This is the first time I went on a mapping party and that too to Wayanad. I didn’t know much before about what a mapping party is, but I looked up on the internet and realized that we will be learning how to map areas on Openstreetmap and will meet the community and the people contributing to it. Actually if any type of event is happening in Wayanad, you can be assured that you will have a good time. Its such a beautiful place, you cannot miss the chance to at least see it once :)

I asked Praveen sir about how to reach there and we decided to go from KSRTC bus stand from Calicut. The journey from Calicut to sulthan bathery was just mesmerizing, I witnessed the beautiful sunset in the hills from the bus. I was just hoping that the bus get some malfunction and stop there so that I can look at it for a little longer. And you can even see pineapple farms there, they were just beautiful. There were even people selling pineapples on the road sides. I wonder how fresh the pineapples were, its like you can ask them to pluck a fresh pineapple for you!

Also being an open source software user and supporter, to discuss what all is happening in the world is just awesome, It was like feeding your soul. And since we are talking about feeding, the food there has just another level of awesomeness. At first I was reluctant to try the food as I wasn’t sure what it is made up of. Then I tried puttu, and it had no taste, and then they told me that the taste of that depends on the curry. So you better have a good curry!! Puttu mixed with curry tastes delicious, it’s just that I wasn’t able to find the right curry :) A tomato curry would have been the one, I will try that next time. If you are a dosa fan but not much of a fan of potato, then let me tell, there is a thing called “ghee roast dosa”, you should definitely try that and even better is appam. The only thing that I didn’t try was idiyappam and I still think that I should have tried that. I missed the opportunity :)

The discussion on the dining table was about all the things going on in the technology world, I was happy that I wasn’t the only one reading about those things. We talked about all the cryptocurrencies, payment gateway of telegram, then out of nowhere elon musk came in (Boring company, tesla and spacex), and then the MINIX OS. Then sombody probably Joice mentioned Abish Mathew, and NOBODY knew who he was and there ended one branch of the conversation :). Apparantely elon musk is more of a concern than Abish :)

Apart from that we mapped many parts of the sulthan bathery town. We got divided in a group of two each and started mapping on our own. The best thing about mapping is that you will know each and every path you mapped (Try creating a mind castle out of that !), next time when you go there. The first application that Sruthi mam suggested was Vespucci. It’s a nice application and it reduces your work a lot, you can directly upload the data as you map. The first day I mapped with Vespucci only. Later in the evening I realised that Kannan and Ambadi were mapping with OSMTracker and the cool thing about that is you can actually see the trail that you went through on the map. I liked OSMTracker and the next day I used that only. We specifically went through some of the less travelled paths and as Kannan told me, we were able to create new paths on the map. Although that path won’t be named after us but still good to know that we added it on the map and that information might help someone some day.

Just to travel the paths less travelled we went through the roads in the fields and there I realised that kerala fields are very diverse, you can literally grow anything here let it be banana, coconuts, pineapples, coffee, tea and lot of other things that even Kannan didn’t know the names of and mind you that Kannan is from kerala :) The next day was to say goodbye to all, we went on our separate ways, and even on our way back we visted Pookode Lake. Although it is a great place but we found the parking the “Hard way” :) And probably somebody would have mapped it now (Ambadi?), so you won’t have any problem finding it.

And now whenever I am bored I start OSMTracker and just go by some weird routes and map it and share it with my friends so that they can also try that route :) Waiting for the next meetup :)