BY BETH VELLIQUETTE

bvelliquette@heraldsun.com; 918-1042

CHAPEL HILL -- Anita Mander has a plane ticket, has practiced packing, wonders how many pairs of shoes she should bring and whether she should tone down her fashionable outfits or go bold.

It's her first trip to the United States from her home in Birmingham, England, and it's all in the name of Anoop Desai.

"Anoop has such a beautiful tone to his voice and conveys so much emotion when he sings, and that's what I love about him," Mander wrote in an e-mail.

Desai is performing Thursday night at the N.C. State Fair in Raleigh, his first solo concert after he appeared on "American Idol" and toured with the other finalists. Ever since the fair folks announced he was on their ticket, a group of about 20 fans who bonded through their mutual love of the crooner have been planning a big get-together this week in Raleigh, with the highlight, obviously, going to Desai's concert at Dorton Arena.

But they're also excited to see and meet each other. They've been working together through the Internet creating fan Web sites for Desai and scouring the Internet for any and all articles or photographs of him and posting them on their Web site. They call themselves the Anoop Desai Street Team.

"The purpose of the site is to bring together Anoop fans and help to keep the buzz alive," Mander said. "There's nothing more that we want than for Anoop to succeed in the music business."

Although a few of them have met Desai briefly when he was on the "Idol" tour, some have never seen him in person, much less met him, but they work incessantly on their project -- Anoop Desai.

Mander, an administrator of the Web site, is likely traveling the farthest, but there are others coming from California, Texas and Canada.

They'll be joining Shaquille Fontenot, a 17-year-old high school student from Columbia, S.C.; Yoko Furukawa, 42, a geochemist from Louisiana; Jean Logan, 62, an exuberant housewife from Wilson; Anjana Kipfer, 31, a marketing consultant for BlackBerry in Toronto; and Holly Driggers, 21, a college student at UNC Greensboro.

Many of them will be staying together at the same hotel in Raleigh.

"We certainly are a very, very diverse group of people, all ages and races," Kipfer said.

"One of the things that I've loved most about this Anoop experience is getting to know all these other fans. We started out with this common interest, and now we've formed these friendships."

Although they live miles away from each other and have different lives, they have found some common ground other than Desai.

Furukawa, who is from Japan, had a son who was going to the prom in Louisiana, and Fontenot gave her the inside scoop about American proms.

In turn, some of the older women have given Fontenot advice.

"I have met many amazing people that I now consider my sisters, alternate moms, and aunts," Fontenot wrote in an e-mail.

Besides trying to help promote Desai, they've also raised money by selling Carolina blue wristbands with Anoop's name on them for the Eve Marie Carson Memorial Scholarship Fund.

Carson, who was student body president at UNC and a close friend of Desai's, was murdered in March 2008.

Logan, who has been selling and mailing out the wristbands, has made three donations to the scholarship fund, but she didn't want to say quite yet how much she's raised. She wants to surprise Desai on Thursday night by making the announcement then and presenting him with the names and photographs of those who donated.

While the group is in the area, they also plan to make a pilgrimage to Chapel Hill, Desai's hometown.

A few of the group members have been to Chapel Hill before, but many have never even been to North Carolina, much less Chapel Hill, and they want to see Desai stuff -- the UNC campus, Franklin Street and some of the places he's mentioned in interviews and tweets, such as Top of the Hill restaurant, where they're planning on eating dinner one night.

Wherever they go, there's no doubt there will be a lot of giggling and "squeeing," which according to the Urban Dictionary is the noise female fans make, as in "Omg, I can't wait to see Anoop Desai, Squee!"