Why a girls getaway is important?

We, the babes, ( look at the audacity of calling ourselves that) just got back from our trip this monday and we had a really awesome trip.  

Keep guessing the location, that we went to, which I plan to reveal shortly.  ( just to keep you all, my readers wondering!!)

But before I put together the experiences of the wandering souls, I wanted to tell you all why it is important for the girls to getaway in the first place.

1. Bonding – Not that we girls need to get away someplace to do this,  but when you live together for few days, there is an intimacy that we get to experience which beats every other short get together's.   We get to know the sleep cycles, fitness schedules – didn’t help coz we never even gave fitness a thought during the holidays, eating habits, bargaining skills, technical capabilities with gadgets, posing skills, organizing abilities and why, we even know each other’s weird potty behaviors and menstrual cycles.  Over all these, we really bonded over small talk, deep conversations and mindless prattles.
2. Laugh for no reason –  Each of us have varying range of laughter – the loud gurgling laughter that is mine, Sudha’s Guffaw, Rosy’s belly laughter and the modest of all, Jay’s chuckle.  We can see something together and laugh heartily in our own special ways, and you see laughter is the best medicine.
3. Get away from real life for a short while – All the 4 of us play different roles in our personal and professional lives like every other woman around the world and its our second nature to multitask and play these roles to a T.  There are also times these roles overwhelm us and we may not even show it out to the others including family.  The Girls trip is a perfect getaway to forget all our roles briefly and just hang out with the soul sisters just to rejuvenate each other in order to get back to reality and live it all up to the expectations of the loved ones.
4. Do mindless stuff -  Yes Yes Yes.  This is the perfect opportunity for us mothers not to worry about being role models to our little ones and big ones, and do stuff which suits our whims.  Like for example, taking pictures, plonking on the middle of the road.  Having a conversation over a bottle of homemade brew of wine, or just laugh our heart out listening to stories.
5. Understand how much we mean to each other -  yeah we know, we mean a lot to each other.   But there are moments in a trip, which will make this evident and the love shines through.   Like for example, when we met Rosy at the airport we were jumping in a huddle, screaming our heads off, our guide was kind of taken aback.  Nyugen our guide had a few intimate questions to us after she saw us do that.  There are also incidents which showcased our love for each other and I will let the girls do separate blogs on this.
6. The girls are worth it – for all the hard work we put round the clock all around the year at our workplaces and at our homes, we deserve this break and we need to do this at least every year, if not more frequently. The memories we create are a little gift to ourselves and fuels us to go through life unabated, and keeps us looking forward to the next one to come.
7. Feel empowered – When you prove to yourself that you are capable of some new learning and new ways of working things out, empowerment is on its way.  Travelling with a bunch of girls and doing it in a poised way, gaining knowledge about other cultures, going around this universe makes you realize, how small and insignificant one is.  And that is empowerment in itself.   While the girls getaways are common, we still have people around us who cannot do it for various reasons, and there also ones who can do it and the simple verdict is travel, and especially travelling with girl gangs makes you feel empowered.  Just the sheer act of surviving a new place, new culture around unknown country men gives that empowerment.
8. Enjoy the nature  - Ah, how I can I ever explain this.   Nature is intrinsically  adorable and there is mother nature who will surprise you venerably with her astoundingly vibrant beauty.   The more you enjoy nature the more you want to be one with her.   Atleast this time, the girls were mesmerized by the voluptuous natural beauty of the location we chose, offered us and we are still in a daze.  Good enough reason to get away with girls.
9. Talk about absolutely anything and anyone – Uninhibitedly  chatter away about work place friends, our children, our other friends, our spouses, our dreams, our fears and this list is endless. 
10. Root for each other – The best of the things that happens in a girls trip is how we highlight the positives of each person, from our physical appearance to our talents, our interests in life, accomplishments, our cooking, organizing, tactical abilities in every conversations that we have.   It could simply be how well someone can pose for a stunning photograph at the right angle to highlight the right curvatures or probably the ability to manage all the photographs in a cloud platform, without making a hefty payment for storage 😊

So, my question remains.

Which location do you think we chose this time. 

Post script :

For the first timers here, we, the group of 4 ladies, who call ourselves, babes, purely because we are narcissistic, went earlier to Banglok in the year 2017 and then to Bali in 2018. 

Pura Goa Gaja

The first famous temple of Bali that we girls set our foot on, was the Balinese Ganesha temple, also known as Pura Goa Gaja or the Elephant Cave temple.

This temple is an ancient structure built in the 11th century as a spiritual place for meditation, when Bali was ruled by King Udayana and it was at rural Ubud,  the part of Bali which is still unspoilt by urbanization.  Most of the temples we visited, had magic woven into the stones and it was amazing to see the stone artwork.

When I heard the name Elephant cave temple, I was waiting for a gigantic dwelling of the God, full of pachyderms, but that was not to be. This is an archaeological site of significant historical value and is one among the top visit sites in the Island of Bali. Though we kept pronouncing Goa like our Indian state Goa, it actually has to be pronounced as Guha which means cave and Gajah  means Elephant.  Pura means Temple.

colourful Souvenir Shops on the way 

Some more interesting Souvenirs

We walked on a concrete footpath constantly reminded by Kevin, to watch our step, crossed a concrete pathway lined with brightly adorned souvenir shops and refreshment kiosks.  We were all dressed appropriately for a temple visit as we had read that our clothes need to be below our knees. We still had to tie a bright yellow Sarong, which looked like a Sash around our waists.  The temples would offer these Sarongs for the tourists at the entrance.  But they are particular about wearing them when inside the temple.

The central meditational cave entrance was a carved out stone structure that depicted a massive goblin like creature that looked straight into our eyes and we had to get inside its mouth.  The cave was itself small and shallow but anyone can feel its history rich in tradition along with a kind of mysticism.  

The Cave Entrance - look at the amazing stone work.

The main Deity - Balinese Ganesha

The main deity was Balinese Ganesha with a black and white checked Sarong and there were also other shrines, one which housed three Linga's representing the Hindu trinity, each wrapped in red, yellow and black clothes, within the cave. Black soot lines the cave walls and there are several empty indentations, which probably is the place where the meditating saints sat.  Probably.  Kevin also told us this is a shivaite temple, but i did notice some elements of Buddhism all over the temple. 

The Hndu Trinity

Inside the cave, All four of us fell silent, which is rare, Sudha meditated a while and we let the serenity fill us. And that's something I find quite enchanting with the four of us.  We are all chirpy, talking, laughing and making fun one moment, but when one of us needs the space, we all are willing to give it to each other and step back. 

The huge tree :to show the scale

From the cave we moved to a courtyard that has a century old ( or more than that) large tree.  The tree had a large black and white checked Sarong just like the deities.  We then descended to another courtyard and Wantilan, that is filled with relics that was excavated from the site, as late as the 1950's.

Relic Courtyard

We also saw a huge Buddha's head broken into two, and the sculpture had fallen into a river.  Somehow missed to click a picture of it.

The pool which is opposite to the site where the relics are kept, features five out of supposedly seven statues depicting Hindu angels holding vases that act as water spouts and we actually went down there but found the rocks a bit slippery so didn't really touch the water.  Kevin did tell us the names of these statues were Ganga, Yamuna, Saraswathy etc., its a pity, I do not remember them now. (whacking myself for noting it down and for not writing a blog immediately after our trip).

Water spouts

A sense of calm engulfed the four of us, as we took in all that ancient  history. In my head, i was relating how India and Bali were connected by Hinduism as well as Buddhism and how the religions are differently depicted and practiced in Bali.

Kevin must have had some relief from our chatter for a few minutes, then.

P.S:

This post is inspired by Ramesh, one of the expert bloggers, I admire.  His travelogues are the best I have read.

Letting go, yet again

 In the earlier post I mentioned about letting go off the land beneath my foot and armed with that confidence, and overwhelmed with what I had just accomplished, we were herded to the next stop into yet another motor boat by our guide Lilly.

 

It took another 30 minutes to reach the next boat close to a small patch of reef that fringes Coral Island called the Koh-Lam in Thai. We all had signed up for the underwater sea walk, purely intrigued by the idea and Lilly handed us over to our new guide, an Indian who was multilingual. A well-built Indian who could speak in broken English, Hindi and Thai language (for the benefit of few south Asians who were with us).

 

He assumed all of us can understand Hindi, and though not very versatile with the language (shame on me), I managed to figure out the instructions he gave. Jay, having been brought in the north chipped in and helped. With all seriousness he gave us the instructions and with all our might we listened to him. I listened out of sheer fear. I was not comfortable with water and the awesome looking blue blue aquamarinish water didn’t look all that great, the moment he was saying you will all go under water and remember you cannot speak under water, so you need to know how to communicate.

We were given black gloves and he explained the whole process of communicating with our hands. He also assured that we need not necessarily know swimming for this activity. Quite a breather that one was. He further assured, all the better if you didn’t know swimming. You only have to sink in the water. Made a note to myself, Learn Swimming.

 

Communication.. Sounds pretty simple for someone who does that for a living. (Me) But under water communication?? the few butterflies that I had when I went for parasailing, multiplied manifold suddenly that they didn’t have space in my tummy to fly. I was desperately trying to hide my fear. The breeze that was blowing was making us feel cold and I found myself trembling. Difficult to say if it was the chillness or if it was the fear. But company the of four helped. We laughed and joked and took pictures (yeah we never missed that one).

 

Here we had to climb down from a platform on the boat, to metal stairs that went into seawater, like the ones that you see in swimming pools. When water is at your chest level, they instruct you to walk on one strip of metal to the guy who holds a heavy white coloured astronaut like bubble helmet. The bubble helmet is connected to a tube that in turn is connected to the oxygen tank, so that we get a constant supply of oxygen and also stops the seawater ingressing into the helmet.

 

I was second in the line, and as per instructions given, after the first person goes down, the divers on board would place the bubble on my head. And that moment I have to let go of my hands from the steel bars that I was holding onto. My biggest doubt was, if I will let go. I told myself, its too late now to back off, all others are doing it, none of them know swimming and there are scuba divers down there to help.

 

Then it happened. The bubble was placed on my head and I just let go. Yeah I did. First time ever I went underwater, followed the instruction of the Indian guide who told us to swallow saliva to maintain the air pressure and I was kind of fine. I kept going down until my feet touched the fine coral of the sea bed. I could see the first guy who was the only guy with our four member team, down there and I frantically held on to his hand. Tightly. I was floating and my feet would not stay firm on the sea bed. 

Have I made a wrong choice of opting into this adventure sport?
Did I pay for my own funeral in Thai bhats?
Will I die under water? Will I make it back home?
What if the water gets above the chin, after all, the distance between the chin and the nose is just a couple of inches.

If I am struggling for breath and what if none of scuba divers see?

Questions to myself and my initial thoughts under water.

By then a scuba diver held my legs and steadied it on the sea bed. The water pressure makes it unable to stand still and gives a feeling of floating. Like air pressure, realised the prowess of water pressure too. I repeatedly try and steady myself. In a few minutes all seems well.

 

I saw Jay coming down and holding my left hand. Relief writ large on my eyes, we could see eye to eye. A diver came in front of me and checked if all was okay. I communicated correctly, remembered my sign language and showed him the correct sign.

 

I could see Jay had some trouble with the air pressure and the body guard helping her. She is being steadied too. I didn’t let go of the grip of my right hand. Jay was holding my left hand. Things were falling in place. I could see a reef in the sea bed, fishes swimming a little far away. I could see the sea bed, and the divers clearly and a lot of organisms which I could not identify. We have seen these so many times in Discovery channel and didn’t give two hoots about what grit it involves.

Then the show begins. One of the divers comes close to me and pulls my hand and saves the first guy from my vice-like grip. He must have felt so relieved. He handed all of us a piece of bread and almost magically, a huge school of fish comes to feed from our hands. The fishes are just inches away from the helmets. Some are small, some big and all are colourful.

 

The fishes are cautious, hesitant but like us they are driven by the strength of a group. They are also smart and sometimes peck my fingers and it all feels so good. Some fishes are touching my legs too. I dare not look down as we were instructed not to bend down or look up. We can only look sideways through the bubble helmet. For the time being I enjoy the tingling feeling when the fishes brush past you. We are allowed to touch pieces of live coral and the whole thing is a fine display.

 

I cannot believe myself. I am amazed at what I am doing underwater walking on the south Asian sea bed. Fear takes a back seat (not completely vanished though) and I take in all that I can see through my helmet. The divers are hovering around.

 

We should have been there for 20 minutes. And we hear a long tap on metal from up above. The divers come for us and help us go up to the stairway that seems to hang in water. As I come out, the bubble is removed from my head and not a drop of water above my chin.

 

Four of us laugh, dance, chatter and rejoice – this was the best experience of our trip. The waters looked Cobalt blue now, fear replaced with ecstasy and the magic returns.

Letting go helped.

Post Script:
We had paid up for under water photographs, but particular day, there was some technical snag with the camera and they couldn’t give us our photographs under water.

Letting go

Ramesh, this one goes out to you again.  Thank you for that gentle nudge to write more.

 

For all the other readers ( I am being flamboyant here again, in assuming that I have too many of you, but the ones who read, trust me, you are precious to me) the earlier two posts are about our all girls trip to Thailand.

 

Letting go on Day 2 -  Part 1

 

Our plan for the second day was simple, unlike the earlier day. First half of the day at Coral Island and then back to Bangkok.  But what did not anticipate was all the adventure that was awaiting us at Coral Island.

First things First, we met our guide for the day, this time a petite woman who had the name tag on her which read LINRY, but this is how she introduced herself to us ( please read with a sing song tune)  Iiiiiiiii Lilllyyyy.. your guideee… A friendly woman who repeatedly assured us No Wollies… ( for the uninitiated, what she meant was no Worries). Figured out most of the Thai population cannot pronounce “r” and the “r” is invariably replaced with a “l” so tomorrow is always tomollow. Safari world is Safali wolld… you get the drift right?. That however is not the point in discussion, isn’t it?

 

We are not the only ones who are to be guided by Linry, she has a group of Indians. Ok we were a little surprised to see a whole bunch of Indians along with us. Most of them as families, grim faced and quiet. And while the men tried to look cool, the women looked jealous. How can these women ( us ) have so much fun?

 

But that realisation was only momentary and we were ushered into the thin silver sands on the beach, by the time we could take a few pictures, we had to wade into the crystal clear sea water which was a never ending aqua marine colour in front of us. That blue blue colour is something that I have seen only in movie song sequences. We clamoured up the speed boat in which there were people taking our pictures, we did pose for them too… Later we realised at the end of the ride, we will have to pay and take the prints or else they will just tear it up and throw it away.

Sudha & Me posing before we clamoured up the speed boat

 

We were instructed to wear life jackets in the speed boat and were eager and animated as the boat leapt above the water only to come down on the water with a stomach-churning thud. Laughter and chatter of four women filled the speed boat. I guess the laughter was more about hiding our fear for water. None of us knew swimming.



 

Our Speed boat leaving the bay

 The speed boats’ first stop was for parasailing. We moved from the speed boat to the large floating platform that provides a clear view of the bay and the city’s skyline. But who had the time to watch all that. Linry handed us over, to the care of some young men and she assured “no Wollies” once again, when we looked at our bags promising to look after our belongings. Sudha had already done the parasailing earlier in Andaman and hence she chose to be our photographer. Her DSLR was put to good use. our special thanks to Sudha, if not for her, our memories would not have been captured so beautifully.

 

We were watching people floating a hundred feet over the water held by a parachute and driven by a speed boat. Since I could see the harness being tightened on each person and is safely secured on to the parachute, logic was in place and except for a couple of butterflies in my stomach, I wasn’t worried.

 

My turn came and two of the gentlemen fastened the life jacket with the harness that can clasp the parachute. And then I was given the instruction to run on the floating platform as they strap the Parachute’s metal clasps onto me. In my mind, I was instructing myself to be ready to let go of the solid surface beneath me.

Waiting in the queue for our turn to be parachuted :-) & finding safety in a group :-)

Instructing myself to let go  just before giving my control to the parachute & speed boat

My heart was beating fast when they were strapping my parachute and before I could finish a couple of huge steps I realised I was airborne. It is an amazing feeling to let go of the land beneath your legs and float in the sky. While the speed boat seems to be moving pretty fast, I was floating in the air with almost no movement at all. The air up above was noisy, not very happy about my intrusion into its space and was hitting me hard. My heart started fluttering.

Airborne



Letting go



waving to Sudha while landing

A minute of being airborne, I found myself at peace, looked around and loved the skyline of Pattaya, the sea front looked far away and the unending aquamarine looked fabulous. I could also see few small islands’ and wondered if anyone lives there. And then overcome by some strange emotion, I let out a loud noise, my voice only to be drowned by the sound of air and the speeding motorboat in front of me. I let my hands off the parachute straps, freely flying in the air enjoying every bit of the experience.

By now, I was landing back onto the platform and I could see Sudha focussing her DSLR on me and I waved to her. I didn’t want to land, but I could see the speedboat manoeuvring itself to the spot for me to land. Two gentlemen helped me land smoothly. 

 

Harness removed, parachute off, the speed boat gone, I realised in my head I was still flying.

4 Friends, 3 nights, 2 destinations and one goal : Day one

This is a sequel to the earlier blog post. And thanks to Ramesh’s insistence on a live travel blog, I felt obliged to jot this down as a live travel blog may take sometime. I had the pleasure of following his live travel blog the year before last and I do feel I owe him one. So this one and the ones that are to follow this, is for you Ramesh. Gilsu I am about to induce more stomach fire in you.

 

The first day of our trip was hectic to say the least. We reached Pattaya early morning and went for a good walk on the main beach road, when Pattaya was slowing waking up from its slumber. Since Pattaya is a night town, I guess they wake up only by mid-morning or later. We opted for an English breakfast that morning, not just because the two others with me were pure vegetarians, but because the smells of the native food weren’t very appealing to us.
 

We had 3 activities to cover the first day – The first in the list was Art in Paradise, an enchanting place fully blown with 3D illusion art work which gave so much photo opportunity to us girls, we were behaving like a bunch of kids in a candy store. Did we care? Of course NO.

This museum allowed visitors to interact with the artwork. To make the photos look real and to become part of the art work itself, we had to find a cool angle so that the 3D paintings come alive.

Blending into 3D artwork



Doesn't this look real?

on a flying carpet at Art in Paradise

Didn’t realise that two and half hours can just fly past us in a jiffy. We literally ran through the last parts of the artwork as our pick up vehicle was already waiting for us. Quick lunch. No prizes for guessing – It was decent Indian food. The guide dropped us back at hotel. Quick change of dress. Purely for photographs and off to Nong Nooch village.

We had to travel around 40 minutes and the next 3 hours’ time flew again. They say time flies when you are having fun. Fun we did have. We all were sporting nose pins.. Yeah just for fun. At Nang Nooch village we went for the Thai Cultural show, Elephant show, butterfly garden, Dinosaur valley, did we see orchid garden? There is so much to see, we probably can spend an entire day there.. but by then the tiny girl, our guide in our Honda Civic was ushering us back. I am sure in Thailand time is shorter than in India.

with our nosepins :-)

one of the gardens at Nong nooch village

Thai culture show

Back to hotel, yep change of dress and off to Alcazar show.

An amazing cabaret show by the transvestite community of Thailand. We had read up so much about it, watched videos, but still could not believe these awesome people were actually transvestites. They would give the beauty queens of the world, a good run for their money. This was one show where we girls sat stunned in silence, a lot of emotions running through us – totally jaw dropping experience. The show was almost an hour in a state-of the–art theatre and was a feast to the eyes. We went up close to the performers, after the show was over and we still could not believe our eyes. They look attractive with the right curves and the right body language and most of the performers were ravishing.

And if you thought after all this we were done for the day… you are mistaken, we had heard about walking street in Pattaya and we wanted to have a look at that place. We walked up to that street – a street that busies itself in the night and filled with all types of bars and nightclubs where you can spot a whole lot of Lady-boys. We could not bear to walk 100 feet into that street, the pole dancers and all that exposure, we walked back quietly and quickly to the beach road. Realised this was not our kind of place.

And you thought we went straight to sleep, nooooooo….Inspite of getting  into a flight at  10.30 pm the previous night,  sleeping quite intermittently in the flight and in the cab to Pattaya,we were as energetic as we can be even after visiting so many places.

Our chatting and planning for the next day and we must have dozed off much beyond, 2 am, only to make sure we got up early to start a fresh new day.

Babes to Bangkok

Pre-script:

This is a delayed post. delayed by a month. this has been in draft version as I was organizing something else and this was totally forgotten. now you can continue to read the post... at your own peril :-)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.” Says Khalil Gibran.

While I love this quote much, its difficult to follow this one. Have you ever tried it?

And hence I will continue to bore you guys with the banter of the little things and ofcourse the big things that is going on in my life. well, anyways you guys do not ruin beautiful things.

Coming to the title, I realise it is an exaggeration to call myself a babe – but what the heck, if not now, then When? With a pricking conscience I will continue with this title. Also, this was the name of our group in Whatsapp right from the time we started discussing about this trip and so I am kind of attached to this name. ( pardon me and my friends for the abundance of vanity and appreciate us for the sense of humour).

It all started off with a casual conversation that my friend Sudha and I were having, over a cup of our regular cafeteria coffee, which tastes differently every single day depending on the mood of the lady who puts in the mix for coffee in the vending machine. We religiously drink this concoction every single day to a point that we are almost addicted to it, which is another story altogether. I digress here.

So an all girls women trip idea was born and you know, “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” And that’s how it all began. Way back in October 2016.

I initially thought this is one of those stuff which may fizzle out after some discussion, which did not happen fortunately. We were determined to go even if it was just two of us, but we got 2 others who were as crazy as us. Jay is our friend from the current organisation and my friend Rosy who is settled in Australia showed a lot of interest to join us. The plan was that she will join us at Bangkok from Australia and return with us to India. Why did we choose Bangkok – we really do not know.

If we were clear about one point about this trip, it was the fact that this was going to be all girls and no family, though all three others had little children who may want to join. Cruel women we must be right, but you know what, we thought we mothers will make ourselves a priority once in a while – It is not being selfish, a break is always necessary.

Like our Marathon running, we read up, worked with our tour operator, that poor fellow must have gone crazy with the repeated calls and requests to change the itinerary every time a good friend suggests a new place. Shilpa my friend from Bangalore had just been to Bangkok on a holiday end of January and she ran through our itinerary one last time and she helped finalise the plan. Her inputs were so precise, detailed but specific that we felt we could have done away with our tour operator.

Sudha is such a meticulous planner that she had created an excel sheet which had the every day trip broken up into an hour-wise agenda, which included distance between our hotel and the spot we were visiting, address, point of contact and hold your breath guys, she also had the number of dresses, kind of dress needed for every day, including the kind of footwear. Other than this the excel also had check list under various categories like documents to carry, cosmetics, beachwear, and what not. A big salute to Sudha for her eye for detail.

I was the oldest among the group, and surprisingly the families of the other three, were sending them just because I was there. Funny. Thankfully the families didn’t get see the other side of the goody goody Moi.

The trip was an amazing one and it was an experience of a life time – fun, laughter, thrill, joy and what not. For a bunch of working mothers, it was reliving our college days. After our college days, this was the first time, we were all travelling with our friends and that made it even more awesome. Support from families helped quite a bit.

For a place of tourist attraction, Bangkok surprised us with its cleanliness, wide variety of food, quality of stuff available and the fun activities we could do. The first two days were at Pattaya and next two in Bangkok city. We had safe fun with reckless abandon, and did so many things that I never ever imagined I would do. We all went in for the Underwater sea Walk, fed the fishes there, did Para-sailing, went on a water scooter – unbelievable considering the fact that I am scared of water, watching those massive Buddha statues, listening to the funny English slang of the people. The best part of this trip was we were never tired of posing for pictures or taking pictures. 3 mobiles and 1 DSLR together has more than 2000+ pictures. We were creating memories and a few of them were life changing.

The best fun was when we were shopping. Each of us have a different approach to shopping and all hell broke loose those couple of hours when we went in for it and enjoyed it to bits. Slept late every single day but we were all up in the morning all set for the next day. The only problem we had was with Thai food and somehow, none of us could get accustomed to the smell or the food.

We came back all rejuvenated to truck loads of work, but are convinced we will do it again. Some other place. Soon. ( Rekha are you listening???)

Sharing a few memories with you folks.

The blue blue beaches of  Pattaya - Coral Island

Any guesses on how this shot was taken?

and the word down there is babes

At Safari world, Bangkok

The mandatory one

Nong Nooch cultural village, Pattaya.

Old ends and New Begins

I hope everyone has cheered the new year 2017 in,  and I know I am a few days late, but better late than never, right?

The last post I remember was just before Christmas and after that was family time for us at home.  Celebrations, Choirs, get to-gether's, dinners, partying, gifts, surprises what not.  I actually felt the need for a couple of days of holidays after the last week of the year, ( in which I was officially on leave).

Starting with the fun of a dear friend from a different city listening in  to the Christmas Choir which came home, to the huge  surprise of Joe dropping in home 12 hours early driving through the night from Cochin, packing gifts for family to the Christmas Mass where the priest almost called everyone's name during sermon and asked individual questions embarrassing most parishioners, getting together as a family where we siblings and our spouses having a whale of time partying together,  the holidays just vanished in a jiffy. Left with the feeling that we didn't get enough time with each other.

And suddenly you know, it was time to start a whole year anew and to trust in the magic of beginnings.

New year as usual was at Church.  We, as a family have been at church every new year, since I remember, a practice our parents have got us into, thanking the Lord for every blessing bestowed in the year gone by and entrusting the new year into his safe custody.  This year we were part of the New Year mass of the most famous Edapally church at Cochin.

So, here's wishing all of you, an awesome year than all the years before.  God bless.

And before I leave here is a picture of three of us taken during the Christmas holidays.

Vacation at Valpaarai

Valpaarai….. A travelogue…

Sholaiyar Dam ( picture on left)

It was a very unplanned trip – All of a sudden, my hubby dear came up and said lets go to Valpaarai ( later I figured out that one of his official partners’ friend had a guest house and during a discussion this idea came upon him) and thus began our trip to this amazing place which was full of lush green tea estates, waterfalls, dams, wilderness and lots of hairpin bends ( 40 to be precise – 28 going up and 12 going down ). The unplanned trip definitely turned out to be a real good holiday.
From the hustle and bustle of citylife to a place covered in green carpet all over with plenty of fresh unpolluted air to breathe, most importantly the silent serene atmosphere was a welcome change for all of us. This place is quite close to the borders of Kerala. Gods own country is a just a couple of kilometers `away and interestingly, my mom hails from Chalakudy which was just 89 kms away from the place where we stayed.
From Chennai, Valpaarai is approximately around 650 kms and the route to we took to drive was Chennai – Dindivanam-Salem-Tirupur-Pollachi-Valpaarai. With some lavish breaks during our journey we reached this place in 18 hours and that’s a long drive. Hubby dear has a lot of stamina… he drove alone.
Though we could not enjoy the drive up to Valpaarai ( we were going up at midnight and all we could see was just plain darkness), we realized we missed quite bit when we drove down to Pollachi – the drive was incredibly beautiful. Its better not to go to this place unless you know of a place to stay in Valpaarai, because there are not many decent hotels up here and this place is yet to be commercially exploited.
Most of the large tea estates here are owned by TATA, and remaining places are filled by dams such as Sholayar dam and the Azhiyaar dam and a lot of water bodies. One of these dams is the second largest in Asia. Azhiyaar dam’s guest house is the place in which one of the oldest Rap songs of tamil cinema, “Vishwanathan, Velai vendum “ was shot. Walking on the dams is permitted and is wonderful. Monkey Falls is on the way to Valpaarai and is a reasonably big waterfall and there are those numerous small ones on the way to Valpaarai.

Few moments we enjoyed during our trip other than the drive up and down all those hairpin bends include the long steep walk around the tea estates for almost 2 hours called Sajitha Estate which is around 250 acres ( mind you, it’s a small one compared to the TATA tea estates which are much bigger), drinking the black tea prepared for the workers – its got a peculiar smoky taste, and our moments of glory when Denny and I joined the workers to cut the tea leaves with specially made scissors attached to netted plastic bags. None of us can forget the way the head of the monkey clan at LOME view ( this place gives a comprehensive view of Azhiyaar dam) gave signals to the others to attack us. But the head of our group, JOE the great, outwitted the monkey clan he he he…. The estates and the places had some very funny names such as the Hospital Waterfalls – an Hospital named Waterfalls. There was a few minutes when we were driving down those hairpin bends when a massive wave of mist engulfed our path and it was heavenly to drive through those curves and bends in the mist.

Above : A New recruit tea picker ( sounds rhyming with Rag picker?) and that’s green tea :-)

Our guide ( can we call him that??) showed us the tracks of a tiger – he showed us a place where a tiger had slept the previous night and the paw marks looked very much like those of a tiger to our untrained eyes. We only have the experience of watching all these on Discovery Channel. Denny never dared venture out on his own after that.. but he had some brow raising questions such as does an Anaconda live here, do you have pythons here? Are there any Crocodiles in the water? Will a hippo attack us, Can we see an elephant? etc., and of course his infamous question during the drive all along was “When will we have our next flat tyre?” which kept sending jitters through joe’s spine ha ha..
Although our guide and the owner of the resort told us that we can spot exotic wild animals after seven in the night, all we could spot was a wild brown rabbit, monkeys and a couple of very exotic looking birds and of course the very interesting Tiger paw marks.

We had gone for a early morning walk on the Sholayar dam ( which we could not make it though) on one of the days and on the way back we stopped at a typical teashop that you find in the hillstations and ordered for Chai. A very unassuming man there, who seemed a regular customer of that place told us that one us have been bitten by a leech and all of us checked our legs and didn’t figure out anything. The man showed us a very small leech on the floor which had a slight bulge on the belly side – and insisted that it has sucked out someone’s blood in our group. We frantically checked again with no evidence of a leech biting any of us. Later we figured out the leech had bitten Joe as there was a spot above his ankle that was bleeding. Thankfully it was not a big one..Wisdom from experience…
On the way to Valpaarai we had two flat tyres and got my parents all worked up – they did start up on their prayers. It was their maiden voyage with us. The drive was a little too hectic on Joe, driving around 18 hours at a stretch one way, and that’s one of the reasons we didn’t want to venture to Athirampally and Vazhachaal… which was close. Our guide had warned us of the bad roads leading to that place and the special permissions that we had to take because we would be getting into the forest range.

Though this was a very short trip, the serenity of the place charged us all up.