Ultra Female Open

U1007Nandini Sharma4:0111:297:28

Ultra Female Veteran

U991Divine4:0110:576:56
U1023RADHA PARTHASARATHY4:0111:067:05

Chennai Trail Marathon - Finisher Timings / Rankings - Full Marathon

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42K Male Open

F924S.SENTHILKUMAR4:308:304:00
F938Simanta Baruah4:308:414:11
F1155K Viswanathan4:308:584:28
F943Sathish Kumar Ramalingam4:309:004:30
F915Bharath Srinivasan4:309:044:34
F906SENNA KESAVAN4:309:054:35
F930Srinivasan4:309:244:54
F1157Suresh Kumar T4:309:244:54
F940Vysakh venugopal4:309:254:55
F951Selvaganesan4:309:315:01
F942Criespin Noael4:309:325:02
F963Thomas Galeron4:309:355:05
F1152Dinesh jothimani4:309:435:13
F937Avinash Kumar4:309:525:22
F1154Suraj Kumar4:309:535:23
F956Naveen Kumar4:3010:075:37
F1156Khushal gore4:3010:115:41
F947Leelendhu4:3010:165:46
F920Vigneswaran4:3010:175:47
F928Mahesh Sukumar4:3010:255:55
F955Ranjith kumar4:3010:255:55
F926PRAKASH D4:3010:265:56
F910Tapan Mahapatra4:3010:416:11
F931R Soorya Narayanan4:3010:416:11
F948Barathraj G.4:3010:476:17Grace Time
F917Karthik4:3010:546:24Cut-off
F958J Suresh4:3011:056:35Cut-off
F912Senthamizharasu Panchavarnam4:3011:076:37Cut-off

42K Male Veteran

F927Ramachandra Babu4:308:514:21
F934Ashokkumar Jothimani4:309:475:17
F944Vilva Natarajan4:3010:095:39
F957Balu.P4:3010:225:52
F959Kothanda Raman4:3011:046:34
42K Female Open

F904Aakriti Sanjeev Verma4:309:084:38



Chennai Trail Marathon 2016 - Finisher Timings / Rankings Half Marathon

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21K Open Male

H650Muniappan1:24
H1069P Dharaninathan1:31
H1043Sumit chatterjee1:33
H1070E Selvakumar1:34
H119Santhosh1:36
H254Prashanth1:41
H1113Sharath1:41
H1064Sathish kumar1:43
H346Dominik Urban1:46
H1073Gowtham1:49
H112Murtaza Tasira1:53
H628Jaakko Kiukkonen1:53
H579Ross Connelly1:56
H544Aravindkumar1:57
H1037anton rasmussen1:57
H1099Abubakar1:57
H283suraj kadam1:59
H556Mansurbabu1:59
H204karthick2:00
H461Karthick2:00
H506Ram Ganesh2:00
H1068Anand V2:00
H315Michael John Bennis2:03
H118amedeo peyron2:05
H120Sree Ram Kumar M2:05
H200Pradeep Narasimha Prasad2:05
H1055Sathiyaraj R2:06
H1031M Raju2:07
H1036Francis raja2:07
H562Karthik Varma K2:07
H597sanjeev sharma2:07
H257Sampath Kumar2:08
H322ramkumar2:08
H161Maniraj K2:09
H349Vikram2:09
H899Antony Arul Pragasam2:09
H420Prem Anand2:09
H502Rajkumar N2:09
H165RAJA MANI KANDAN2:10
H700Mithilesh Kumar2:10
H776Sukumar2:10
H865SANTHOSH KUMAR E2:10
H504Ashish2:10
H543Manoj Pandian K2:10
H148M SELLAM2:10
H313Paritosh Rana2:11
H305VIKRAMADHETAN HARIHARAN2:11
H498Omkar2:11
H1074Surendar2:11
H154Gnanasekaran2:12
H160Sheik Abdullah2:12
H746Abhishek2:12
H438SRIDHAR RAJAMOHAN2:12
H552Kushagra Kapila2:12
H560Udhayakumar2:12
H109anbharasan2:13
H136Shanmuganathan2:13
H151Heiko Lampe2:13
H409Yogendra Kumar2:13
H437Anurag Mishra2:13
H572GANESH2:13
H593Santhosh VC2:13
H802Balasubramanian H2:14
H316Nikhil Rohankar2:14
H503D. Jaya kumar2:14
H564Anand Gopinath2:14
H640RITUM SINGH2:15
H811Kaustav Baruah2:15
H720Santosh Kumar Keerti2:16
H332Mukesh2:16
H403K YOGIRAM2:16
H649Sundraarama2:17
H1034Mukesh s iyengar2:17
H1100Samuel2:17
H633Rathana kumar R2:18
H147Vijay K2:19
H480Yogasundaram2:19
H801Ravichandran2:19
H396Kamalesh VG2:20
H413Srinivasan C2:20
H429Douglas Lobo2:20
H434Shanmugarajan2:20
H211GANESH KUMAR2:21
H323Kotteaswaran2:21
H509Arrvind Balaganesh2:21
H540Anton Bright T2:21
H600MURALI MALLIKARJUNAN2:21
H623Dhileeban2:21
H680Shanmugasundaram2:21
H834Balaji Guhan2:22
H857Arvind2:22
H135Jaganraj2:22
H341Annem Akhil Reddy2:22
H412Veeramani Elangovan2:22
H487RAGHUNATHAN M S2:22
H528Ganesan K2:22
H177Nitin Dharam2:23
H608Prasanna2:23
H846VENKATESAN2:23
H1087Mohan2:23
H635Karthi Chandramouli2:24
H645Paranthaman R2:24
H1057Jeevan raj rajeev2:24
H183Thiruvengadam D2:24
H483Gopalkrishna Bhalerao2:24
H508JUZER2:24
H514MURTUZA BM2:24
H518Satheeshkumar2:24
H611Gokulakrishnan2:24
H654Siddharthan Sethuraj2:25
H1067Sathis kumar2:25
H180Suthan2:26
H277ASHOK BABU2:26
H1052Shyam Durairaj2:26
H411Thomas Philjon2:26
H728PANKAJ2:26
H548Maniraj2:27
H613Joe2:27
H644Kasi Viswanathan2:27
H1071M Jagadeeshan2:27
H1096Karthikeyan2:27
H128Shishir Jaiswal2:27
H366Ramakrishnan G2:28
H520sivakumar2:28
H618ABHISHEK KUMAR GUPTA2:28
H625Vinothkumar2:28
H799Sudhakar2:28
H352Surya Prakash2:29
H462SUNDAR SWAMINATHAN2:29
H557saravanan2:29
H617Kalaiselvan2:29
H620Sriram Mukundan2:29
H651Yogesh Kumar2:29
H569Muruganandan2:30
H570Venkatesan2:30
H576Madan Ramachandran2:30
H577Sam2:30
H642Shon Yadav2:30
H785Jayaprakash2:30
H879Shravan kumar2:31
H122jayaganesan2:31
H225Ananthan chandrasekar2:31
H382Appandai Raj2:31
H467Karthikeyan2:31
H586R Shankar Anand2:31
H603Thirugnanasambandar2:31
H601Mohanraj L2:32
H167Boopathi2:32
H290Mathan Raj2:32
H807N Nageswaran2:32
H851Ravishankar2:32
H1077Prathivraj2:32
H1101Selvakumar2:32
H859G Karthikeyan2:33
H882Kavin Palaniswamy2:33
H1092Selvakumar2:33
H1109Muniaraj2:33
H229Jai Sankar2:33
H389Charles Durisingh2:33
H205krishnamoorthy vediyappan2:34
H221Deepak Narayanan2:34
H233Govindarajan2:34
H292Siva2:34
H302Vinod kumar S2:34
H701Gomathinayagam2:35
H714Tarun Vaish2:35
H767Sethuraman Murugesan2:35
H131G.RAJESH KUMAR2:35
H457Rajkumar C2:35
H532Venkat Tadi2:35
H578Tom Zuzulock2:35
H606Nivash AR2:35
H342Aditya Mulchandani2:36
H404karthik alagappan2:36
H441Senthil Kumar Kaliyamoorthi2:36
H469Kishore Kumar AV2:36
H525venkatesh kalimuthu2:36
H530Sakthivel Natesan2:36
H181Boopathy Rathinasamy2:36
H246Saravanan2:36
H256Ramesh S2:36
H1053Harikrishnan S2:36
H484VISHNU P B2:37
H388Dominic2:38
H459Prakash2:38
H596MS GOWTAM2:38
H182Manoharan Selvanathan2:38
H789Ajay Kumar2:38
U989Don Celestin2:38
H706Mahesh2:39
H386Sonu Sehwag2:39
H445Krishna Kumar Sivaraman2:39
H561Suresh Prasanna2:39
H379Karthick2:40
H421sasikumar v2:40
H456Nitin2:40
H334Prakash2:40
H107Gokulnath2:40
H733SATHISH2:40
H734SAMPATH2:40
H821jitendra jadon2:40
H1039D Satyanarayana2:40
H173Sandeep2:41
H510Gautam2:41
H534Prassana Janarthanan2:41
H539P.Srinivasan2:41
H605Santhosh2:41
H614Muruganantham2:41
H808alex2:41
H599Madhuvanth Gopalan2:42
H163ILAMVAZHUTHI2:42
H842Jegan Ponnusamy2:42
H134Raja2:43
H230Vijayakumar2:43
H374Tanuj2:43
H565Sabarish Gopalakrishnan2:43
H698Chandramouleeswaran2:43
H1041Rajagopal sastry2:43
H522Vimal Raj2:44
H274SELVAMANI2:44
H652Sivakumar2:44
H416Vijay Ramachandran2:45
H527Randhir Kumar2:45
H589Vivek Anand2:45
H656PARAMATHMA2:45
H716Kasiraman V2:45
H725M K Sudarsan2:45
H876MOHD RASHID KHAN2:45
H140Nikhil Padvala2:46
H218Britto2:46
H668Manuel Varghese2:46
H845Satheesh Kumar2:46
H1094Arunkumar2:46
H1107Praveen Kumar2:46
H260Vasanth Balaji2:47
H314Sankaran2:47
H347lingam2:47
H356D. Christopher Gnanadurai2:47
H394Dhayalan M2:47
H604Dilipan Thilak2:47
H737Ramkumar Natarajan2:47
H1045Aman sharma2:47
H1051vijay kumar2:47
H1108Sakthivel2:47
H251Shiva Prakash2:48
H291Saravanakumar Ponnusamy2:48
H693Ganesh PK2:48
H1040Vinothvasan2:48
H595Thangaraj2:48
H202karkki2:49
H208Daniel Santhosh kumar2:49
H284muralidharan parthasarathy2:49
H285Aravindh Pamujula2:49
H619Mario2:49
H690Seetharaman2:49
H812Mathivanan2:49
H1093Sathih Kumar2:49
H1097Gokul2:49
H307Srinivasan2:50
H320Karthick2:50
H736RAVICHANDRAN M2:50
H769Nagarajan A S2:50
H1090Selva Balaji2:50
H1106Subramani2:50
H373Vedavyas Buragadda2:50
H536VINODH2:50
H424Dhanasekaran Palaniappan2:51
H446Karthik Madhavan2:51
H558ARVIND SUNDAR2:51
H751Praburam P. M.2:51
H1083Elambharathi2:51
F929RAGUL KUMAR KRISHNAN2:51
H226Manoharan2:51
H227VIMAL2:51
H263S MANIKANDAN2:52
H898SubashChandran2:52
H1032Paranthaman B2:52
H381Deepak2:52
H473NarendranNamachivayam2:52
H563Saravana Kumar Venkatakrishnan2:52
H378Manikandan2:53
H526venkateshwar Rao Madasu2:53
H535Manikandan S2:53
H1063arun john2:53
H141RAGHU RAM2:53
H194Palanisamy2:54
H718Karthikeyan2:54
H731Gururaghavendran2:54
H774Shankar R2:54
H868NARENDRA KUMAR2:54
H1103Dhuvarakesh2:54
H126Velayutham G2:54
H546G.Srikrishna Dayal2:54
H553Rajesh Arangarajan2:54
H223Balachander2:55
H392Krish. R2:55
H398Arvind Ravikumar2:55
H153Raghavendran2:55
H324Mahaesh babu2:55
H191Thiyagarajan V2:56
H343Vimal Kumar K2:56
H365Kannan2:56
H452KARTHICK2:56
H491cv venkataramana2:56
H516AMULRAJ2:56
H646Kavin Raj2:56
H748Harikumar2:56
H759Yogeswaran2:56
H1059hariharan r2:56
H344Udit Janardhan2:57
H419sumit agarwal2:57
H517Raghaven2:57
H765Guru Venkatesh2:57
H237Rupan Chakraborty2:57
H258Ravikumar Chinnasamy2:57
H270Raghavendra Kumar2:57
H272Mandeep Yadav2:57
H123Ashwin Sekar2:58
H232Hitesh Khandelwal2:58
H422Mahendra Prabhu S2:58
H479Vijay Prasad2:58
H575Jayakumar K2:58
H630Kasipandian2:58
H632Balaji2:58
H653Parthasarathi2:58
H732Shanmugasundaram S2:58
H885Balamurugan2:58
H460Varadharajan2:59
H705Vinodh B2:59
H773S.G.UmaMaheswaran2:59
H810Reejith tk2:59
H816Sriram2:59
H847vaasudevan2:59
H176Amey Kirwai2:59
H220Vikram S2:59
H551Janarthanan3:00
H722Loganathan3:00
H850Shivaram3:00
H1102Lojan3:00
H744Vamsea3:01
H755Harish3:01
H1030Karthick R3:01
H267Kumar Srinivasan3:01
H271ARUN SELVAKUMAR3:01
H278SAI KRISHNA KOPPURAVURI3:01
H296Sathish3:01
H310Premkumar3:01
H387Hansraj Aditya3:01
H391Neeraj Bhatia3:01
H489Raviganesh M3:01
H496Vijayanand3:01
H206Dinesh Rathinam R3:02
H300YUVARAJA KANDASAMY3:02
H545Mohan Babu.M3:02
H631Rathesh Kumar K3:02
H719amit joseph manavalan3:02
H750s aravinda prasath3:02
H768Gurunivasan Padmanathan3:02
H800Krishnakumar3:02
H745MOHAN.S3:03
H853Anguraj R Balaguru3:03
H215SRINIVASAGOPAL3:03
H376Subhash K A3:03
H425Dinesh Shetty3:03
H476Manoj Kumar3:03
H125Kishore. S3:04
H166Rajesh Fernando A3:04
H304NAVEEN KUMAR M3:04
H309saipraveen3:04
H281RAMANATH SHARMA3:04
H490B.KARTHIK3:04
H554Rohit Raghuram3:04
H818Raja3:04
H711SIVAPRAKASAM PERUMAL3:05
H760Sridhar Kannan3:05
H779shenbaga praburaj3:05
H803Sridhar C3:05
H813Rajesh Kannan3:05
H881vignesh3:05
H1044Nagarajan G3:05
H1056Jayakar daniel3:05
H129Suresh3:05
H417stalin3:05
H418PRAKASH3:05
H609Kiruba3:05
H691harikrishnan3:05
H475Harish3:06
H796senthil arasu3:06
H255devaraj3:06
H340Visweswaran Vidyaraju3:06
H1076Davidraj3:07
H137rohit goyal3:07
H523karthik3:07
H607Sivakumar Doraiswamy3:07
H513Anand3:08
H883vimal3:09
H1085Seelan3:09
H264Shankar ganesh3:09
H423Sujith Kumar M3:09
H463Gururaj Kosuru3:09
H432Binod Kumar3:10
H697Natarajan Mahalingam3:10
H814Sugumar Shanmugam3:10
H892Vijayababu K3:10
H193Bharadwaj PV3:10
H198Vikas Nath Singh3:10
H286Aravinda Babu3:10
H231Anish Kumar3:11
H244P V Mallik3:11
H330Sridhar Narasimhan3:11
H207GANESH AMIRTHARAJ3:11
H393Srinviethan3:11
H877bharath3:11
H368Abhishek Gowrishankar3:12
H369Bharath Kumar3:12
H621Rajesh V3:12
H1081Ajith Raja3:12
H311Rajkumar Chandru3:12
H312Gowrishankar C3:12
H339Rishal S P3:12
H350Sriram3:13
H519Balaji Jothimani3:13
H533Velmurugan Sundararajan3:13
H538EZHIL AMUTHAN3:13
H827Nanda Kumar3:13
H395Kannan3:14
H584K KAMALESH3:14
H784Thilesh3:14
H815Ramkumar3:14
H893gokulakrishnan3:14
H201Navaneethakrishnan. L3:14
H253Varun Kumar3:15
H384Prabhat Kumar3:15
H399Magendran Pandian3:15
H775P. NATRAJ KUMAR3:15
H872Safiq M3:15
H786Muthukumar B3:16
H248Vijay3:16
H501Jagadish T S3:16
H507Narayanan R3:16
H588anandaraj3:16
H265R Satyanarayana Murthy3:17
H713Lucky K3:18
H806murali krishnan D3:18
H1088Vasanth3:18
H1098Poovarasan3:18
H1104Jaya Prakash3:18
H427Vijaya Kumar sivakumar3:18
H493Abhilash3:18
H293Yugaraj H3:19
H512Harrish Shanmugamoorthy3:19
H770avinash uvaraj3:19
H1089Ganapathi3:19
H889Natarajan S3:20
H1105Moses3:20
H179ILANGO3:20
H192Gopinath S3:20
H197Pranesh A R3:20
H375Mohan3:20
H371Dhandapani K3:21
H833Manikandan3:21
H639PARTHIBAN A3:22
H754Senthil kumar3:22
H1028Nipun kanade3:22
H250Gobinath3:22
H195Ramamoorthy R3:23
H549Dinesh.N3:23
H185Saikarthick3:23
H306Raj Sharma3:23
H741Selvakumar Lakshmanan3:23
H788krishnamohan3:24
H1061Sudhakar3:24
H1078Vijayaragavan3:24
H1080Arasu Raj3:24
H1082Ajay3:24
H1084Dushar3:24
H1086Bharath3:24
H164KATHIRVEL G3:24
H294Dinesh3:24
H354Vignesh3:25
H820BALA SUBRAMANIAN3:25
H891Satheesh Selvaraj3:25
H1079Amith Jain3:25
H188SENTHILNATHAN3:26
H449Akshay Karthik3:26
H537Aadithya3:26
H758Karthik Subramanian3:26
H837Swaminathan Sunder Ganesh3:26
H466Selvakumaran B3:27
H634Saheb Singh3:27
H249Supreet Singh3:27
H325Murugan3:27
H699Varadharajan3:27
H777Raghavendran3:27
H178Balaji G3:28
H351Aravind3:28
H1038K Ramesh3:28
H752Rathinamvelu Subbiah3:29
H453KA Sridhar3:30
H454Alexpandiyan3:30
H158pradeep3:32Grace Time
H887Saravanan V3:32Grace Time
H143thrilok babu d3:33Grace Time
H709Balakrishnan S3:33Grace Time
H629Arun.P.H3:36Cut-off
H894Gopinath J3:37Cut-off
H1062R thirulogachandran3:37Cut-off
H708MOHAMMED SHARIQUE K3:38Cut-off
H880Sridhar Babu3:39Cut-off
H695Siddharth3:41Cut-off
H838Arvinth3:42Cut-off
H787Arunkumar Asaimani3:43Cut-off
H904Pandi Vijay3:45Cut-off
H168Sowmya Ramakrishnan3:46Cut-off
H363Chaithanya Krishna3:47Cut-off
H542E Tamil selvan3:47Cut-off
H550Nithin3:48Cut-off
H402K HARIHARAN3:49Cut-off
H430Suneesh Kumar3:49Cut-off
H436Arun Pandian P3:51Cut-off
H726Prabhaharan3:53Cut-off
H157DHAMODHAR V3:53Cut-off
H637pankaj kumar3:54Cut-off
H156sheik dawood3:54Cut-off
H486Sriram Mecheri3:54Cut-off
H319Raja Ellapan3:56Cut-off
H1035Rishab sharma3:58Cut-off
H243Dillibabu Ganesan3:59Cut-off
H1075Manivannan4:01Cut-off
H1111Moharajothi4:01Cut-off
H431Vibhor Sharda4:03Cut-off
H326Vikram4:13Cut-off
H1042G Balachandar4:15Cut-off
H361Sundara Moorthy4:17Cut-off
H854JEYARAMAN.B4:31Cut-off

21K Veteran Male

H266Kumara Raghavan1:50
H113Vishvesh1:53
H301Colonel Rajesh1:54
H1050Roberto domingo fedron1:55
H724Lakshminarayanan Iyer1:55
H1046Bhava2:04
H298S R Prasanth2:07
H795C N Karthikeyan2:07
H130A Ravichandran2:08
H228Suresh Narayanan2:10
H364Suresh Govindarajan2:10
H566Rajesh Ramachandran2:10
H189Venkatraman V2:12
H377Krishnamoorthy2:16
H574D Dhandayudhapani2:17
H116Arun Kumar Jain2:19
H583MANOHAR2:19
H150JAYENDRA SONI2:20
H521Vaidyanathan2:21
H142Sai Sethuraman2:22
H567Kumar S2:22
H896Varadarajan Parthasarathi2:24
H581P.Arokiaraj2:25
H485Anup Chandran2:29
H582s.murali2:30
H115Subramanian2:31
H458Kannan2:31
H559SAIRAM RAMASWAMY2:31
H212Vijay Padmanabhan2:33
H587RAJARAM VENKATESAN2:34
H671Govind Negi2:34
H840SURIYANARAYANAN R2:34
H682Arunachalam2:35
H435SRINIVAS SRIKANTH P2:36
H703Kumar JS2:36
H897Sam Siddharthan2:36
H287Raghu2:37
H591V.V.Manivannan2:37
H170Kamal Tejnani2:39
H704K P SURESH KUMAR2:42
H781Santosh Nair2:42
H580Chinni Krishnan V M2:43
H900Mohanavel.P2:43
H849suresh velloremadhavan2:45
H174tamilavel2:47
H335S.RAJAKUMAR2:47
H1054V venkataraghavan2:47
H133Ameen Pasha2:49
H110Narayan Balasubramanian2:50
H712Chandran Gnanavel2:50
H1048V aswin kumar2:50
H674V VISWANATHAN2:51
H303Umashankar2:53
H677sridhar Ranganathan2:54
H676Balakrishnan D2:54
H873PALANIAPPAN2:54
H819Satish Panchapakesan2:56
H1029Mahesh chandra s bhakuni2:56
H805Anand2:57
H103Sathyanarayana P2:58
H184Srinivasan2:58
H856Sridhar2:59
H804Krishna Mohan Reddy3:01
H213Ravi Sampath3:01
H338Selvakumar3:01
H367R Dhevarajan3:01
H471CHANDRASEKARAN R3:01
H102Bala Kesavan3:02
H482SRINIVASAN B3:02
H841N.SANTHANA GOPALAN3:02
H858Ganesan K3:03
H331Kannappan kn3:03
H357Venkatakrishnan Pichumani3:03
H610P Murugesan3:04
H678Raghuram3:04
H370Subramanian M3:05
H433REX3:05
H707G S BALAJEE3:05
H295Yuvaraj3:06
H689Suresh3:07
H397Parimalavannan3:08
H782V V GIRIDHAR3:08
H895KIRUBAKARAN3:11
H104Sivakumar3:15
H869Sundaravadivelu3:16
H261Subbu Subramanian3:17
H673G. Suresh Babu3:18
H685Rengaraj G3:18
H1033Kannan J3:25
H1060amitabh kant3:25
H864Joseph prabhakaran3:27
H688Omprakash Ellanty3:28
H121Venugopal G3:31
H333Subbiah3:33
H660Nathella Prasanna Kumar3:35
H783Jaganathan Ramanujam3:36
H874SIVAKUMAR3:37
H106VENKATESWAR3:39
H1065T Gopi antony3:39
H355Nedunchezhian3:40
H241Sivarajan N3:42
H683Siva Shanmugam S3:51
H829ATMARAM3:57
H144K MOORHY3:59
H159Anil kumar4:09Cut-Off
H172M.Vijayan4:15Cut-Off
H114V. S. Kesavan4:25Cut-Off

21K Open Female

H209Holly Younglove2:12
H627Marianne Leinikka2:14
H222Grace Gahagan2:15
H362Arundhathi Krishnan2:19
H793Sarah Zuzulock2:19
H794Calley Connelly2:24
H809Trishna Agarwala2:24
H448Pudhuma Bharathi K2:29
H624Sindhu Raghavan2:29
H426V JANAKI2:30
H308Pepper McFarland2:35
H505Sucharita2:37
H499Padmapriya Ashok2:40
H199ramyaa.d2:40
H219Deepa Subramanian2:42
H329Kelly Rusch2:43
H132Supriya2:49
H790Gomathy Narasimhan2:50
H798Sridevi Ashokkumar2:50
H643Jotsna2:51
H771Melissa Kanjiani2:51
H828G Srikala2:52
H835Sindhu Rangasamy2:52
H670Lekha Rajeev2:53
H358Arunadevi2:54
H738m d lokeswari2:56
H747Anu vidya2:57
H822P.Boolakshmi2:59
H679chitra sharma3:00
H1047Prabha G3:02
H778Dr Sruti Chandrasekaran3:03
H862Rajeswari3:06
H727Rama Vani3:07
H1049V Deepiga3:07
H888VINOLEE3:08
H844Sreeja3:09
H665kamini mathai3:10
H687vidhyutha3:12
H275Vithya V3:14
H730Sangavi Gururaghavendran3:16
H740Deepashree3:16
H245Vijayachamundeeswari3:16
H658Suganya3:17
H585A Ponnichelvi3:19
H715Uma Jayanthi .K3:21
H675KAMAKSHI E3:27
H742Seena Krishnan3:27
H353Deepti Sachan3:30
H663Nivedha Kumar3:31
H667Jeyanthi Murthi3:31
H863Santhosh Lakshmi3:34
H447S. Sneha3:36
H345GOPIKA SUNIL3:41
H175Meera Iyer3:46
H772Srimathi Kumaraswamy3:48
H664Devika Rajkumar3:49
H470sanjana3:51
H1112Anisha3:51
H681Saranya Krishnamurthy3:52
H242Chitra Veeraswamy3:58

21K Veteran Female

H571Chhavi Malik2:31
H672Sujatha Rajesh2:45
H843Vijaya Somasundaram2:47
H870Shanthi3:01
H666SUNDARAMBAL V R3:06
H710RADHA KUMAR3:09
H839GEETHA L3:17
H763Alli Premila3:25
H289Deepa Kaliyur3:30
H867Shobana Raghavan3:41
H105gita mathai4:42Cut-Off

Chennai Trail Marathon 2016 - Photo Links

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Dear Runners,

we hope you enjoyed running #CTM16 and do look forward to hearing about your experience! The volunteers behind the 5th edition of Chennai Trail Marathon had a great time this weekend indulging 1000+ runners into trail running bliss! Do share with us what you appreciated and do not hestitate to point out the areas which you feel further improvement is possible.

More Photo Links / Timings / Rankings will be shared shortly. Stay tuned!

Photo Links

Vaithiyanathan S


Hemnath - Be calm Studious



Mahee Wanderer - Nineeka Photography


Follow our FB Page for the latest updates!

Chennai Trail Marathon 2016 - Finisher Timings / Rankings


CTC - Ainthinai Green Day - 4 Sep 2016

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CTC - Ainthinai Green Day - 4 Sep 2016






Chennai Trekking Club along with our Green Team Ainthinai is proud to announce yet another signature event of the year Green Day 2016 - a special annual event dedicated to Mother Earth to celebrate the cause of Environment and Sustainable living. This event will be our big step forward to create awareness by planting trees on a larger scale and to understand the necessity to have a Greener Ecosystem.

Over the past 4 years many of you volunteered selflessly in our ongoing green events to plant an amazing 7000+ saplings in and around Chennai with a significant survival rate of 70%. We can all be proud of this amazing accomplishment which is a small effort to make our city a greener and better place to live in. In the past years our team has initiated numerous green initiatives including major cleanups, lake restoration, setting up nurseries, fabrication of tree guards, corporate green drives, segregation & recycling efforts, green workshops, rooftop gardening, source segregation initiatives, collaboration with farmers, kids tree walks, etc. Most of this was done seamlessly owing to the fruitful collaboration that we have with TN forest department.

In November 2014 which was CTC's first Green Day we planted around 900+ saplings in Thenneri village near Kanchipuram. This was followed up by various maintenance events over the past 2 years with the help of our regular volunteers.

Last year for the second edition of Green Day we chose a reserve forest area near Padappai and planted around 1500+ saplings along with Forest Department. This was followed up several maintenance drives over the past year with the help of our CTC volunteers who have spent their several weekends here especially during summer bathing in the scorching heat. Results have shown here with about 90% of the saplings survived.

This year for our 3rd Annual Green Day, on Sunday September 4th, we are planning to plant around 1000+ saplings in a place in Chennai outskirts with the main theme of afforestation. We need help of minimum 300 volunteers to make this event a grand success.

It's gonna be fun.

It's gonna be green.

And as usual it's gonna be another wonderful CTC style volunteering event ;)

So go ahead and register yourselves to be part of this wonderful event !!!


When : Sep 4th 2016 06:00 am - 12:00 noon

Where : Somewhere in Chennai outskirts [Stay tuned for updates on location ;) ]

Agenda :
- Assemble at a pick-up point of your choice (on time).
- Group together and reach the plantation spot before 06:00 am.
- Planting 1000+ saplings ( or as much as we can plant, planting them proper is more important than the count we plant :) ).
- Do some mulching and watering to the saplings that we planted.
- Pose for a group pic :p or click a selfie.
- Leave from the spot before 12:00 noon with satisfied heart.

Must Carry :
1) Comfortable Clothing, Shoes/Sandals.
2) Reusable, Filled Water Bottles.
3) Cap, Sun Screen - if required.
4) Camera - if you have ;)

Member Guidelines :
  • CTC is a non-profit group and accounts will be shared transparently with all participants.
  • Participants who engage in irresponsible, disrespectful or unsafe behavior will be blacklisted from future CTC events.
  • Feedback or complaint from any CTC member on the group, event, organizer, safety or accounts can be raised to the core@chennaitrekkers.org .

CTC Green Day 2016 - How to plant a tree ?

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CTC - Ainthinai Green Day @ Kambarajapuram (near Walajabad) - 4 Sep 2016



Planting a tree
A tree is planted with lots of passion and the joy of connecting the roots to mother earth is matchless. It is the birth of a new green life on soil to support the animal and human life-system. There are various activities that are carried out before, during and after the plantation (A.K.A: Giving Life to a Tree) of the tree sapling. We have tried to summarize them below.


1)      Procuring Tools
Crowbar and Garden Hoe are very important tools to plant saplings. Crowbars are used to dig the pits and loosen the soil bed before planting the sapling and Garden Hoe is used to take the soil out from the pit. Apart from these tools, small iron rods are also used to dig small pits in case of seed sowing activities.
2)      Procuring Saplings
Saplings of 5-6 feet sizes are procured from the TN Forest Department nurseries through appropriate approvals from the forest authorities. We choose the saplings according to the place of plantations, its soil texture and water source availability. Various plants we plant include Vengai, Illupai, Naval, Magilam, Fig, Kumil, NeerMaruthu, Thaanrikkai, Poovarasu, Pungai and Mandhaarai
3)      Transport Saplings
Transporting saplings from nurseries to the plantation venue is done through small goods carrier vehicles. The saplings are carefully loaded taking into consideration of its size and growth, and then unloaded in the plantation venue. We get the help of TN Forest Department vehicles to transport the saplings locally.
4)      Digging Pits
The growth and survival of the plant saplings depends on the way the Plant Pit is made. An average of 1.5 feet to 1 feet are dug depending on the size and variety of the saplings using the tools. The pits are widened with the width of 2-3 feet circumference depending on the type of plants to form the soil beds and water the plant once it is planted.
5)      Planting Saplings
The sapling cover that holds the root is cut open carefully, without damaging the roots and the sapling is planted inside the pit with its original soil that held the roots, then filling up the pit with the soil which is dug out. The soil is packed closer and stronger to hold the root and stem of the sapling to be firm and upright. The soil bed around the sapling is then widened and made a bund like shape to hold water and manure.
6)      Mulching
Mulching is the process of packing the root-soil bed with dry organic materials like grass husk, dry leaves, coconut shells, coir and sugar cane husks after planting the sapling. This process ensures the young root which connected the soil retains water content and moisture for the growth. This is very important for the survival as the root needs to be taken care to not get dried during the initial growth phase of the plant.
7)      Watering
Watering the saplings is the process of filling the soil-root bed of the plant with water and ensuring the water stagnation around the roots for the plant. Watering the newly planted sapling is very essential for the survival and strength of the roots which connects the soil bed firmly.
8)      Fixing Tree Guards
One another very important method to protect the planted saplings. Tree Guards protect the plants from being eaten away by domestic animals and broken by heavy winds and ensures its growth to be a fully grown tree. We make our own tree guards by cutting the iron mesh, reuse the tree guards which are cut from a fully grown tree, make a natural tree guard by combining thorns and tree barks and by wired meshes.
Apart from all the core activities, 
* Giving preference to Native trees is always best approach which is capable enough to withstand natural disaster like flooding,cyclones..etc and these plants survive in environment and soil even during peak summer and life time of the these trees are more than 100 years easily. 
* Identify the sapling which is suitable for the place, How to do it ? It is simple, Look around the trees grown there already which can be chosen for plantation. For example, If lake is chosen for plantation, It is best to have the trees which attracts birds to nest  and kind of fruit bearing saplings to birds and the sapling that withstand even high amount water poured around the roots. Understand the bio-diversity and plant saplings accordingly. 
* Obtaining permission from the official/local/groups which is key factor to be considered before doing any plantation and also make sure somebody from the locality would take care of the planted sapling and monitor its growth and survival on a regular basis. It is not just about plantation, one has to maintain the planted sapling till to grows into a tree. Keep in touch with the locals periodically and conducting maintenance drives on the planted areas would also yield better results. 
* Tree guard is MUST for any open area/street/roads plantation. If there is no scope to fix tree guard for saplings then pick the saplings which will not be eaten by cows or other animals. 
* Applying manure periodically on the planted saplings is also best way to make the trees grows faster and healthier.
Come join us on our annual Green Daycoming Sunday Sep, in which we are planning to plant 1000+ saplings near Walajabad in association with the Tamilnadu Forest Department - sign up here

Thanks,Team Ainthinai |Refuse |Reduce |Reuse |Recover |Recycle

Fitness Test Results - Sep 14

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Around 20 members (dedicated souls) self-assessed their fitness level today morning by joining our fitness checkup climbing up a 142m high hill along a rocky slope with a 10kg (7kg ladies) backpack:
Monit(Age 3): Barefoot climber and Divyesh(Age 5): Runner just ruled the 142 m Panchapandava hills today along with their father, climbed in 6 and 7 min respectively. What are you guys waiting for, these kids are just full of energy and proper climbing techniques. 

Another wonderful morning spent in breezy climate, beautiful city views and like minded souls!
Are you a member of CTC but not yet participated in any trek? Highly time for you to join the next fitness test and know where you stand in terms of readiness to get into the outdoors. Stay tuned for the next one coming soon. Even if you don't make it within the given time limit you can start working out and get ready soon!

Timings to reach the peak generally vary between 5 minutes to 15+ minutes depending on the fitness level of participants:
  • 10 min and below - fit to participate in CTC moderate treks
  • 11-15 min - need to become more active to improve fitness (read: health)
  • 16+ min - out of shape! Urgent action required to get out of unhealthy shape
Members taking 11+ minutes to scale the peak should engage in regular physical activity (e.g. trice a week, 30-60min each) - any sport will do: 
  • Trekking - join for any of our ongoing easy weekday morning treks
  • Swimming - join our twice a week open water swimming camp
  • Cycling - cycle near your neighborhood or join our frequent cycle rides. Cycles can be rented in many stores in the city
  • Running - go for a solo run near your house or join one of the many running groups across the city
  • Others - any regular sport activity will get you quickly in shape: play badminton, volleyball, soccer, etc.
We have all become stagnant in our modern day lifestyles (sitting at office, commute, home) disconnected from the active lifestyle of our forefathers. Unless you engage in a regular physical activity to offset our stagnant lifestyle your health will quickly dwindle down. A regular sports routine will make you feel more active & alive, sleep better, eat healthier, you ll make better use of early mornings, ... simply said - it ll change your life!
So what are you still waiting for to step out?

Regards

Vishal.R
+91 9003623094
13.039125 N,80.212376 E

Green Day - Thank You Green Warriors!!

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Thank You Green Warriors!!
Annual events... or should I say, 'Celebrations' like this is always special and leaves everlasting , beautiful memories... This Green Day was no exception and it brought back fond memories from previous green day events/ locations...
Friends,
On behalf of CTC Ainthinai, we thank all the volunteers and the singa kutties for the selfless efforts...   We (CTC Ainthinai) seem to have some 'Punarjenma' connection to  Walajabad, as all our green day locations so far have been around Walajabad :-)... Its been a busy week, with lots of pre event works in preparation for the Green Day - Digging pits, sorting out other logistics like transport, breakfast, tools, manure, mulching material, calling up participants, coordinating transport, etc... And, you were all geared up and ready , pitching in left, right and center for the pre event work too - It wouldn't have been possible without you guys. 
Come the D day, it looks like rain was so eager, that it decided to pay a visit to the spot before the Green day... And, we only feel blessed that it did... Yes, the wet convictions made it a little challenging with all the pits filled in with water... But, CTC volunteers na chummava... Gethuda... Neruppuda... Nothing could have stopped us - You all cared little about the thorns, no one cared about the repeated falls instead enjoying it ...Be it, teams competing and having kiddish fights,  Kids giving gyan on why we plant trees and making fun of some 'uncles' ,it was non stop fun..  It was a perfect ending that the last 'sapling' for the day was planted by a 'kid'...In all, we planted 806 Saplings and 300 Palm Seeds500+ Pungai Seeds.. 'Mass' effort... Hats off to you all... Take a bow.
I hope all these saplings and the kids stay healthy and grow well together. Saplings are like these kids... They need to be nurtured during the initial days, until they are ready to be on their own... Watch out for regular camping/  maintenance events at the green day location... Lot more fun awaited. If you doubt the fun part, rewind to the mud bath many of us had :-).
Core Team and volunteers had spent many days on the preparation works of Green Day. It's our pleasure to highlight few of them. Once the location was identified, few volunteers had visited the spot and got involved in marking the pits for saplings. Various aspects have been taken into consideration while marking the pits. We would like to thank Vignesh MailappanDilly Babu,Prabhakaran, Prabha G, YogiRaghuramThanabalanRajeshRashmiBharatDeepak and few others for spending their weekends/weekdays and ensuring the pits preparation.
As we targeted to plant 1000+ Grown up Saplings with 200+ Volunteers involved, lot of prework had to be executed  couple of days prior to the event. Bunch of our hard core volunteers were always ready and took care of these pre event works. We would like to thank SudhakarGohulHariMaheshNaan SPSathyaRajeshYogiRashmiBharatThanabalan, Raja, MuthukumarDeepak, Nagaraj, RaghuramSai KarthikVinoth SankaranArun Prasath and few more volunteers who were involved in unloading the 1200+ saplings, placing them in appropriate pits, unloading mulching materials, arranging the tools and various other works. Without these bunch of selfless dedicated hardworking fellas, the event wouldn't have happened smoothly.

When the volunteers were putting their tremendous effort on planting the saplings, it was very very important to keep the volunteers energetic - Who else to thank, but the team leads who kept the energy levels of their teams high and executed the plans well.. Thank you guys.
Team Leads
Arasu - Naan SPSathya
Vaagai - AshwinIlangaovan
Banyan - 
RajeshThanabalan
Poovarasu - 
Prabhakaran, Prabha Pungai - MeenakshiHiema TejaBadam - RavikumarNiranjanNeem - RaghuramKarthikai SelvanKaruvelam - Dil BabuMahesh
Naaval - YogiSudhakar
Neer Marutham - Sai KarthikVijay

Saplings might not have needed its food (water) on the green day due to rain, but we definitely needed soru...We would like to thank the Food Committee , headed by Vinoth Sankaran and his team members Arun PrasathSai Karthik for taking care of the most important department for the day :-).
Beautiful mementos aka photo frame had been prepared by Hema and Bensh for appreciating the volunteers. Thanks a lot guys. Photo Frame was so beautiful.


We extend our sincere thanks to Apoorva who took care of First Aid and General medical assistance. 
Beautiful clicks & editing by all the photographers including Noel,VishnuBalaRameshBe Calm StudiosHarish Karthik - Links below - A beautiful pic speaks thousand words and looks like we have so many of them... Thank you guys. Tag yourself, share and spread the word.
Last but not least. We thank each and every participants who joined this wonderful event. You guys are awesome. Mother nature blesses you all.

Post Event Fun
Follow us in Fb on below links...Many more plantation events planned in and around the city too. Keep an eye for the upcoming events and 'Grow Trees with Us'.


Feel free to let us know of any feedback @ ainthinaicoreteam@googlegroups.com ...There are always things to improve and we are happy to hear constructive feedback. 
'Tree Growing' though an important step in 'Going Green', there is more to it..  Daily 5 minutes of our time towards 'Waste Management' at home will get us more closer to a  green sustainable living... We are here to share /help each other. Many in CTC have done it/ doing it - waste segregation and home composting... What are you waiting for? Reach out to one of the organizers and we will help you get started.
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#ChennaiRedKnights# (CRK)
CRK, CTC's blood wing is organising blood camps and blood for cancer fighters at Egmore child hospital . If you are interested in bleeding do it for these kids.
#BLOOD DONATION CAMP @Chrompet & Central GH#
Date : 02-October-2016
Venue : Chromepet GH & Rajive Gandhi Govt Hospital
Timings : 9AM - 2PM
#Bloodgroupbehindourname#
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Neelankarai Community Development - Efforts at Govt Middle School, Neelankarai

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You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
- Walt Disney

In our search for such beautiful people we discovered the kids of this school
😍😍😍

Environmental awareness is something which should be seeded in every human being when s/he is young, nurtured as their second nature
Week 1
Day :- Sept 2nd, 2016
Time :- 2.30 pm to 4.00 pm
Venue :- Neelankarai P.U.M.S Govt school

Welcomed to the combined classes of 6th ,7th & 8th by around 80 smiling and budding faces, with a handful recognizing us due to our previous engagement with them at Chinna Neelankarai and Periya Neelankarai during our CCC7 story-telling events


We start of with simple discussion on why plastic is harmful to us by showing few pictures to them. Thanks to CESAW - we were able to use their materials to explain them the harms of plastic , the damages it causes not only on land but also in water, to all the marine life.
They added that they too have seen a couple of tortoise being stuck in nets and plastic covers.
We now quiz the students for solutions for these problems. The kids are on their feet, answering them and throwing us various ideas such as:
1) Stop using Plastic bags
2) Stop using Plastic drinking packets and bottles , etc
Then we ask the kids what do we do with the existing plastic bottles and covers...?
Planning to show our expertise, we were about to explain and again the kids are on their feet to answer let's recycle it 😊👍
This is the moment we realised these kids were well informed, all they need is a bit guidance i.e., the seed is already planted all it needs now is nurturing and care.
At the end of week 1 session , we gave a task to our beloved kids to make and bring crafts out of recycled materials and we said we will be with them next week same time.
Week 2
Day :- Sept 9nd, 2016
Time :- 2.30 pm to 4.00 pm
Venue :- Neelankarai P.U.M.S Govt school
With no previous reminder for almost a week, we again went to meet these amazing kids. To our surprise out of 80 kids almost 30 to 35 kids made some beautiful crafts out of throw-away plastics like a mobile stand, Plant holder and other paper arts.



Then we proceeded to quiz them about the types of garbage : wet and dry waste; Recyclables and Non recyclables.
Discussed with them about the bio-magnification  process and also reveal to them the fact aboutcarrying hot food in plastic covers/packs is one of the reason for cancer.
We urged them to choose our traditional good-old tiffin-carriers over plastic/tupperware.
In a bid to test their knowledge about alternatives for plastic goods, we challenged each one to come up with one plastic-item and the equivalent non-plastic goods. Here's a few with what they came up with... 
  • Cloth Bags vs Plastic Bags
  • Steel water bottles vs Plastic/tupperware bottles
  • Fountain Pens vs Ball Point Pens
  • Colour Pencils vs Sketches
  • Toys made of wood and clay vs Plastic-made toys

We encouraged the students find more of such alternatives and make a conscious choice to use non-plastic goods.
While we were about to finish, the students who didn't bring their crafts, promised to make and bring them in the following week... This was great due to the fact that the students realized that our visits were not one-off sessions... but that we valued their efforts and that we wanted a better future for all, including them :)

Week 3:
Day :- Sept 16th, 2016
Time :- 2.30 pm to 4.00 pm
Venue :- Neelankarai P.U.M.S Govt school 
This week started off with an interaction with the School's principal. We requested the principal to set up a Eco Club in the school... to our amazement, she responded that the school had one already and it conducts Drawing, Essay and Speech competitions on almost 20-25 days in a year on various special days such as World Environment Day, etc.,
Since the foundation was already in place, we discussed with her and another teacher about our plans such as setting up of a green wall on the compound of the school, Setting up of compost bins, a session on Paper Crafts and a No-Plastic Awareness rally with the children. She was extremely happy and extended her support for all our endeavours.
The EcoClub (Sutruchoozhal Kuzhu) was functioning as 5 groups. We took this as an opportunity and designated one activity for each group as below:
A) Green Team - Weekly talks in the assembly on environment awareness
B) Blue Team - Planning & Setting up of green wall
C) Yellow Team - Making of paper bags & bin bags which will be distributed to local shops on day of rally
D) Brown Team - Compost bin setting up in school
E) Orange Team - Planning & Organisation of rally


The principal then confirmed us with tentative dates for the plans. We proceeded to meet the children , the kids who had promised to make craft last week, they brought some more beautiful crafts like Pen pouches, Piggy banks, Etc.,
Then, with the help of the teacher we identified the teams and it's members and we explained to them about their designated activity.
Awareness in Action...
Finally, before we concluded for the day, the students made a pledge not to use ball point/gel pens any more... instead use only the fountain (ink) pens as a first step towards our journey towards a healthy and green environment.
We bid them adieu until next time ☺


Our Plans include the following:


1. Session on Paper Crafts and Bin Bags ( October 7th, 2016)
2. Green Wall (October 14th and 21st)
3. No-Plastic Awareness Rally in and around Neelankarai (14th November)
4. Source Segregation and Composting within School Campus
5. Weekly EcoTalks on Friday's at the School Assembly


Come... Be Part of the Change that you wanna see.... !!!


Heartfelt thanks to all folks....Chitra from CESAW, Aravind, Pradeep, Varadaraja, Ragavee... who showed up during different days and boosted our efforts 

-- Cheers --
Neelankarai Ninjas



Into the ‘Wild’

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Into the ‘Wild’ 
Lakshmi Sundari Agoramoorthy





Prologue:

Who Am I? A lazy fatso techie who prefer movie marathon rather than real marathon. How did I register? For my best friend; she pushed me and I can’t see her Orangutan face that she keeps when she is upset. My previous trek experience? A big Zero. My fitness level? Well, I thought myself fit until I took fitness test.The test, though I was not up to the mark, but it was the real motivation, first time in my life I felt the feel when you accomplish something pushing yourself from the comfort zone. That’s the time I decided to go for the challenge and was praying desperately to get selected. And yes! Next day the inbox popped up with the short listed participants with me in it, that’s how I started my first trek with a bag of optimism, determination and other essentials.

The day finally came, me and my friend, Monica Gellers of real life, checked, shared and packed the essential items as on the prep mail, reached the pick-up point a little too early, that we made friends with the tea kada anna, the dog next to him and countless mosquitoes. After some time by 5 am the van came and the real journey began with 19 of us in the van and the lovely French couple following us in their car, by 6 am we left Chennai.. We had heavy breakfast on the way in Varadhapalayam and reached Tada 9.30 am.We had formal security check-up near the gate, then travelled 2/3 km in van to the start point.

The First Climb:

After walking few meters through the woods, at the start of the trek point, got the instructions from Nambi and Rajasekar, the organizers of the trek a.k.a my life savers. Clambered my first elevation, by beginning I was enthusiastically climbing up, with lot of statistic plans in my head to reach first. Every plans got dead, when wheezing hit me, I started to breathe heavily and my heart felt like triggered explosive, as pushed myself so hard to climb,  my friend, the aged French couple were crossing me and climbed so high. Deep inside felt ashamed but also I wanted to make sure that I shouldn’t make Nambi/Rajasekar to bring me in, is wrong. So I tried my best, to move up with motivating voices inside my head. Finally with lot of struggle I climbed the 540m elevation and the price for it, was the beautiful small water pool in middle of the wild. After having good fun and relaxation, with full energy, was ready for the next step.





Moving forward, through the flow of the stream, was rejoicing, as you can spot small pools, where the water is so HD clear (as Akash always mention) that you can see the algae and kelp inside it.Then we settled for lunch again near a water pool, it was a scenic beauty; we had fun swimming and witnessed Bahubali acts of Rajasekar, as crane was not available to lift us out of the pool. With good chit chat and laughter, the journey continued. By this sequence of the trek, I got adapted to the condition and was making it quick without any trouble.

The Lost Series:

But oh yeah! Did I mention ‘without trouble’?  Curse on it, as the real trouble welcomed us with its evil smile. Around 3.30 pm, we lost the trail; we lost the people before us. The group spitted into two, one with Rajasekar and the rest with Nambi. From then the trek got more interesting, the lost series began. Me, my friend and seven was with Nambi. Since it was a new trail, the things got harder, we were moving forward in the plateau chanting Rajasekar’s name, hoping to get a response, but all we got was echo, it was like nature replying ‘ Have fun!’.Nambi, Sudarshan and Sravan, the other 2 experienced trekkers, sometimes made us wait in a place and check for Rajsekar.At one point, Nambi alone left, in full-fledged search mode, leaving us with Sravan and Sudarshan. For the actual scene going on, we guys should be in tension mode right? But we weren’t. It was like a time knowing more about us, eating, playing, teasing and making fun. The panic started to fill us when we realized rain clouds nearing us. Luckily we had signal, several time we tried calling the other group, but they couldn’t be reached. As we were thinking what can be done, Netaji came up with an idea of making smoke. Even though it was a bad idea for a highland, but we don’t want to take chances, so with the dry grasses and leaves created smoke, well! It was a mosquito repellent at least. It was getting dark, we were out of water, and there was no sound of Nambi too, so Sravan with Savanna went to fetch water if any chance to find waterbody nearby. That was the time Rajasekar called Sravan, and then quickly we shared our location.Whoof! It was a relief, after a long wait Rajasekar came so is darkness and rain. We quickly filled our bottles with rain water and sealed our mobiles in rain proofs, took our torch and all ready for following Rajasekar, in that pitch dark and rainy land. Something is missing! What was it! No who was it? The character Nambi was missing, his mobile was switch off, since it was dark and raining we decided to move the camp place hoping that Nambi will reach us. Walking through the thorns and the shrubs, we reached the camp site by 8.00pm with our wet dress and hungry face. My dreams on having Maggi was ruined,’ Thank you again for it RAIN!’.Since tarpaulin got stuck with Nambi, we managed to build an affordable tent, quite enough to cover all of us. The rain got stopped by the time and we went to sleep after having some food. The night was so cold, somehow we managed to sleep with our wet clothes between the insects and weird snoring’s.




The Thirsty Day:

After amazing first day experience the next day began with the warmth of the sun. I had many first’s during this trek, one of them was eating without brushing teeth, due to the shortage of water. There were only few bottles left for the 5 hours of journey, so we had to be so stingy in preserving it.The next stop was the ruined fort and I was so disappointed on it, as it was nothing but was like a broken well. The disappointment didn’t continue until they took us to the view point, it was awestruck, felt like was on top of the world, the purpose of the trek got fulfilled. Back then, I felt some changes in me, I didn’t feel normal, though I was on the very top and wanted to enjoy but couldn’t, something hindered me.I thought I could manage , without any excuses I started for the next pit stop waterless. Most of us were dehydrated, as sun was giving it’s over affection to us, at some point most of us started to dream about water. Rajasekar lead the thirsty group, pulling each of us saying that it was only few meters away and took us to top of the steep elevation. By that time I totally lost my energy, due to dehydration and improper diet made me sick. Getting down the hill was easy but was little tricky, everyone with water in mind started to go down. We were going down and down, but there was no sign of water, it looked like forever to get water. As the time went, I felt sicker, I could feel my eyes were going up and I became so desperate of water. I started to slow down and then got separated from the group. Then with the help of Karthick, Iyyamperumal and Rajasekar I reached the water point, No, Heaven is more appropriate to be told. Everyone waited for me (I’m really sorry for that guys!) and we halted for lunch near the forest Temple. In the entire second day series, did we forget something? Like a person who went to help us? Yes, Nambi was back again and the crew was complete. Everything became normal and we started for the end of the journey. Due to my sickness, Rajasekar took my bag added to his bag and he was back me till we reached the plain land. (That was one of the most caring acts someone has ever done to me, Thanks a ton Rajasekar! It meant a lot to me.)Reaching the plain land, we had to travel 7km for the village, I felt alright but at the end, I struggled again and Sudarshan was there to help. Finally Nagala!

So that’s the end of my first trek, the entire two days was a roller coaster ride. One of my most unforgettable life event and was a learning experience; the word ‘Thanks’ won’t be enough to express my gratitude for the people who was next me. The quote ‘It’s never too late to start’ is now driving me, soon you all can catch me in next trek with high fitness level! Till then Ciao !!!

CTC Blood donation camp - 2nd Oct – Inspiring donor stories

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Looking for some motivation to start with blood donations?
20 minutes of your time and 350ml of your blood is all it takes to save a life!
Read further for few inspiring words from some life savers…
Rajasekar - CTC volunteer/organizer, Randonneur and biker, who has donated 50+ times since he was 17.5 years old:


What motivates you to donate blood?
It’s a God like feeling to donate blood because you give life one more opportunity in flow in someone’s body.
How do you feel mentally after donating?
After donating blood I have a habit of meeting the recipient. The beaming eyes and joyful smiles makes me forget all the physical weakness that I would have got.
Most memorable moment when you donated ?
There are many.  I once donated to the road side dwellers. They almost fell on my feet as if I was God to them. It reaffirms my faith God dwells in all. Once I donated blood to an accident victim on New Year's Eve. New Year New Life. In one of the Apollo Hospitals, a nurse recognizes me 'Blood Donor Anna'.

 M G Raja – Regular CTC volunteer and blood donor, who has been donated 60+ times since he was 18:


How did you improve your haemoglobin count?
I have changed my food habits. I have a piece of dates every 3 hours and my daily diet includes green leaves, raisins soaked in water every morning/night, daily intake of fruits and a glass of beetroot juice every week.
Most memorable moment when you donated?
I donated blood to an elderly woman for an open heart surgery and post donation I went to meet the patient to meditate and extend positive energy to her. I got the chance to meet her children and grandchildren who were from a financially sound background. At that time, I was searching for a job and my family was in poverty. After getting to know my situation, the family offered me a job and financial support and provided me their visiting card for keeping in touch. With mixed emotions and prayers for the patient’s life, I left the hospital and dropped the visiting card in temple hundi and told God that I'll never sell my blood at any cost directly or indirectly even in the most challenging and tough times in life and to give me all strength to deal with the situation.
Have you met any recipients of your blood; how was the experience?
Emergency donation creates a possibility of meeting the recipient. The moment they wish/praise us, I feel even more responsible to keep myself healthy and keep donating more to serve the humanity.
Ramanan – Regular Emergency AB-ve blood donor, who has donated 33 times since 2002:



What motivates you to donate blood ?
There is no motivation at all seriously. This is the only help I can do myself to others.
How did you improve your hemoglobin count ?
After donating blood for one month I take more pomegranate in my food.That helps to maintain my hemoglobin at normal.
Most memorable moment when you donated?
Most memorable moment during my PG I was the only person in my university (Dindugul Gandhigram University) who had AB-ve. For a blood donation they took me from Dindugul to Madurai. A doctor and a health inspector accompanied me for a blood donation, wherein a 60+ years old patient was about to undergo a bypass surgery. They required 2 units of blood but only I was available till that time. I donated blood and then visited the patient. Usually I do to encourage them a little. When the patient's son said only 1 unit is available the patient was crying like a child. My heart melted on seeing him and I couldn’t control myself but request the doctors to take another unit of blood from me as AB –ve was a very rare blood group. However, the doctors disagreed to it. Later in the evening, I got the news that the unit was arranged. I couldn’t reason out my happiness when I came to know that the blood was arranged for that elderly person, though he wasn’t known to meThis is one beautiful memory that comes into my mind on my blood donation.




GHs have a daily blood need of 200+ units in Chennai. The units collected in the blood camp on 2nd Oct would be utilized for satisfying the daily demand. Join us on Oct 2 for our blood camp and support us further with emergency blood requirements.


You don’t have to be a doctor to save a life. A few drops of your blood is all it takes to save a life….

_______________________________________________________________________
Thanks,Chennai Red Knights


Kalrayan hill running (2x50) 24th & 25th Sept 2016

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[Written by Pudhuma]



Thanks to Peter and team for this memorable first ultra hill run!
I am so glad I survived it! I was really eager to participate in one of these after seeing the amazing photos/ videos from previous hill runs. But I am a newbie to running, too lazy to run and had only done 21k. But I wanted to try some new activities in CTC many of which I have not been to yet. I wrote to Peter seeking advice how to prepare for a hill run and hoping to participate in one in  6-12 months atleast, but he replied saying I can join this one!!! yay...I was so excited!! I sought CTC friend Niranjan's advice and asked about his past hill running experience (had seen him in the pictures).... he said I will be fine,..there will be rest breaks and all, so it wont be so intense and he encouraged me to participate. I was very eager to see the scenic hills, the villages, their beautiful people and houses...

I went through the names in the group list. ayyayo.... ivanga ellarum seasoned ultra runners madhiri theriyudhe.. setthom po.( all these people look like seasoned ultra runners- I am going to die!) But then Vipul and Varatha Raja are coming... means lots of fun for sure .. hahha :-) I ditched my comfy cotton salwar kameez which I usually like to run in, and tried dry fit T shirt & pant.. felt awkward and uncomfortable in that, but probably worth it, I thought..last minute shopping, packing and all set for friday evening. It was not so difficult to spot our car at Perungalathur- for it was the only one with a cycle mounted on it :). It was inspiring to meet Durai sir and listen to his amazing stories from ultra runs, triathlons with MTB and his energy drink- koozh (ragi porridge).We reached Kariyalur aroundmidnight and found a warm cozy corner to sleep in the windy campsite.


​I had opted for both cycling and running, but since I don't have a cycle nor hill cycling experience, was not sure what to expect. 
Peter was kind to offer his cycle to share and he said he would also like to run and cycle about 50-50 since he was ''out of shape'' ..!! Whhaaat?!!, he must be joking, I thought. Peteraavadhu out of shapeaavadhu. After breakfast at Vellimalai, Peter asked me if we shall ditch the cycle, and so I got the cue that he was not going to cycle and agreed ;). Planned to share with Manoj, but was later glad after actually getting on the trail that I was on my two feet and not on wheels hahhaa :D .Poor cyclists, so hilarious...observing 4 min silence for the cyclists at the trail turning and off we went running over the gravely trails, jumping over the fields, and climbing the steep terraces of the hills. We stopped to make arrows with small stones at every turn, sometimes Peter drew it on the rocks. Very often we had to retrace our path as it was a dead end !! Sometimes he drew a teasing smiley  with a heart or cycle :D 



The weather was very pleasant- partly sunny and partly cloudy and now and then a gust of cool wind would bring relief and freshness to our sweaty faces. The smells were so rustic and refreshing- could smell the fragrant herbal plants, the smell of cowdung as we crossed the fields and houses, the smell of smoke from firewood. Loved running in the rocky trails, uphills were challenging to keep running, had to stop and walk steep slopes. It was so beautiful to see the terraced rolling hill slopes.. for most part dry, whereas foothills and some lower slopes fertile and green with Sugarcane, Tapioca, vegetables, ragi, etc. We got fresh lemons, sugarcane and yummy fruits from the trails! The villagers must have thought we were crazy to be running around. The women in the fields draped their saris in a different style. It was nice to see many of the children out in the fields waving at us cheerfully. Women in their homes and were kind to offer us water even though they had to fetch water from far away. In one place the girl got scared and hid at "amma thanni" :D One of the men working in the fields seeing us running asked if we like to do some farm work.Many of the villages were small- just a street or two of row houses. I saw the beautifully constructed bamboo structures for the goats, hens, and the beautiful mud houses with clay tiles and thatch and missed my camera very much- I had left it in the car to keep my bag light :(  


Afternoon 1pm snack, we had much awaited power nap under the huge mango tree on a square stone platform. I could not sleep. It was too windy and cold. But rested the legs. As we waited slowly the cyclists joined us one by one.. some more survivors! yay! I slowly learnt all the names of the runners and cyclists, atleast most of them. There was this little boy who looked like a school kid. I hadn't met him before. We introduced ourselves and were so thrilled to know that we were from the same hometown... ada! namma ooru payyana??!! Ranjith slowed down his pace and gave me company for a good part of the rest of the day, as we chatted away.

Then we saw Peter stop for a dip at a stream, we also saw the road ahead led to Vellimalai and without stopping lest Peter changed the plan to some loops and tough trails, stuck to the main road and kept going till we reached Vellimalai. We quenched our thirst with refreshing lemon juice at the juice shop. Then Peter said that we can do a 5K loop to finish the 50K target distance for the day and pointed at a peak somewhere!!???!!. Didn't sound so simple, but still we went reluctantly. Many dropped after first stretch and Mani who had the map led the rest of us through it. But almost midway Thomas got bad knee pain and my legs were done with running, so we walked most of it (Thanks to Govind and Mani for slowing their pace) and finally reached Vellimalai for dinner where everything was over and I was happy to get some curd and rice. Caught up with Priya, Raja, Manoj and Vipul who told us how they ended up doing a different route after missing the trail. We missed you all so much! 


Then we reached campsite at Kariyalur.. and thus completed 52K for day1! I wondered why everyone crashed to sleep at 9 pm.. a bed time too early for CTC, I thought. I was not so tired .. infact, felt refreshed after dinner and juice. I was a bit disappointed that there were no stories (i dont mean ghost stories :P) or sharing of experiences of the day, singing or dancing (yeah after that 50K run? you might ask) or other camp fun. I had still not learnt many of the names nor met everyone!

On day 2, I was surprised my legs could actually run normally after what they went through previous day. we set out from another village Kottapatthur. I saw Randhir take a photo of the name of the village on his phone :). It must be a challenge for people not knowing Tamil to run around here in this place, I thought. We started off and before long we were climbing steep terraces....hahhaa poor cyclists had to carry the cycles.. at one point we had to climb right adjacent to a huge well!!! We stopped for a dip at really tiny pond and cooled down the skin.We met so many animals along the way- many unhappy dogs, bored goats, and curious cows. It was scary to cross the bulls.. there was a pair of them at every corner. They were all getting so restless seeing us running. Mani who was running next to me was also in red T shirt like me. At many places we stepped off the road and took difficult route climbing up or down to avoid the bulls. But at one place they were not tied properly- both the bulls. They were getting restless as more and more runners went past, and finally broke loose from the knot and chased us (or so we thought)...that sent Mani, myself and others running into the fields and bushes. Mani fell down in fear.. that was scary!! But the bull was gone in a few seconds- he was more scared .. hahaa :D Thank god!


​Kilometers don't seem to increase after first half of day..,..had done only 25K till 2pm!!!! Kottapatthur was soooo faaar across the hills. Quick snack break and very short rest under mango grove at this large village Thalakarai where they had two wells- a stone well for drinking and a muddy well for washing. Our rest place under the mango trees was nice and breezy had a nice view overlooking the paddy fields below. I made myself a simple straw bed to rest. At 3pm , we were back on our feet running. I was slowly trailing behind not wanting to miss the arrows or turns! Saryu was kind to slow and run along and boosted my speed and confidence to catch up with the runners ahead. I saw a very old man carrying a long heavy log of wood on his head and climbing uphill. wow! these villagers work so hard and are so strong, I thought!  Last water stop at a village which looked familiar. At the entrance there was a stone shrine made with flat stone rubble and no mortar. The traditional village temples were so simple and rudimentary. I saw many tiny shrines by the road/ in the fields, just made with 3 stone slabs and no mortar. They had no statues, just stones anointed with turmeric for worship.  

We stopped to ask how many kms more at every village. The villagers pointed a short cut which was there, but it seemed like we were headed the longer route to complete 50 K for the day! Our destination still seemed so far away... we may not reach before dark.. Govind and Saryu who were running along with me said they were going to walk the rest of it.. but there is about 10kms more and it will be pitch dark in half an hour!! It will be hard to run in dark. So, scared of missing arrow signs and running in dark, I left them and ran without stopping or listening to any leg pain whatever. It was pitch dark when I reached this familiar mango tree.. OMG.. this was where we rested yesterday for lunch!! must be still very far from destination. I ran on and came upon cyclist Kathir who had stopped to send a puppy back to that village it ran away from following him. His pedal had broke. But he managed with one pedal.. other cycles had suffered lot of damages too in the rough trail :P Kathir left in his cycle. And I was left alone in the dark. I did not want to miss the arrows. It is very important to be on right trail, so I took out my little phone and turned on the flashlight and hoped the battery would last till I reach main road atleast. My mind wouldn't stop worrying and I imagined getting lost in the forest and spending the night in the forest...grr...It wont be so bad, I will atleast find a shelter or some locals to help- I knew Tamil afterall!  Unfortunately, the trail was so desolate- no houses or even motorbikes. Then suddenly my foot slipped and almost tripped and I saw this soft puppy between my feet. That puppy that came with Kathir!!! 'Go back or stay away from me', I instructed the pup, 'don't come fall under my feet'. It wouldn't listen and ran along closely. okay! Well, atleast for this pitch silent darkness I had one companion :-) I stopped and thanked runners ahead for every arrow I saw.. atleast I am on right trail... oh wait, was it yesterday's arrow??!! Finally after running in dark for about 45 min- 1 hour saw some motor bikes and asked how far to main road and he said our folks were not far away. And he was right for in a  few minutes I was relieved to hear voices and saw a part of our group at the main road! They received me with cheer and applause :) We waited for a while for the other members to reach. Was so glad to reunite with the team! 48K run completed on day 2!



And thus I completed my first 100 K ultra run (2 x 50) thanks to the amazing team who gave me the confidence and determination to complete with ease which I would not have even dreamt of doing otherwise! Thanks to Peter and all runners and cyclists for awesome company, energy and support during this adventurous weekend! It was such a memorable experience! Thanks also to Nedunchezhian and Durai sir for dropping us home safely after such a long tiring day!
(Photos courtesy- Govind, Peter, Vipul)

CTC Fitness test Results - Oct 04,2016

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Around 40 members (dedicated souls) self-assessed their fitness level today morning by joining our fitness checkup climbing up a 142m high hill along a rocky slope with a 10kg (7kg ladies) backpack:
Another wonderful morning spent in breezy climate, beautiful city views and like minded souls!
Are you a member of CTC but not yet participated in any trek? Highly time for you to join the next fitness test and know where you stand in terms of readiness to get into the outdoors. Stay tuned for the next one coming soon. Even if you don't make it within the given time limit you can start working out and get ready soon!

Timings to reach the peak generally vary between 5 minutes to 15+ minutes depending on the fitness level of participants:
  • 10 min and below - fit to participate in CTC moderate treks
  • 11-15 min - need to become more active to improve fitness (read: health)
  • 16+ min - out of shape! Urgent action required to get out of unhealthy shape
Members taking 11+ minutes to scale the peak should engage in regular physical activity (e.g. trice a week, 30-60min each) - any sport will do: 
  • Trekking - join for any of our ongoing easy weekday morning treks
  • Swimming - join our twice a week open water swimming camp
  • Cycling - cycle near your neighborhood or join our frequent cycle rides. Cycles can be rented in many stores in the city
  • Running - go for a solo run near your house or join one of the many running groups across the city
  • Others - any regular sport activity will get you quickly in shape: play badminton, volleyball, soccer, etc.
We have all become stagnant in our modern day lifestyles (sitting at office, commute, home) disconnected from the active lifestyle of our forefathers. Unless you engage in a regular physical activity to offset our stagnant lifestyle your health will quickly dwindle down. A regular sports routine will make you feel more active & alive, sleep better, eat healthier, you ll make better use of early mornings, ... simply said - it ll change your life!

CTC - Ainthinai Home Composting Success stories - Part IV

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My home My Waste - Sri 
Details :
Srimathi Kumaraswamy
5/23/2016
Small 3T Khamba


My first black gold is ready feeling excited to share with you all.. 
Just 10 days of my home kitchen waste now changed to earth (yes it smells like Mannvasam) smell of earth...
Using kamba i started home composting 2 months back.. Got first output..
Just want to add kitchen waste in a pot like container (kamba) with little cocopeat everytime.. And spray little water.. Cover it with newspaper and lid.. Just 2 to 3 miinutes daily is enough... Theree pots in kamba.. After the pot is filled have to leave out for 1.5 months then pure soil is ready... Can be used to own plants .. I got 5 kg from my 10 days kitchen waste.. Can be sold too.. 



Can be used in organic farms as manure... 
Thank you Ashwin Sekar for the procedures and delivering kamba to my home.. Thank you Rocky Ravikumar Swaminathan for all valuable inputs... 
If anyone interested to start this kindly ping me... 
I am not sending daily waste out of my home.. Plastics also collected seperately including chocla covers milk packets... And given to laying roads or plastic collectors...

The joy of doing the right thing - Bharathi Vinoth
Details :
Bharathi Priya 
6/12/2016
Small 3T Khamba 

Until few months ago, I was one of the city people who used to live in an illusion that I do my duty correctly by putting all my garbage in one black polythene bag, tie it properly and judiciously dump it into a “dustbin” in the street and walk away. I assumed that my job ends there and from there on it’s the responsibility of the municipal workers to dispose them of properly without causing much damage to the eco-system. I never thought about what really happens thereafter and many of us still don’t.

Fortunately I came across Chennai Trekking Club and its inspiring CTC-Ainthinai volunteers. It's through them, I learnt that if we treat our garbage effectively at home by making small lifestyle changes, we can really avoid/reduce polluting our ecosystem.

In the illusion of comfort and modern lifestyle, we often ignore the damage we are doing to this system by just dumping our garbage(wrapping it around in an additional black plastic bag as if we don’t already generate enough garbage ) in a once beautiful marshland like Pallikaranai. Yes!! WE are the ones who are responsible for that big pile of garbage dump we witness in the Pallavaram-Thuraipakkam highway. Slowly and steadily we are contributing regularly for the increase in size of this dumpyard. We as a society can really change this by making some small changes in our lifestyle.

I wanted to change and so here I am after about 4 months of making small lifestyle changes in my home and spending about 2-5 minutes of my daily morning time towards Segregation and Home-composting. Now only the floor dust and non-recyclables go out as trash from my home, which comes up to a bin full for every 10 days. Rewind three months and the same bin used to be filled over every other day. 

So Composting, how its done ???

During my childhood days, I happen to live in a small town. I vaguely remember my mom throwing away the daily vegetable and other kitchen waste nearby the plants around our home. A much refined process of letting the household organic waste decompose naturally into the ground is otherwise called as Composting. In our city lifestyle where we live in multi-storeyed apartments its impossible to have such a place around our home.

Here comes Khamba pots to the rescue. Khamba pots are nothing but clay pots which are available through vendors such as dailydump. Together with this pot and a sack of cocopeat powder, I was able to witness firsthand the beautiful and effective process of how my household organic waste turned into a useful load of manure.


Segregate the organic waste from other non-decomposable items. Organic waste typically includes fruit & veggie peels, egg shells, food leftovers (only if they are already rotten else they can be used to befriend your street dogs). Once they are segregated, put them in this khamba pot. Add a handful of cocopeat powder. Mix them well and leave it to nature to do the remaining job. One need to add this mix of organic waste and cocopeat daily until the pot gets about 80% full. And once its about 80% full exchange the upper pot with the middle/bottom pot and repeat the process.

When you are busy filling the second/third pot the waste that you have filled in the first pot would have now turned into fresh nutrient rich manure (black gold). I experienced firsthand that composting at home is easy, mess-free, smell-free (except for the nice fresh earth smell – “Mann vaasanai”) and above all very satisfying. All it took was 1.5 sqft area in our balcony and 2 min of time every day. 

When I harvested my first batch of black gold yesterday, all I felt was pure bliss and a sense of contentment. This manure can be used for our own plants at home (if you happen to grow) or the plants/trees in your neighboring area or you can hand it over to our CTC-Ainthinai volunteers, they will put it to use in one of the tree plantation events.

Remember that, throwing our unsegregated daily household waste into the street garbage bins is almost same as throwing them on the streets. Especially, with the current disposal system in place this garbage will either end up in Pallikaranai or Kodungaiyur dumpyardand get burnt occasionally, polluting the eco-system which we happen to share with million other living species.

I have begun my path towards the change I want to see. You too can !!!

"Let us take our daily organic waste and put it back to earth, rightfully where it belongs"


"KEEP CALM AND COMPOST ON"

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Composting & Terrace Garden visit VIII - 8th Oct 2016

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Composting & Terrace Garden visit - 8th Oct 2016Mugalivakkam

Register Here !
“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
― George Bernard Shaw
Lets Grow Our Own Food

Below things will be covered . Volunteers who are interested to learn and practice alone  please register.
1) Home Composting
2) Soil Preparation / Terrace Garden Setup
2) Growing Organic Vegetables, Herb and Flower in Terrace.
3) Terrace Garden Issue and Solution
4) Practice the setup of Plants.






Reuse wastes for your garden







CTC's school cum tuition center in Pulicat started catering to children of impacted hamlets near Pulicat

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Thanks to the many kind hearted souls who supported our long term rehab program near Pulicat. Many kids from nearby backward hamlets which got badly impacted during the last Dec floods started attending classes at Chennai Trekking Club's school cum tuition center at Senjiamman Nagar kalvi kudom. Thanks also to the participants of our recent Kalrayan Hill Run / Nagala Trek for donating the trip balance towards the salaries of 3 teachers (10K / month).
We are now initiating the next rehab phase focusing on sanitation by constructing toilets for the nearby village of Vanjivakkam. Stay tuned for further updates.



Peter

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