India (Part I): Get married and then spent a month a part - it’s genius!

We have returned safe and sound from our Indian Odyssey on Sunday eve, spiritually replenished and already making hay in our new home in Unawatuna. The Himalaya, however, will live long in the memory, as the evocative culture intoxicates the mind and pumps blood to the heart. With the luxuriant landscapes seemingly soothing the soul along the way...

So it did exactly what was required.

I will try and start at the beginning to give you a greater feel of what we experienced - often trivial, sometimes testing, but always enlightening. And having now started writing in some detail, this letter is going to have to stretch to a part II (and maybe even a part III) arriving in the coming days. So, thanks in advance for your patience.

We flew from our old home-city of Colombo to what I imagined was the despicable cauldron of New Delhi. The 26 million metropolitan population dwarfs the entire island of Sri Lanka and the guidebook kindly reminds us to “expect the worst” (Footprint, 2016). Even the feel of the flight was unabashedly Indian - almost intimidating. The gentlemen next to me (Flo had snagged the window seat, as per) was constantly fidgeting. And burping. And then rubbing his hands together malevolently. Half blind with short-cropped grey hair he looked like a Bond villain henchman. On the plus side, the inflight palak paneer and jeera rice were delicious!

New Delhi wasn’t half as bad as predicted as we quickly passed through the city using the new underground system; we had already memorised the four stops north-east on the yellow line and the subsequent four stops south on the orange line to safely deliver us to “Kashmere Gate” – (as it sounds, the gateway to the north, the Himalaya, and Kashmir beyond). Without any bother we secured two bus tickets to our first destination: Rishikesh. Made famous by your beloved 'Beatles, this is a city that chimes to the rhythm of sitar-playing, charas-smoking and yoga-training, amongst other more esoteric indigenous rituals. Sadly, we arrived at 11pm from the seven-hour bus ride to a guesthouse room adjacent to a gaggle of Israeli travellers, listening to what I imagine the Tel Aviv press have coined “Nu-Circus-Techno”. Our  NME would simply call it “BULLSH*T”!

Rishikesh straddles the holy mother “Ganga” (The Ganges), its emerald green waters dissecting the foothills and the town thereon. The “Lukshman Jhula” – a suspension bridge of epic proportions -  joins the distance edges, its narrow margins a throng of baba’s, revelers, scooters and holy cows. Flo has a film going over the bridge that ends with a monkey trying to grab the camera! We spent the next day actually in the Ganga itself having immense fun: 16km of white-water rafting. And all for a princely sum of R 450 (approx. £5). On our raft there were three girls from Punjab who barely picked up a paddle. But they easily made up for it with incessant howling and laughing! And they could translate the poor guide’s Hindi so we all didn’t die - “Dhanyavaad Shiva!”. After another day of acclimisiting (read: drinking copious amounts of Ginger, Lemon & Honey and smoking the local hashish – a seductive combination in these holy, “dry” lands), we booked a bus further north.

Our next stop was Shimla, holiday home of the British Raj, and a first hand recommendation from Auntie Lam. This is where the beautiful people of India live. Sophisticated and untroubled, the locals parade “The Mall”, the promenade built along the mountain ridge up to “Scandal Point”. As the colonialists of the past gathered here to escape the heat of the plains further south and breathe the fresh mountain air, so Shimla became the lungs of The Old Empire. A side-effect being that alcohol runs through the veins of this colonial heartland, and I treated myself to a few Kingfishers one sunny afternoon. These brief stops-offs were simply edging us closer to Dharamshala, where Flo was going to embark on her yoga training and I was to be left to my own, incapable devices. 

One plus of the solo-honeymoon is the points we will gain on the hipster-scale after doing something as conventional as marriage. I’m sure we’re going to start a craze: ‘Get married and then spent a month a part' - It’s genius!

Photo credits Flo