the numbers of climbers like prasalan have fallen dramatically as the younger generation have graduallyry strong, indeed! it is a bit of a marathon. you need to think of it as a marathon. you have about 20 good metres to climb. if you run out of strength halfway, it is not going to be pretty. oh, i think that is it for me! pants. how does he do it?! my feet, i tell you, i think it is because i have soft — soft everything. i am a wimp. you are much stronger than i am. the coconut industry is worth billions of dollars, so the decline of manual climbers has called for modernisation of sorts. that looks so much easier than what i was doing. the state government has tried everything from competitions to prize money to find a machine that can entice people back into the job. this one, invented by a local farmer, has proved relatively simple to operate. just right there? right. 0k. left there and here? 0k. on my way up. it is definitely a lot easier. i may have spoken too soon. it is a lot tougher than it looks. do the right one and the left one then just relax. you have got a lot less stress