Hello, I am Charlotte, I´m 18 and I have been in India for the past 3 months. In total I am here for 11 months, all of which I will spend on the Varanashi Farms. The farm is situated in Adyanadka, a small village in the south of Karnataka, right on the border to Kerala. I am living together with 3 other volunteers in a small hut on the farm. Every hut here has a name, and all the names are flowers, we’re staying in “Mandara”, which is the Kannada name for “Hibiscus”. Philippe and Fynn are also both from Germany and Marie is from France. Together with other volunteers and the farm workers we work on different tasks every day.

The task depends on the season. Right now, we are harvesting a lot of Areca
Nuts (Bettle Nuts) and Cocoa beans. We are also involved in the further
steps of using of Cocoa beans, like the pod-breaking, bean-sorting or the
peeling of the beans. The farm then makes different products out of the
Cocoa beans, e.g.: Chocolate bars, Cocoa Burfi, Cocoa Dates, Cocoa Nibs. Last
week there was a festival in Bangalore dedicated to Chocolate, and we went
there to sell all of these products at their stand. It was lots of fun:
In our free time we go swimming in a pond on the farm nearly every day after
the work. It is a good opportunity to cool off. We are also trying to learn some
Kannada and attending lessons that are taught by Ashwini, one of the owners
of the farm. It isn’t that simple though because there are so many languages
spoken here, apart from Kannada there is also a local language called Tulu
and the language of Kerala, Malayalam, which many people here speak, since we are so close to the border.

On my free days and weekends, I’ve visited nearby cities like Vitla, Puttur,
Mangalore or Udupi and went to the beach to go swimming and surfing.
I’ve already met a lot of nice and interesting people with whom life here on the farm and in India in general has been great. I am looking forward to the rest of my stay here on the farm and couldn’t be more excited!