The rains

Tags

Blogging, India, Travel, writing

‘Even a plant that has died can come back to life during the rains.’ (Umesh, restaurant owner)

What’s on top

The monsoon is imminent.  One evening we actually felt cold and rued abandoning our fleeces, jumpers and warm socks in Delhi.  It has an effect on wildlife.  In the guesthouse we saw a biggish snake about to eat a very big frog, before being chased out.  There was another smaller snake in the guesthouse a couple of days ago, as it was being chased out it ran under another guest’s door and he had to be woken up to alert him.

I got a rickshaw into town one day, we later met the man and found he has a restaurant, a small local place at the other end of our road, near tiny shops and stalls where we bought bananas.  We promised to go and get breakfast there next week.  Exploring, trying out this new area was quite exciting and made us feel strangely enlivened, even though it isn’t at all far away.  My husband said that maybe it’s because we aren’t doing much, that a little bit of change has an effect.  A few days earlier, we had felt restless, and even went to look at some other guesthouses, before realising that where we are is still the best (for now anyway).

We’ve been in Kerala for a month but it was only a couple of days ago that I had a beer, for the first time since Goa and realised that alcohol is restricted in this state.  It is legal in bars and Government liquor stores but not in all restaurants.  My beer was served in a large mug and the can put discreetly under the table because of the police.  Sometimes groups of men come to the guesthouse and rent a room just for the evening to socialise and drink.

Rahul, who works at the guesthouse nine months out of twelve has gone back to his family in Assam, over 3,500 miles and a three day train journey away.  We used to chat to him every day, swapping language tips and photos of home and he and my husband played carrom together.  R, a guest from Switzerland who we had some interesting talks with has also left.  We and a permanent resident who works at the temple are the only guests now.

After two months of eating out for every meal, we’ve been enjoying making porridge in the guesthouse kitchen.  Oats and bananas are easily available with dried fruit and soya milk sold in some places. Cooking, even something so simple as porridge, has been very nice, and the porridge has tasted especially good, maybe because it’s a taste of home.

My favourite food to eat out at the moment is Gobi Manchurian,  cauliflower but not as you know it.  Battered and either ‘dry’ (deep fried with caramelised onions) or ‘with gravy’ (softer in a delicious rich sauce).  I wince at the thought of school dinner cauliflower and what the chefs here would think of that!

I’ve been doing quite a bit of yoga and experiencing little moments of ease and awareness; of being able to be kind to myself and flexible re my routine as well as get things done (something I really struggle with).  Also a sense of arriving in my own body, being happy with what I see and not comparing myself to others (another thing I struggle with).

Rain has meant a lovely Sunday afternoon type feeling, watching a film in the daytime as rain poured down outside.  When the film finished it had stopped raining, it was still light outside and we went out to eat.  As well as the sound of rain there’s the sound of hard green fruits hitting the tin roof at regular intervals and the almost incessant barking and/or howling of dogs.

What I’ve been watching

Partition (film)
Her (film)
Battlestar Galactica
Thirteen reasons why (Season one, I’m a late convert)

What I’ve been reading

Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (about Partition)

(So basically Partition and the nature of consciousness, with a bit of High School misery thrown in.)

Writing update

I’ve worked really hard this week and completed a draft of Chapter One (actually more like chapters 1, 2, and 3).  This covers the period of how we got here:  Nothing to lose but our dignity (the idea); No half measures (the decluttering and giving up everything); The Matrix fights back (obstacles and temptations).  There’s still polishing and editing and probably some moving about to be done, but I am leaving it alone for now.

Yesterday I started work on Goa, which is where we went after Delhi.  It was really interesting reading my notes and blogs from that time.  I think I feel a lot stronger and more confident than I did then.

Today I just worked on this blog post.  Last week and this week I have ring fenced Friday only as the blog day and the rest of  the week for the book.  The good thing about this is that it separates the two nicely, especially as at the moment the book work is about previous months not where we are now.

It also ensures the book work gets done; writing the book is hard work and the blog is more fun.  It’s also written in the present tense and so seems more lively than the book.  Plus it allows me to change my opinions week by week.  I intend to complete the book, but I think in an ideal world I’d be a blogger rather than a book writer.  But maybe that’s just what I think this week.

The disadvantage of not starting the blog post until Friday is if like today I get distracted by talking and don’t start the blog until later then it’s a bit more pressure but hey, it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do.

Thank you for reading

See you next week

Agonda beach

Tags

Agonda, Goa, India, Travel

We book one night ahead on booking.com then choose somewhere to move onto in person.  We got a taxi to Agonda from Colva (about an hour), we could have got a bus but I needed the  journey to be as fast and as comfortable as possible.  It was a wonderful journey, through small towns and villages, past tree covered mountains (possibly hills, but coming from super flat Norfolk, England, they look like mountains to me) and lots and lots of cows some with big curly horns (I love cows).  All the windows were down and the car was filled with a lovely breeze.

And then we were in Agonda.  Agonda and Colva are as different as Southwold and Great Yarmouth (for UK readers only sorry).  We arrived too early to check in (we had got up early to travel before it got really hot) so we went and sat in one of the many beach front bar/restaurants and had breakfast (toast and ginger tea).

Whearas in Colva and in Delhi I had been marooned in a hot hotel room during the hottest part of the day (which is most of the day, to be honest), here I realised I could be ‘outside’ (under shade) and with the breeze blowing in off the sea it was entirely bearable.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  Earlier that day in the hot hotel room in Colva I had envisioned months of being shut in a room all day.  Good for writing productivity, but there are limits.  I had been very apprehensive of going to India, or anywhere in South East Asia, at this time.  Most people go to India between November and February, when it is not so hot.  But if we’re going to be out for a year, we are going to be in the hottest time at some point.  And we had to go when we could go, i.e. when the house sold, and with all the obstacles that the matrix seemed to put up I wasn’t inclined to wait a moment longer to leave.

Agonda is touristy, but in a palm trees, beautiful sandy beach, luxury holiday look kind of way.  The beach is long and framed at each end by green lush tree covered mountains (?hills).  Our beach hut had a veranda that was shaded and cool enough to sit out on even in the middle of the day.  The owner said, don’t worry that it’s hot inside in the day, at night it will be okay.  And it was.  It was the first time I had slept under a mosquito net.  We would have happily stayed there but it was fully booked, so my husband went off and found us an (even better!) place.  Up high, reached from some steps, more space in the room, and a big cool veranda shaded with palm trees.  And right on the beach.  We are staying here for two weeks.

I was so relieved to unpack (I am such a homebody, but can make myself at home easily too), and do things like cut my nails and wax my face and floss my teeth properly.  (I still haven’t shaved my legs yet though, if I put it off much longer I’ll need a lawnmower.)

The beach huts are amazing.  I had imagined beach huts like we get in English seaside towns, but these are more like wooden chalets, with proper washrooms and everything, and the incredible thing is that they aren’t allowed to stay here permanently so they get dismantled at the end of April.  I wondered how they go about that, do they label all the bits, or do they just know?  I struggle to remember how to put my tent up once a year.

I once wrote an utterly heartfelt review on Amazon for Eat Pray Love, my bible for many years.  I had read that book seven times, written notes in it, folded over almost every page…  I knew I was genuine, so when someone commented, ‘This review is as pretentious as the book itself,’ it only made me laugh rather than hurt my feelings.

The first day here I did a bit of yoga out on the veranda (too hot indoors), using a rug from in the room, and then without even thinking about it just dropped into meditation, sitting half against the door jamb, resting after a set of one of those super strong hip opener poses (sleeping swan, half pigeon?), pulling the ends of the rug so as to buffer my ankle bones from the wooden floor.  I adjusted my position to be straight against the wall, but otherwise I was right there, for quite a while, despite the fact that I haven’t meditated for ages.

This wasn’t meditation aimed at or coming from a religious or spiritual angle, although it would probably be best described by the Buddhist meditation ‘Just sitting’, because I did nothing other than just check in with myself, deep inside.  And what I noticed was fear.  Fearful breathing, anyway, which I took to mean there’s fear there, or that fear is the thing going on for me, deep inside.  I had recently, possibly even only the day before, read a blog post by Alexander Bell about how if you calm your breathing so it isn’t fearful, then you won’t feel fear.  Try as I might though, my breathing remained shallow, tight, almost painful, and seemed to get worse the more I focussed on it.  So I remembered what the post had said about if you have a pounding heartbeat, just observe it, and observing it will naturally calm it.  I didn’t have a pounding heartbeat, but I used this approach for my breathing, and eventually, at last, I broke through to a place where I felt at peace, no fear.  As often used to happen to me in meditation, images came to mind; me opening a door, only to drop down an empty lift shaft and arrive, on a seat, in a room, and then again, somewhere different.

We’ve done a lot of moving about, and I’m a real homebody as I said.  I’ve hardly even been on holiday, and coupled with the pre leaving stress, it’s not surprising there’s fear in me.  And of course I’ve been sick, but then tummies are emotional too aren’t they?

(Just in case I sound pretentious here, writing about doing yoga and meditating on a beach hut veranda in Goa, please know that I did this on the train from Norwich to Nottingham (the meditation) and yoga in any hotel room I’ve been in with work in the UK using a towel or a jumper.)

We’ve had three nights here, and each day I have got up at 6.30 or 7am, had a paddle and a walk on the beach, a walk to the shops before it gets too hot, before retreating to the balcony/indoors for a siesta until the evening.  This is much better than sleeping late as you get to experience more time outside.  Also the beach in the morning is amazing, with incredible (must be teachers) people doing yoga, it is awesome what they can do with their bodies.

For my part, a short walk in the waves and/or a few stretches in the afternoon is all I can manage at present.  Today is day seven of traveller’s diarrhoea and today my husband took a Tuk Tuk to Palolem to go to the chemist and came back with gut flora and strong antibiotics for me.  He has looked after me all the way through and apart from the first night in Delhi when I went out to buy fruit and this morning when I went to the very nearby shops to buy water, juice and crisps (rehydration, sugars and salts) and fresh local bananas (potassium), I haven’t done anything on my own.  I also haven’t always been that nice, and I am realising how much I hurt my husband’s feelings when I get annoyed about stuff he has or hasn’t said or done, when all he is doing is looking after me.  But I don’t often know until later what it is I am unhappy about, and then I struggle to express it.  I tend to come across as annoyed when in fact I am feeling overwhelmed or vulnerable, I just don’t like to admit it.

A couple of times recently, if I’d stopped and thought about it, I could have said, that’s a great idea but I can’t manage that just yet.  Or, actually, can you come with me, I’d rather not be on my own.  In that way I am literally like a chicken, they are prey animals, therefore they don’t show their vulnerabilities.  I don’t like to feel, let alone admit to, feelings of pressure/ inability to deliver, shame, or fear of abandonment.  In other ways I am like a child, if I get sad my tummy hurts more, and I’ll seek comfort and attention by describing my physical ailments.   We are both much worse and much better than we realise, is a Buddhist quote I read about becoming more aware of ourselves.  India has a lot to teach me, which is good, because I have a lot to learn.

My husband has just started doing a vlog, if you want to check it out here is the link.

Thank you very much for reading!

Lots of love

Rachel xxxx

Instagram followingthebrownrabbit

 

 

‘A change of feeling is a change of destiny’

Tags

Cloth sanitary pads, India, Menstruation, Moon cup, Mooncup, Periods, The law of attraction, Yoga

This afternoon I did some yoga in the hallway of our room.  It was only a few stretches on a rug rather than a proper mat, but it felt good.  It felt good to stretch after the tension of travelling.  And of course I couldn’t help thinking whilst I was doing it, I’m doing yoga.  In India.  Even writing that makes me well up a little.

We slept in late and then headed to the same place we ate dinner last night to get breakfast.  We were surprised to see that almost everything was closed, the shops, the people selling from little stalls outside the shops, nowhere seemed open.  Happily our restaurant although  apparently closed was really open, and we had to duck under the almost closed shutters to get in.  Apparently there was a strike (just for the morning) over new government regulations about the distance the stalls need to be from the shops.

During the hottest part of the day we are lucky enough to be able to take siesta time (Vamkukshi in Sanskrit).  With the drapes drawn, the windows closed and the fan on, we can keep it cool enough.  If we got too hot, we could always take a shower; the water is tepid rather than ice cold, but I was almost chilly after my shower this morning.

Last night I couldn’t sleep, due I suppose to excitement, the emotion of the day and travelling across  timezones.  I dimmed my tablet and laid in bed reading One Black Tree’s latest post.    This was so well written as always and illustrated beautifully and perfectly with artwork that is just right.  I also want to say perfectly researched but that is not quite the word as it implies a scientific paper, but OBT has read, reflected, put into practice so many ideas and then explained them just right.  Her posts are always wonderful, but this particular post for me last night was so perfect.

I was too tired to absorb it all; I think it warrants a second and third reading anyway, but late last night as I turned over in my mind the enormity of what I have done and wondering am I capable of seeing it through (after my mini meltdown on arrival) reading this was the cure I needed.  I couldn’t summarise it and do it justice, but this last quote saw me into a peaceful state, good sleep, and then waking to something amazing:  A change of feeling is a change of destiny.

I was woken this morning by my husband saying, We got an email, we got an email, we got an email from The Daventry Express saying they want to do a story on us.  This is our local- to the boat- newspaper.  In the last days of being in the UK I sent a few emails out just in case people might find our story interesting, and today we got one back!  Is this because I changed my feeling?  It certainly felt like that this morning.

Oh, and I got my period, and not for the first time thought, Well, that explains a lot.  I didn’t actually bring any tampons and pads in the end (I had to be ruthless with space), just a few panty liners, so I need to get with the programme I have set myself for India of cloth sanitary pads, of which I bought a really nice pack complete with handy storage bag before I left, straight away.  And a mooncup, although I have been less successful with this when I tried it in the UK.  If anyone successfully uses one and wouldn’t mind advising me please do use the contact page to get in touch.

Thank you for reading

Lots of love

Rachel xxx