They say no good story ever started with a salad. They are wrong. “We are going to have salad with every meal from now on,” he declared one day before we were to go on a weekend trip to Chikmagalur. “He” refers to the autocratic, ambitious, ampractical (alliteration over accuracy) husband of mine. If we were going on a holiday and sustaining on salad, I had to do other drastic things to make up for it. I headed to the salon, and after a teary reunion, my stylist took it upon himself to change my look. “Blue hair”, he said. “Only if it takes less than an hour,” I said. “Of course,” he said and proceeded to hold me hostage for the next 4 hours. It was worth it, despite the size of the bill. The smurf look was gonna fit right into the hilly scene. I would have ideally liked to post a picture. Then again, the selfie collection of a person who is too embarrassed to freeze people mid task while posing for that perfect selfie, is just filled with blurry faces and missing limbs. The influencer life is clearly not for me. Anyway, we start off Friday afternoon with my blue hair, a blue suitcase, 3 umbrellas and a bottle of wine. We were headed to a homestay in a coffee estate. With instructions given ahead to the homestay that we needed salad for every meal. The brat is coached to be a good ‘travel buddy’, which mostly included tips on how to look out of the window in wondrous awe of the beauty around us, without asking for our mobile phones. The forecast was rain and heavy rain for the next 3 days. Lucky for us, we love the monsoon. We arrive at our destination in the midst of fog, clouds and rain, just as it is getting dark. We are greeted by the smell of coffee as soon as we enter the gates of heaven aka our very welcoming, very cosy, very green place of stay. The hosts rush us into our rooms and invite us to join them for a cup of coffee. Two things happened. The bub discovered what addiction means when he took the first sip of horlicks he was offered. I discovered that coffee actually tastes amazing, after all these years of ignorance. We got out our umbrellas and raincoats and went for a short walk just outside the estate. Stopped at the ‘Hill top canteen’ for some egg burji and the company of a black cat. We got back to our cosy room to enjoy the fantastic view of the foggy mountains. We had been experimenting with various board games. Catan and Ticket to Ride were the ones all three of us loved. Dungeons n Dragons was the one we were intimidated by. We finally got around to reading up the rules, watched a few hundred videos of the game and were all set to play it throughout the weekend. And then, we forgot to pack it in. Not one to be deterred by such impediments, the husband decided to do away with the multiple polyhedral dice and go with a simple coin toss. He was the dungeon master. Brat chose to be Gandalf. I chose to be Snoop Dogg. Yes, I am aware that I didn’t fit in. But I was determined to not let this game degenerate into an enactment of LOTR. The brat scoffed at my choice. “What is your power then, huh?” he challenged me. “I chill, severely,” I replied. We got into character. The DM put us in castles with assassins and beasts. I summoned dancers on my turn to solve every problem he threw at us. Meanwhile Gandalf was fighting Saruman (one sorry man, apparently) on his own, pouncing on Urukhai, mistaking Urukhai for Oorugai (the tam pickle), Uppuchek (the gult version of nippat) for Nunchuck and overall managing to put even the dancers to use. The game was interrupted with the arrival of deep fried chicken and french fries. If you ever wondered what there is to do when you go to a hill station with no ‘things to see’, here’s a comprehensive guide - you drink coffee/tea/wine and eat fried chicken. And when you are done, you realise that sunrise has turned into sunset. The next day we headed to the peak of Chikmagalur, Mullayanagiri. Our homestay was located quite close and a short trek got us there. We fortified ourselves with the maggi bowl that is a mandatory sighting on all hill tops. And then we started the 300 step trek up. The wind threatened to blow us away, the husband chickened out several times, but the little guy held our hands and dragged us to the top. The rest of the trip was spent heading out in different directions on walking trails. That is, when we were not gorging ourselves with the drool worthy food our hosts were dishing out. Last year for his birthday, we had gifted the bub a small canon camera. This might be the best investment we had ever made to maintain sanity during travel. He clicked pictures of the road, the bugs on the road, the fallen trees, the mist-covered houses, the umbrellas, us holding the umbrellas and just about everything else in sight. A trip to the western ghats is always amazing. The great scenic winding roads literally make you unwind. It was a very short trip, but we did manage to load ourselves with more coffee powder from the estate to relive Chikmaglur for a few more days at home.
PS. No salad or vegetables were harmed or touched during the trip or the writing of this blog.
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Aishwarya KalakataThe loss of and search for individualism has never been felt more acutely. Everything changed after I had a kid. But this blog is not about me being a mom. It’s about the things I do when I want to stop being a mom. It’s about telling myself that it is possible and that it is ok. It’s about my little escapades. Mostly travel - sometimes physical, sometimes mental. A desperate bid to stop my identity from being rolled into a single word. CategoriesArchives
March 2021
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