Wednesday, April 04, 2012

another land of mango trees and coconut water sellers


(written some time ago):
... am I glad we came here!!! fresh cut Mango from the street stalls.. water festival for their new year! Had water thrown at us for hours today - soaked to the bones. Very well natured people, gentle water fighting. NO aggressions whatsoever. SOOOO refreshing and restoring after the country of people who know no boundaries.Pineapple shake for $1 here and it was delicious. SO happy. Glad we came even so we spent too much that we can't afford to spend... Now I feel like we did the right thing. It'll be good for us. I could live here by the way. People, food, culture, grace....
AM SO glad we came here!! It is so extremely refreshing and restorative to be here! The people are so graceful and respectful, gentle and fun loving! It's their New Year and we have been doused in water for hours, the streets are filled with people sporting water guns and buckets....... It looks like there was a monsoon rain but it's just the whole city splashing water over each other, nobody is safe; whether one sits on a rickshaw, bus or moped... chances are everybody is soaked to the bones. VERY much fun and all in gentle humor. Had my first fresh mango cut up into pieces from a street seller. oh YUM
We had a pretty hellish journey to reach here but as soon as we landed it all got better.Our taxi driver - of reasonably old age - had tremendous fun throwing water at pedestrians and rickshaw passengers, while driving us from the airport to our guest house... You should have heard him laugh... infectious fun.
SO happy! The replacement flights cost us terribly much and I wasn't sure if we shouldn't head straight for Berlin but I think we would have arrived SO exhausted there... coming here was the BEST best best choiceJason's heat rash has not shown itself since we reached the airport in Bangalore yesterday and we decided on an airport taxi here today to keep the reappearance of the rash at bay. Same for our first night or two here. Normally we make do with fan rooms, not just to save the wallet but also the planet. But That J isn't getting sick was a bit more important today.So all is beautiful I am so happy to be out of India. For some reason I couldn't take more this time. Which likely has more to do with life and it's uncertainties than with India itself. But wow it is a challenging place and it doesn't even try to dress itself in any other way than: full on and challenging...I'll be taking a break from palak paneer for a while before I'll surely crave it all over again....