Clearing the Ford Culverts

To go to Himalayan Acres, which is what we call the agricultural endowment lands on the south side of the river across from Iraivan, requires that we drive one mile north of the Aadheenam and then take a left to go west and across the river.

To make that crossing we go over a ford that has about 10, two-foot culverts buried in concrete that take river water under the flat surface that provides a bridge over the rocky base of the river. Of course, when the river is in spate, then 5 feet or more of water flows above the ford, and we cannot makes the crossing.

Recent floods blocked the culvert with rocks and even when the river was low, we could not cross.

Acharya Arumugaswami, who heads the noni operation, was determined to clear the culverts which make ford crossable ever when the river is a little high. Off we went for adventure on dry, sunny day to see what could be done.

Here is the north side of the ford. It is crossable when you have about ten inches or less of water overflowing. Above that, your vehicle will float downstream like a boat!

We have our tools: \"Rajendra\" our mini excavator and the John Deere tractor with a bucket on the front.

Adi Srikantha in tractor, and our marvelous \"can do anything\" Doug handles the excavator.

Going in front each culvert on the incoming water side, Doug scopes out whatever rock he finds.

And the dumps them into the tractor bucket.

Its hard to see what is down there. Arumuganathaswami makes several reconnaissance missions going with the water. It wasn\

t as cold as we thought today.'

When we started the water was about 8 inches flowing over the ford. Gradually after two hours of digging, when see four culverts are cleared and the water dropped to 2 inches over the ford. That is a big success!

This is where you do not want the vehicle to go swimming downstream!

Brahmanathaswami holds a rope while Arumuganathaswami checks the culverts which have no water flow.

The culverts are 20-feet long and we have 20-foot long bamboo pole to test with. You can see the culverts behind us that have been cleared, showing a rush of water underneath the ford.

We determines that four culverts have 3 to 10 feet of rock impacting them. How to get it out? That\

s a job for Monk MacGyver to noodle on for another day. First day\'s score, it was a tie: River Rock Blocked - 4, Monk MacGyver - 4, cleared! '
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