What a gloriously sunny morning but what a rude awakening! The previous night, most of us had gone to sleep VERY late. I myself had reached R. E. M. state at around 3.30am and was meant to be getting up at around 6pm to make a 7.30am start to the Trivandrum Techno Park. As suspected, I didn’t get up on time. Instead I awoke to the PA system blaring out “Breakfast is being served outside on the platform, get up, have breakfast and be ready soon, infact VERY soon, to board the buses as we’re going to the Trivandrum Techno Park”. At this point, the typical Flintstones and Barny Rubble scene of urgent panic and insane madness ensues as I make a mad dash for the bathroom, change of clothes, brushing of teeth and simultaneously falling out, half asleep on to the platform to gulp down breakfast. With all of that over in a blink of an eye, and STILL feeling as if I had just run head long in to a brick wall, I stumbled on to a bus, completely separated from my own group and ending up next to a fellow Bengali with what one can only describe as an “interesting and persistent” laugh. Cue throbbing headache 😉

The Trivandrum Techno Park is located up on a hill. As the bus entered the grounds, we were greeted with scenes of ultra modern buildings and house-hold names such at ITC and Tata Consultancy Group, amongst many others. The most striking aspect of the Techno Park was how spotlessly clean it was. This really did jump out at me as I walked around the grounds and observed the superb facilities dotted around the techno park. Unlike vast swathes of India that is often littered and dirty, the Trivandrum Techno Park did not have a single item of plastic, paper or any other man made trash visible on the ground anywhere.  What a refreshing and impressive change to the world just outside its gates.

We arrived at the Techno Park at around 8.30am and settled down in their outdoor open air audirorium. An impressively large venue, capable of holding at-least ten times more people than our yatra group. All the yatri’s settled down quicly in eager anticipation to see two very distinguished speakers.  Whilst waiting for our guests, a thought crossed my mind that the surroundings of the Tehcno Park added to the excitement. Participants were clearly impressed by their immediate surroundings and the chatter could be heard amongst the participants about the big name companies and the impressive architecture that was available within the Techno Park. Lets not mince words here, even I was impressed, and I’m used to working in big technology parks back at home in the UK and on my occasional trips out to the USA. I think for me the beauty of nature, palm trees, plush vegetation and impressive modern builders all seamlessly co-existing in a way that almost felt natural was the most impressive aspect of the outward physical beauty of the location.

Up on stage we greeted G. Vijayaraghavan who is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Technopark in Trivandrum. Technopark is India’s first technology park and among the three largest IT parks in India today. He was accompanied on stage by P. Jayakumar from Toonz Animation,  an animation company which has diverse interests in production and distribution of live action feature films, digital and gaming content, licensing and merchandising and media related education.  Mr. Vijayaraghavan took us through an engaging history of the techno park and spelt out a number of the challenges and issues he faced during the early days when he was attempting to acquire the land to build the techno park to the corruption and issues he faced after the techno park was built. He gave some very inspirational tutoring and encouragement to the yatri’s to be follow the path of truth, honesty and hard work without having to stoop to the level of bribery and trickery to get business done. This drew much applause from the young audience. Mr. Vijayaraghavan later returned to the stage after the Toomz presentation to give a one hour talk to the audience about entrepreneurship. This was a particularly educational talk, giving concrete and tangible advise to the gathered yatris. Topics such as how find the right talent, how not to build debt, how to treat your customers and how to not be afraid of failure was all spoken about with some great real world examples that helped to bring the message to the youth in an accessible manner.

Next stop Kovalum Zero Waste NGO, Kovalam Beach. Here we attended a talk about waste management by an NGO called Thanal. I was quite excited to note that one of our African contingent stood up to ask a question! Superb! I suspect the session was a little too lengthy judging by the flagging spirits of those in the audience and the dropping heads. Having said that, we did get a clutch of good questions towards the end an an opportunity to sample some of the local handy craft made by women who work at the NGO and make collectible items made out of recycles waste items such as paper and coconut shells.

We all headed back to the train station for dinner, then entered train at 12.30am to hit the sack. It was a long and thoroughly engaging day.