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I've been in India for a few weeks now...I've got my daily routine, I'm institutionalised under Pushpa's care and have a lot of time to think. After all, swirling a few clothes around in a bucket is as much domesticity that I have to undertake. I climb the hot stairs to the roof to hang out my dripping items which take about an hour to dry in the fierce heat up there. I take the dried clothes to the ironing boy and he uses the cast iron 'heated with hot coals' ironing method which leaves my clothes ironed paper flat and smelling faintly of coal fires. Which I, of course, love.

Apart from a few design commitments that I can cover whilst I am here, I am reading a lot which is luxurious...although my dreams of reading to my heart's content is not that viable in the heat and my eyes (even with glasses) get tired easily. I've doodled a bit in my diary/sketchbook but I'm not feeling it. Truth is, the visual stimulation I get here is totally overwhelming. Sights and sounds galloping by. I can't precis my thoughts or visions as there are so many and I am aware that I need to get 'it' down, record what 'is' here before I'm faced with two days left and an impending feeling of desperate creative panic.

And I keep thinking, my blog, my blog, I should at least be giving something away when I am receiving so much and could channel some of it your way, dear reader...

But I'm not bothered, not bovvered at all. I'm sitting and thinking and brewing and dozing and drifting and dreaming and it's wonderful. I keep getting gripped by 'it's lazy, I'm lazy' but I watch the phrase float on by like the heavy bee that lives in the bamboo blind by my balcony. The Truth is, everybody could do with this, this luxury of time and space and drifting, many much more than me and there it flares up again, the guilt...but I don't hold onto it, I just let it goooooooooo

And this goes on a lot...stopping only for meals and freshly prepared pineapple that arrives with a strangled cry by the pineapple cart man. 

Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnaaplllllle, pina pina pina piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnaaaaapppllle.

Full on, full-time yoga, does funny things to a girl, opening spaces that was once a mind firmly made up, stretching a brain with possibilities of space and awareness to realise it's actually okay to just 'be'. Yes, it's indulgent and luxurious and most importantly, my choice. That's what I have to remind myself as I crank into another day beginning with the most strenuous physical & mental journey I ever thought I could tackle. (Giving birth was a breeze in comparison)

And as my feet span my mat I learn each day there is a new way to be, an additional millimetre to open my heart, an extra inch to scale in my search for happiness/contentment/existence/bliss and I see it's already there. 

It was there all along.

⊗ Read It and Eat ⊗

Waking up at 5.30 for yoga practise, it is still very dark but I can always hear someone chanting...getting dressed and tiptoeing into the cool morning air is soothing after a hot sweaty sleep with clear, clear dreams in which I can smell and taste and feel..

it's incredible, this only seems to happen here*, in India. 

(*Happy here, I just wrote by mistake which was a truth just waiting to exit!)

{{Once after an Indian head massage from Pushpa 

I slept so well and woke up with my hands in the prayer position 

and had been dreaming of standing under 

a glimmering, golden waterfall...

The memory of this still makes me feel 

the joy that I woke with that day, 

like a 1,000 kids on Christmas day}}

My yoga practise here is a hard deep series of postures; if anyone is interested I am practising Ashtanga, a flowing with the breath practise. Of course, yoga is many other things and I may cover this in a later post. During these postures or asanas (as they are known by), my dreams rise again, through my twists, as though my body is extracting every last drop of night from me. It is cleansing, it feels good and it hurts. I ask myself why I do this to myself quite often during the 90 minute practise but I remind myself it is my choice and I am lucky to be here and it's great for my health, mental and physical.

After yoga and a burst through the doors into morning, I could vault the coconut trees home to Pushpa's. My energy is bursting for breakfast, I'm high on life and as I flow past the corner house I can hear all the Tibetan monks that live there doing their chanting and I always stop to listen to the deep, deep drones, it is mesmerising. I want to go in there one day and listen to the full blast of it.

Pushpa is usually sweeping the steps and has chai waiting for me and we sit in companionable silence listening to the birds and the sweep of other brooms. Breakfast is so good that I go to sleep  at night thinking about it... here is what I had for breakfast today and hopefully you'll be able to follow the recipe (I fear that I am already speaking in Indglish so forgive me for my weird sentence construction, I've hardly spoken to a Brit)

This is a recipe for a breakfast dish but I would eat this anytime of the day. All measurements are approx. 

As Pushpa says "however much you want then you use"

Aloo Methi Paratha with Tomato Chutney

[Potato and 'green' chapati with Tomato Chutney]

• Tomato Chutney

1 small onion

large pinch of mustard seed

3 or 4 tomatoes

handful of coriander

quarter teaspoon of turmeric

quarter teaspoon sugar

chilli powder to taste

salt to taste

sunflower oil 

• Paratha

chapati flour or wholewheat flour

salt

1 or 2 leftover potatoes (mashed)

coriander leaf

1 bunch of methi (which are greens, you may be able to get in an Indian supermarket or substitute spinach)

water

First of all, make your paratha. Put the flour into a bowl and mix in chopped methi (or spinach) with the mashed potato and good pinch of salt, then adding water and mixing until you have a firm dough. Leave this to rest whilst you make the chutney.

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan and add a good pinch of mustard seed, heat until the mustard seed begins to pop then add finely chopped onion & cook until golden...add the chopped tomatoes (and I wouldn't write off using a tin of tomatoes as tomatoes in the UK are quite horrid and tasteless in the winter) & chopped coriander leaf. Mix well and add the turmeric powder, chilli powder (as you like it!) and salt to taste. Then add a quarter teaspoon of sugar and cook well. Whilst it is simmering away and smelling like heaven then you can make your parathas/chapatis.

As you can see from the top image, gather your dough into balls that would fit in your palm and roll out using a dusting of flour. It's the layers that make the parathas wonderfully chewy and crunchy. So, roll and then fold and roll again as though you are making puff pastry. Then place in a hot heavy based frying pan that has been preheated with a good spoonful of oil. Whilst the first side is cooking, Pushpa swirls a spoonful of ghee on top (naughty Pushpa) as she says it is good for health. I go with it. Then when the first side is nicely browned, flip it over and cook until nicely browned.

Then serve...with love... and repeat until everyone is full. Pushpa always makes me eat two 
but one is filling enough.
Eat with your fingers, breaking off the paratha and scooping up the tomato chutney. If you've been brave with the chilli powder you'll be warm and tingly and as I've heard it's a snowy landscape then you'll feel good. But not as good as standing under a golden waterfall. You'll just have to visit India for that.


Please let me know how it works out as this was conducted under a lot of imprecise discussion. And if you have any questions I'll ask Pushpa and translate for you! 
Bon appetite bloggers.

∽ On housewifery ∽

I could write reams about India...there is such a marked difference between their morning rituals and ours; the cultural variations here are like some brave new world to me. And I'm guessing you are interested in these things too?
One of the noises that is high on the musical score of the orchestra of India, is the sweeping of paths and steps with a rough bunch of branches and a bucket of water. This is the first thing that Indian ladies do in the morning light as the sun rises. I can't be all PC about this because it is always the women. I don't think shared household duties exist here, although you do sometimes see the men taking the children to school but you notice it, so it must be rare. But that's another blog post entirely. As much as I love to digress, I will stick to the cleansing rituals for now.
So, the paths get washed and brushed which makes a fabulous shwooshing sound as the water gets sloshed around and brushed away. The ladies are all wearing their nighties which incidentally they seem to keep on all day. Then they stoop in their bare feet to draw the daily rangoli on the entrance to the property. 

Rangoli is one of my obsessions in Southern India. It is a drawing like a prayer which keeps out bad spirits and brings luck to the household. The drawing is made with rice flour (or sometimes chalk) and this doubles up as a food for ants and therefore keeps them out of the house. Sigh...I adore this concept and the designs they draw are so beautiful and so swiftly executed with a flick of the wrist and pouring of flour. These women are natural artists and I am envious of this daily task. I want to do this on my front path everyday too but a)the neighbours will raise their eyebrows at me drawing in my nightie b)the local kids already think I'm a witch because of my high hedges c)the rain will wash it away every day d)my first task is to put the kettle on and stare into space whilst trying to keep warm for 8 months of the year.

Pushpa does an amazing doorstep cleanse which involves fresh jasmine and marigolds placed just so and a rice flour rangoli and various squishes of turmeric and saffron and tamarind powder. This daily cleanse is called Puja which translates to something like cleansing prayers. Pushpa then takes her little tray of powders and burning incense to her garden of pots and certain plants get squished with spices and a smaller rangoli drawn in front of them, I'm guessing this is to help the weaker plants grow stronger. Then Pushpa goes to her little alter in the house and does her meditation and chanting and makes offerings to her Hindu Gods.

It's so beautiful to watch and it's such a gorgeous ritual to go through. It smells and looks divine. Then when I've returned from yoga she makes my breakfast. 

I am in some kind of heaven. 

And far be it from me to make you jealous but just look at my lunch! 

For those of you wondering about the yoga? The less said about that the better, 

I am battered, completely wrecked from it...

It will get better, I have booked an Ayurvedic massage this afternoon 

for my poor muscles.

Yeah I know...sympathy lies somewhere in the dictionary between shit and syphilis... 

*'([{Five addictions}])'* and a beach offering

I've been tagged by the talented Anna over at Colour and Sound to name five addictions, I've been meaning to post this for ages... these are my current addictions but by next week I will have new loves, O fickle me...

•The Internet... Oh my, I loveheart it...Do they have rehab for internet fiends? I have got repetitive strain injury from my mouse usage and ~I still can't stop, there is so much to see and do. All that research at my finger tips, all that creativity leaping around in the magic box. I need to be taken to a remote place and made to go cold turkey..NOW.

•Boots..Oh you know, the ones that go on your feet, they come in all colours shapes and styles and I like them. I line them up and look at them when I am really bored. Soon to be replaced by flip flops as the sun comes out.

•The Wire...The tv police series. It's given me so much to get my head stuck into, it's given me nightmares, it doesn't insult my intelligence, I hate television, I'm very against the opiumbox of colour (see addiction 1 which really shows how two faced I am) but The Wire...sigh. I don't want it to end. Oh yeah, p.s it's got the best looking cast ever. 

•Food..not an addiction but a necessity, heres the thing... I go through phases. I can honestly eat the same thing for days on end. Last week~salad nicoise...the week before...tuna melt with tabasco sauce...the week before that...spaghetti bolog. I think it's because I make a huge vat of something and am so busy watching the wire, being internetty or polishing my boots or possibly even making artistic and creative castles that I just dont want to think about food until I'm staaaaaarrrrrrving, so then I eat what i've left in the fridge...

•Yoga...feel weird if I dont do it, feel shattered when I do but cannot stop for fear of the emptiness and hopelessness. 

Box Number One

Box 1.

Title: Inner Space

Box inspired by and created with a battered copy of Patrick Moore "Guide to the Stars" and was begun after a particularly challenging yoga practise.

The text reads

"If you could measure the distance found by crossing the water

shiftshut still the third other eye

and you will see direction

your clarity apparent"

All of the boxes in this project will be created using my collection of "can't bear to take to the charity shop" old books that really, really need to have a new lease of life because of their sad and lonely condition. And using my collection of boxes that have been teetering and tottering on my desk for months. 

One box dedicated to one book.

Watch this space. But not for too long, I'm sure you've got things to do.

Coming Soon

Box 2: 'The Senses, Instincts and Intelligence of Animals with Special Reference to Insects'

by The Right Honourable Sir John Lubbock.

**India** Part Five (Remembering to breathe)

Namaste 

Arriving in Mysore after yet another overnight train journey left me drained and unexcited due to a posse of Indian business men who entered the sleeping carriage at midnight and then proceeded to play the latest Bollywood hits on their mobile phone MP3 players. This level of disturbance and rudeness is quite rare in India but the politeness extended to a live and let live mentality in the rest of the carriage and nobody spoke up and being alone I didn't want to draw attention to myself. But I fumed as I struggled to sleep on the rocking rolling riding.

Mysore was a city alive with possibilities. I checked into a cheap but clean hotel and hailed yet another killer rickshaw to take me to Gokulam where I knew the yoga shalas (schools) were. Suddenly I felt very alone, adventurous and out of my safe zone as the natives in this area weren't so used to English speakers and I had to survive on my wits. Also bear in mind that illiteracy is high and so writing a name of a place down won't get you there any quicker. I didn't realise that Gokulam could be pronounced in so many ways. The emphasis is on the 'go' or the 'ku' or the 'lam' depending on the driver you ask. It's a funny situation saying the name twenty times until realisation dawns on their faces and they repeat the name the same as you've been saying for five minutes. And they are so happy with themselves grinning as they put your fragile life state in the balance whilst negotiating a roundabout whist continuing to turn around to beam at you and repeat the name of your destination. Gokulam, Gokulam.

I arrived at the yoga shala of Shri K Pattabhi Jois. The famous founding father of contemporary Ashtanga yoga made popular by Madonna and co. I felt like the new girl at school. After enrolling and committing myself for a month to a tough physical regime, I set about looking for somewhere to live for a month close to the shala. I quickly came unstuck...the busiest time of year for yoga students and the only option was expensive hotels or shop doorways. I stood in the street after a long fruitless walk to find something/anything/no room at the inn and I noticed a statue/shrine to Ganesha the elephant God. Ganesha, I have been told is the God of beginnings and remover of obstacles. So, not being one to pass up the opportunity of a good prayer I asked Ganesha to please help me out of this lime pickle and send me a nice place to live. 

Dear reader, would you believe it? Within 45 seconds a friendly face popped out from under the shop counter and asked if he could help me? I explained my predicament and within five minutes I was standing in the kitchen of Pushpa's house being fed delicious Indian breakfast and handing over a months rent for food and lodging all within walking distance of the yoga shala. Bingo wings and elephant wishes. Ganesha is now my secret favourite deity...he wasn't always an elephant but it's a long Hindu story. I still say thanks to him when I see him and that's a lot. There are so many Ganesha shrines and temples.

Pushpa, my landlady, had only decided that morning to see if she could squeeze a couple of yoga students in to supplement her meagre earnings as a language tutor. All my luck but she says it was hers as we became firm friends despite having completely different ways of living. She is a devotee of the local Ashram and spends most evenings there in meditation and is a devout Hindu. Never married she is leading a pure life to get closer to God on her death. Hindus believe that the soul reincarnates, evolving through many births until all karmas have been resolved, and moksha, liberation from the cycle of rebirth, is attained. Pushpa, bless her heart, has had enough of being reborn. I, meanwhile, probably have a long way to go to attain the purity and full set of halos that she has.

She was the greatest cook, the best coffee maker and to wake every morning to her performing her puja (Hindu cleansing prayers) was a delight. She washed the front step down every day and drew a new Rangoli design on the path to keep out evil spirits. Bells were rung and bananas and grapes and incense were offered to the Gods. I learned so much being with her, she was a gem cut from the finest diamond. She was as interested in our 'culture' as I was in hers and she insisted in oiling my hair like an Indian lady and squishing a Hindi prayer of sandlewood paste on my forehead, whilst I traded her fast acting Nurofen for her slipped disc back pain. She was surprised we don't have fresh coconuts in 'our place' and to be honest if she left 'her place' for 'our place' she would probably expire on the spot. I tried to explain about life in the West but she doesn't even have a t.v so her life and her world is Gokulam. And very refreshing it was too. She became a second mama to me (of course noone could replace my Jeannie) plaiting my hair before yoga and telling me to wash my hands and nagging me into eating more than is good for me. 

I finally found the true heart of India, by living in an Indian home. I absorbed so much colourful detail about the Indian way of life. Walking to yoga every day was an orchestral arrangement in rural village life. Always passing 5 or 6 wandering holy cows munching on people's gardens and seeing the same children who shouted 'hello, what's your name?' every day for a month. And if you pause to engage in this you get asked your mother's name, your father's name, your sister's name, your brother's name and then all the way back to what's your name. All this from a grubby bare footed three year old. Every morning I saw the lady whose sole task in life was picking up the cow pats and make a big cow pat pudding with her bare hands then these were hand formed into little cow poo pattercakes which were put all along the ditch to dry and would be later used as fuel for cooking the evening meal. The 'ironing man' had a hole in the wall ironing parlour and I couldn't even lift the heavy brass iron. He slammed it around ineffectually ironing all day. Muscles galore though. The local shop was a hatch into a living room piled high with groceries. I couldn't recognise much except coffee and washing powder. Milk comes in a plastic bag and packaging was refreshingly minimal on everything. 

Yoga was a dream. All that collated energy, all those young warriors bending and twisting like flamingos, the sound of breathing amplified by the room's acoustics. No whispering or talking, just absolute focus on the practise. The only sound was the clicking and unclicking and cracking of my knees and toes. Hmmm. I was a mere beginner by the standards around me but I was full of determination and tried to undo 43 and a half years of no yoga. I worked very hard at my practise. Often wet through by the end of it. I was bendier and calmer and  kept trying to emulate a state of grace which was usually ruined by the next rickshaw driver. I saw some incredible yoga postures and some world class posers. In the afternoons at the local hotel pool I saw too many skinny malinky girls eating lunch (three almonds)with a foot around their necks or young stud warriors diving into the pool whilst maintaining a yoga posture. I soon found the rebellion group (the oldies) and we had a good social life, eating cake and sunbathing and talking. I made some good friends.

I have made a great new friend, Anette, around the same age as me, 6'2" and utterly gorgeous supermodel material. She was a German living and working in Switzerland and we became firm friends. Until I met her I was pretty much a Loulounomates and then a whole world opened up for me in the local community. I think she just helped boost my confidence and told everybody about my creative work. I did some bookbinding classes & I became involved in a couple of art projects (one nearly got me arrested, long long story, invite me round for dinner) and helped raise money for a local charity that feeds the homeless every day. Three pounds sterling feeds 45 people breakfast and 10p gets them registered at the local clinic where they can get medical help which many are in need of. I saw so many physically disabled people on the streets. A man with no legs and a tray with castors as his transport. A dwarf man with no legs who used two blocks of wood to shuffle around on. People really in need of help. Operation Shanti is run to help these people and they do a really good job. What I did was a mere pinprick on a bunch of bananas.

And the stories could continue into the night but I have to end it here. Maybe I'll write that book everyone keeps telling me to write. Maybe I wont. But thanks for reading. I'm flying home on Friday. I miss everyone so much. It's going to be a shock after all this diversity and twanging of my imagination. In India I have had the luxury of time to dream and observe. It's a beautiful life for all of us despite the troubles we have to bear. And I think we should all be grateful that we've simply got legs (apologies to Ronnie here) and that we don't make cow pat puddings as a career option. You are all special and much loved by me and thanks too to Ganesha. 

And the biggest thanks go to my dad. If it wasn't for John I wouldn't have got round to doing this trip, he told me to go and do yoga and I miss him every day. Thanks dad.

La'Haim.

Cor, that was like my very own acceptance speech...

Applause, 

much throwing of roses, 

...curtain

Love and lotus flowers, lentils, garlands and Gods

Loulou

xxx

**India** Part Three /...Kaleidoscope rivers \

Namaste (traditional Indian greeting translates to 'the divinity in me recognises the divinity in you')

It's me again. Catching up with the news of my travels...I'm really far behind now with the story having left Lynn and I on a train on New Year's Eve. So much has happened but rest assured I am well and loving every moment. So here's some more words that might or might not make sense.

The train ride to the beach was uneventful apart from being woken by the ticket inspector to let someone else into our carriage which displeased us ladies as we thought we had booked it for sole use. It's impossible to rely too much on any information here as I keep finding out and I should have learned by now but it's always coming back to bite me as I look into apparently earnest honest faces telling me blatant untruths. I fall for it every time.

Arriving like blinking newborns into the early morning sun (healthy and energetic and full of positive thoughts remember?) onto the railway platform we were faced with the bizarre sight of hundreds of people dressed all in the same colour. Yellow! Everywhere we looked, saris and suits and dresses and children too. Lemon yellow, egg yoke yellow, custard yellow, newborn chick yellow... There were hordes of arrivals for an ashram ceremony (ashram-a place of spiritual retreat) and I think the devotees wore yellow as part of a ceremony there.

Lynn and I had been drooling and dreaming about breakfast for half the night as we had come from the ration retreat and we were just so excited about poached eggs for breakfast. We dumped our luggage and sped to the beach cafes to fulfill our fantasies and all was well again. Toast, poached eggs and coffee. Simple fare made all the more divine by the previous two weeks abstinence. 

It was New Years Eve and we were looking forward to maybe a beach party or a gathering of some kind but it turned out to be neither. We walked along the cliff top after a fish supper and ran into a huge crowd gathered around a group of powerful drummers. We found ourselves in the middle of a pressing crowd of stomping, chanting, clapping men. Realising we seemed to be the only two girls in this scrum we decided to retreat which was really hard work. In typically English fashion I didn't want to appear rude by not joining in the 'fun' but at the same time I was feeling unnerved. We were surrounded, the smell of beer and bodies was overpowering and the men were closing in. Imagine a whirling dream/nightmare sequence in a film...faces looming out of the crush of dance crazed bodies. Lynn and I made a run for it into a restaurant and managed to hide away in a seated area. Everyone was just so over excited and the normal placid well behaved Indian men seemed to have thrown caution to the wind for one night only. We continued to be feted by young bucks who were all supposedly Bollywood producers, actors or cameramen. It might impress the young Indian girls but two old timers like Lynn and myself were not impressed. We made our excuses (yes, we'll be back later, we have to meet some friends blah blah etc etc) and we left. 10.30 pm on New Years Eve and we locked ourselves into our beach hut and decided to bed down for the night. At midnight the noise and shouting and drumming seemed to reach a crescendo. Lynn and I both woke up and wished each other a happy new year. I remarked that it sounded as though they were preparing to eat somebody out there. The noise, fire crackers and tribal chanting sounded ominous, not jolly at all. 

The next day, 1st January 2008 saw Lynn and I doing an 8am yoga practise and we felt like we were the only people left in the world. India had become serene with the first morning of a new year. We later read newspaper reports of assaults and harassment and that New Years Eve in India dictates no police leave and extra reinforcements bussed in.(extra reinforcements also means that the batons the police use to whack people with just get bigger) Indian men see New Years Eve as their one night to party like it's 1999 and all hell lets loose. The women and families stay home and all the single men gather at beach resorts in droves. If only we had known...I'm glad we went to bed and it felt instinctively right to put ourselves in a safe place. The rum remained untouched for another occasion, we were just so yogic and you all thought we would succumb...

Following one's instinct is a good thing to do in India. You certainly need your wits about you at all times. I feel exhausted after visits to towns where the only rules of traffic are that there are no rules and crossing a road or hiring a rickshaw are risky ventures. You have to look and listen and continually be aware  of everything. Reversing buses do not sound horns, no vehicles ever seem to indicate, the holy cows sleep in the middle of lanes of traffic on roundabouts. A cross section of traffic might consist of several heavily laden buses pouring black exhaust and numerous helpful back seat drivers hanging from doors and windows, thirty auto-rickshaws, sixty motorbikes carrying more people and children than they are designed for, cows, dogs, beggars, children, oxen pulling carts vegetable and fruit handcarts and the odd car. And in and out of all this chaos pedestrians wander. It makes the M25 look like a futuristic slice of slick action. The newspapers here report traffic accidents as 'mishaps'. A 'mishap' here is a bus with it's front stoved in and 16 people killed in a fireball. And if any driver is involved in an accident, a crowd will gather to act as vigilantes. The accused (and who decides is anybody's guess) is beaten and then dragged to a police station. I don't think there is too much of a compensation culture here.

And a word about falling coconuts. They can kill you. And they fall all the time. With a dull bone cracking  thud. In front of me on a footpath, by the pool, whilst eating dinner. I've seen it too many times now and I make sure I never linger under a coconut tree. If I voice my concern at heavily laden trees I'm met with a shrug. My one man crusade for health and safety has got a long way to go.

Lynn and I had a few days beach respite. We lounged and swam, read some beautiful Indian literature and chatted, made some new beach friends, did useful good international relationship building work by teaching French boys how to swear, listened to the bitter war between the rival coconut and pineapple ladies, we set our watches by the chai lady who came every afternoon to sell us good hot sweet chai. (We managed to persuade her that half of a desert spoon of sugar was ample instead of her recommended three). We did yoga classes on the beach as the sun was setting and the dolphins were leaping. Standing in a tree posture (balancing one leg, hands held in prayer high above head) turning towards the setting sun, doing a shoulder stand on the sand so all the sand from my toes fell in my mouth, were some moments from my diary.

Lynn and I decided to take a houseboat trip through the backwater canals of Allepey in Kerala. We reluctantly left the beach (sigh, how easy to be a beach bum) and travelled by early morning train to Allepey where we stayed in a guest house and got taken to a 'secret beach'. An endless expanse of sand with no tourists and just a small fishing community. The sort of beach you would see in 'paradise' travel brochures. A few artfully placed coconut palms and a traditional hand painted viking style fishing boat silhouetted in the setting sun as it sailed to evening fish complete with singing fishermen and creatively arranged clouds. Sometimes perfection is handed on a platter and after so many beautiful sights and amazing vistas it can be easy to say...hmm yes it's just another beautiful beach. I was ready for something new. How awful that I was getting a bit bored with paradise? Sometimes the heat gets to me, that's my excuse.

Our houseboat can only be described as an intricate floating wicker basket, shaped like a shell. It was luxurious. Two bedrooms with windows opening onto the silky cool river, en-suite bathrooms, a huge dining area and a large expanse of deck to lounge on cushions and be transported down river. A kitchen and a chef, a captain and a competent steerer. The three staff were discreet as anything, we didn't feel that they were overly present but if we needed anything they were instantly there (must have trained at the Ritz). We had hired the boat and crew for 24 hours to show us the other side of life in Kerala. The river life unfolded before us like a sleepy watery dream sequence. Scene after scene of family life on the edge of water. Nut brown shiny babies being dunked and washed, pools of colour that flowered slowly into women in full sari dress rising from the dark water where they bathed fully clothed, their long dark hair as slick as wet pelts. Groups of women washing and sifting through baskets of shellfish as our boat continued to break through the bright green lakes of water hyacinth that covered the black deep. I was mesmerised by the washing slapped onto rocks to make it clean, the cooking, the eating, the lines of children walking to school or being bused in by rowing boats, the glide past rice fields with rows of coolie hats and umbrellas over bent double bodies. A slow moving shiny jewel of a kaleidoscope river. The day turned into evening and we moored at the river bank in our prehistoric beast of a basket boat. Dinner was served and we watched firefly's bright lights burn and dissolve against the silhouettes of palm trees. It was the Wind in the Willows and Swallows and Amazons rolled into one. Morning bought us cockerels and morning haze and the rising sun and village children demanding school pens. We walked around the fields whilst our breakfast was prepared and set sail again for the home run. The photography opportunities were endless and in the end I just wanted to be hypnotised by river life and lay back and enjoyed every last moment. 

Then it was Lynn's turn to return to the UK and I was alone in India. More exciting adventures were planned as I was about to fly to Goa to meet my friend who had rented an apartment for three months. More beaches, more gorgeous food, more mad dirty mesmerising haunting India.

But despite the diversity and the dirt and the pollution and the power cuts and the poverty and the dust and the craziness, I am just so in love with this country. The colours are incredible and the light is unique and completely arresting. There is a time of the day, approx 5pm, just as the sun starts to drop, that the light becomes electric and colours are heightened and seem to sing. A tiny purple flower dropped on the dust becomes saturated with colour and seems to leap out of the landscape with it's richness. Maybe it's the artist in me but other people notice it too. It's become my favourite time of day. 

Love and light from Loulou

xxx