In the third week of our stay at Sadanah forest the weather all of a sudden became very cold and wet. Id brought nothing but t-shirts and shorts so it was not ideal. Progressively it got worse and we were told a tropical cyclone was headed our way and due to hit land fall at 3 o'clock in the morning. Having experienced 2 tropical cyclones in NZ I thought I knew what I was in for. However, in little bamboo huts it's not so easy to shut yourself off from the outside world. That night Nicole and I tried to get a few hours sleep as nature conspired around us. Wind and rain ferociously battered the side of our hut. Nothing escaped getting wet. Except my Macpac pack which managed to stay relatively dry inside, which i was very grateful for. At about 2 oclock we were awoken and advised by the long termers that the storm was intensifying and we needed to gather in a communal area for safety. This was the training dorm which turned out to be no better then what we had come from. We lay down mats on the ground and prepared to go back to sleep. Then around 3 o'clock the storm hit. All hell broke loose, water flooded the ground and wind whipped up mud into our faces as we tried to sleep. There was no getting away from it. We became soaked from head to toe and trying to stay warm became a challenge. I had nothing but a t-shirt and shorts on and my sleeping bag wrapped around me which was drenched. We had to resort to jogging on the spot to keep warm and eventually spirits became very low. Everyone was cold, fatigued and hungry. It was 5 o'clock in the morning and the storm was still in full force. The only way we could think of to stay warm was to get into a penguin huddle. So everyone crowded around and used there body heat to keep each other warm. It was quite amazing how well it worked. We then started chanting a series of ohm's. The tonalities and harmonies were amazing and with the storm raging around us it is something I will never forget. At around 7 the storm started to ease and a group of us were able to make our way to the kitchen and prepare fresh fruit for breakfast and tea which was much needed. Later in the morning the rain had still not subsided and a group of us decided that we wanted to go and stay in Pondicherry for the night to have a hot shower and have somewhere nice to sleep. What a mission it turned out to be. Just walking down the forest path to the main road from Sadanah was like an expedition into another world. Trees lay treen across the path about every 5 m or so and we had to carefully navigate around them as well as massive puddles of unknown depth. It was all incredibly exciting and my adrenalin was pumping so much I barely noticed the 20 kilo pack on my back. When we finally got into Pondicherry the devastation was enormous and the power was down so finding a hotel with a hot shower proved difficult. The streets were also covered in 30 cm of water so we had to wade through it to get to the hotels as the taxi couldn't make it. After many hours of searching one of our group members remembered a hotel he had stayed at which had a generator called Raj residency. We ended up getting a massive room for 5 people that had power and hot water for about 300 rupees each. It was the best shower ever and the beer also went down a treat.
What the hut is meant to look like
Remarkably the solar panels were unscathed
Hand wash station
Dosa kitchen
