I celebrated the shortest day in Scotland by lighting
a candle and snuggled up under a blanket in front of the TV with the central heating on high but today I had an email from friends for whom the last month has been very different. I'm including it here to cheer myself up really - otherwise this place gets as cold and dark as the days feel at the moment.
I would like to tell you what
our solstice was like, to give you a flavour of our stay in our beloved beach
resort in southern India, close to the equator.
For me the day started with 2 hours superb Ayurvedic treatment (that
is one reason why we always go here), followed by breakfast with
freshly pressed fruit juice, looking out onto the sea, watching the
surfers, and taking in the daily promenade theatre, which is the
usual hawkers, occasional beggars, and a lot of new, pale tourists.
Then walk along the beach to our sunbeds and work sensibly on our
tans. At weekends the beach is entirely Indian, the women in their
beautiful saris or salwar kameezes, and I feel naked in a modest
swimsuit. Still, a long dip and swim in the warm Arabian Sea, and then more sunbathing and a fruit salad in the afternoon.
Back at our hotel a nice swim in the swimming pool, watching the
sun set on the shortest day, which here was almost 11 hours. We have been here all of December. We will stay here until just after my birthday. Then we will move up the west coast, including Mysore and other places of interest, ending up in Goa for a final week to soak up the last Indian sun, before we
hit cold wintery Scotland. Dear friends, I deliberately left out any info on our travels so far, because you can't sum up 4 weeks in the north of India plus 4 days in
Kathmandu.
2 comments:
Hmmmmmmmmm, my thoughts are mostly of the nevious variety, so I won't express them in case one wheel does drop off their wagon.
Another friend (their next-door neighbour) who got the same email said he was tempted to mail them back saying their boiler had burst and their cats both run away!
I'm used to them now - and I would hate the flight anyway so there's no point in being envious although the chill here is rather stiffening to the aging bones.
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