In October 2008, Chris Nurse and Robin Stalker will join a group of adventurers on west coast of southern India to take part in the Karma Enduro. Each team will be competing in a 1950’s style Hindustan Ambassador driving 2,000 kms across the Western Ghat mountain range and crossing the testing and diverse terrain of Goa, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The aim of the motoring adventure is to raise at least £150,000 to help fund the building of a hospital for some of the most vulnerable people in the Palani Hill region of South India.

In rural India there are countless people, many of them vulnerable children that have no health care and no education. They have no chance of decent life expectancy and no chance to dream- worst of all they have no clear plan for their future. The issues of health and education are tightly joined and without one it is difficult to have the other. The Karma Enduro is in being to fund the charity, Adventure Ashram.  Adventure Ashram (Action and Social Health for Rural Areas) is the realisation of a dream shared by an amazing team of medical and educational professionals in India and the organisers of Karma Enduro in the UK. The dream is to help the villages of the Palini Hills region of South India to a better standard of life.

Adventure Ashram are embarking on a project to plan, build and maintain a hospital in the town of Kodiakanal (in the Palini range). To begin with the hospital will have an operating theatre and twenty beds to help the sick people of the area. When fully operational the hospital will have 12 medical professionals fully trained to ride motor cycles so in the case of the very weak or very poor the hospital can take the healthcare to them.

“We appreciate you will receive many requests for your hard earned cash. However we hope this particular initiative strikes a chord and you, like us, consider the building of a hospital in the Palani Hills region in south India worthy of support”

Chris and Robin

Kodaikanal is a town with a population of about 40,000, situated at an altitude of 2,200 metres in the Palini Range of Hills in South India. The upper Hills villages in the Kodaikanal have an extended population of over 30,000 people. There are also a large number of hamlets that are not accessible by motor vehicles at all. The need for proper medical facilities in the villages is a very strongly felt need as these villagers are 30-40 klms by road from the nearest hospital and in extreme terrain without transport in many cases that is 40 klms too far.

Chris and Robin are aiming to raise at least £10,000 through sponsorship, donations and an online auction of sports memorabilia. The auction, organised in association with our friends at eBay, will be held in October. Details of the lots to be auctioned will appear on our website over the coming months. So don’t forget to revisit the site on a regular basis for the latest news.