122909 & 123009: Delhi and leaving to Kerala

As we get comfortable on our exit seats on the Jet flight to Kerala, I have a thousand thoughts racing through my head and I’m hoping I pen them down before I forget it all. I already have Heidike sitting right next to me asking me if I’m writing a fresh piece or just going through all the hard written work she’s been doing over the past 4 days. I almost feel a little guilty for slacking but I think I want to write a bit right now before I’m going through our earlier work. For maybe the nth time I’m wondering if this is really for REAL... I mean is she really here? Did we really spend the most awesome four days of vacation? Why is it that the good time flies like it does? I mean we’re already done with our Udaipur vacation and on our way to Kerala and very soon all of this will be a memory and as the time passes become a fond blur of one of the best vacations I had with my best girlfriend. So yes I’m very grateful of her idea of writing small memoirs on our journey so maybe we can look at it with time to come with fondness and laughter. When you think about it as we grow older and all our needs have been met the only thing we look forward to is bliss and happiness and I have a very strong feeling that one day we’ll look at this and feel happy. It just feels so great to have her here and to spoil her that I can’t stop ranting about it.. But what makes me truly happy is how she’s taking it all in. *Oh yes, bring it on!* She’s loving the food and I know she’s not just saying it to be polite (she’ll definitely complain if she doesn’t like something – no really!!) but because she’s eating more than I am. And everyone sees that at home too and maybe I’m even a little jealous coz of that!! Well, because I can see my mother has taken a true liking for her and is cooking delicacies for her that even I haven’t gotten to eat in the past 8 monhts. *:-)* Well well, I guess she is just so easy to love no one can help but spoil her. *I wish that was always true.”

So yesterday we spent a quiet day in Delhi with absolutely nothing to do. We went to our Ashram in our morning which is like a personal family temple. *This was such a great experience for me as I felt part of the family. We all went in the temple and after we sat down, Rabiya and aunty started to sing. It was so touching and beautiful to me I almost started to cry.* Since yesterday was last day in Delhi before the New Year, my mom and dad wanted to keep a “langar” in the ashram. *Basically they packed up food and distributed it to the poor people.* So we spent a quiet morning there just chilling and chatting about life in general and post lunch we went for our pampering session to the salon. We got red manicures *My first ever manicure!* and even if I say this myself it looks hot!! And we got a nice warm olive oil head massage, hmmmm… *This was freaking awesome!* I think we were super happy we didn’t meet our friends for lunch as planned earlier because it was just so relaxing and now we are ready to take on the next lap of our trip – Kerala here we come!! For those of you who don’t know, Kerala is super famous for its original ayurvedic massages. In fact the ayurvedic form of treatment (which is a purely natural treatment about a 1,000 years old) originated from Kerala!! I’ve never tried it (thankfully, I’ve never had the need to) but its seemingly worked wonders for people that I know have tried it. So yes, we are already booked for our first ayurvedic massage at our hotel this evening.

 

 

 

I think I now want to talk about a little bit of the silly stuff that we’ve been up to. But for now our plane is taking off so I need to pen off and more to come later. Heidike is reading at this stuff and giving her silly smile. Yes, she’s been amazing at soaking it in till now and Kerala should be equally awesome!!

And we’re back. In the air settled in our super cosy awesome seats but starving. We got some crap food at Costa Coffee in the airport and I can see Heidike is also waiting for a good breakfast. I must say after super low super small domestic flights this flight is finally flying high enough so I can get a really pretty view of the clouds below. Our previous flights to Udaipur, Jaipur, Jodhpur were all on these small little jets (can’t really call them planes) which were only like 20 minute flights and hence flying so low that we could see the ground the entire time – imagine flying from New York City to like Philadelphia (no really!!) that’s like Delhi – Jaipur! But yes, Kerala is the south of India so this is a good 4 hour flight I believe. Heidike’s got this nice tourist book on India from Jess and we’ve been checking out the places we want to visit in Kochi. Hmmm this should be a really chilled out new years with beaches, natural beauty, coconut palms and the sun!!! Yes, we can’t wait to shed off the winter layers.

If anyone is reading this you’re probably bored by now and honestly I’m too hungry and I see our food arriving so have a good day and you can check this space out for late.

I’m back – you see our flight made a quick stop at Hyderabad and for a moment we were really worried because we didn’t remember seeing this on our ticket printouts *We later saw the printouts did say 0 stops.* – we thought it was a non-stop flight and with the plane doing these summersaults and wobbling a bit too much we wondered what was going on!! When we realized it was a regular stop over, that’s when we Heidike started wondering how many times we will be going up and down on the flight on her two week trip. We did a quick count and realized it’s a large 9 times and for her 11 times considering her flight to and from the U.S. It sounds a bit too much. So we settled back into our seats sighing, she’s taking a short nap and I pushed my seat back *like always!* and cozied up to write a bit more when I suddenly heard a boy seated behind me ask his mother “Mom, how do you push this seat back”. I had a sudden realization that this is probably the first time on a flight for him and what we were considering a pain (to be on flights so much) is probably something he’ll never do in his lifetime. This one flight may just be a big luxury for him. And then it struck me once again how fortunate we are. We don’t choose where we are born, and yes we can work hard and make a better future but still it’s just so humbling and fortunate for us to be born where are needs have always been met. Anyways, that was just a random thought I wanted to put down. We’ll finally be reaching Kerala in an hour and I’m going to go back on putting my smartass comments on the stuff that Heidike has written at the time we were in Udaipur. Ciao for now!