travel//journal

These past few days have been chilly, snowy, nothing to do but roam around the house days.

I have reminiscence written all over me.

Photo albums are being pored over, old love notes read and re-read and journals flipped through and smiled at fondly.

Above is the journal I kept on my first trip to India back in 2009, it's probably been about three years since I last read through it. My fingers tips are worn smooth from turning so many pages that still smell like a mixture of incense and spices, a ghost of a scent trapped and preserved between the pages after all these years.

Reading through my entries I'm amazed at how resolved I was to document not just the events of my trip but the emotions, the connections, the conversations and the lessons learned.

I scribbled down quotes and snatches gleaned from chats with fellow travelers; things that resonated with me or I wanted to remember for future reference. Compliments given to me or assertions on life that had never occurred to me before.

I wrote lengthy excerpts from books that I was reading while I traveled, stories told by taxi and rickshaw drivers, my fortune given by a palm reader.

 There are maps, phone numbers and email addresses scribbled in the margins alongside my own doodles and calender entries detailing what I did each day.

 I will forever know that on June 4th of 2009 I "Sat next to the ocean reading Hemingway and drinking Ginger Lemon Honey Tea".

Every page is filled with the people I met, their impressions on me, the experiences I had, the romances and what I learned from them.

I'm so glad I have this keepsake from the most magical and influential 4 months of my life to treasure and keep for always.

It's a reminder in this time of healing of what once was and what once again can be.

I'll leave you with a final thought- a sentence scribbled on to the first page of my book, whether it was a quote I heard or read or it came from my own brain I can't remember, but it's a nice thought, and one that serves me well in this current path I'm taking...

rewind ➳ ➳ India mountain paradise

I posted recently about musing, dreaming, building castles in the sky...a divine head trip where I could revel in the fantasy of perfect freedom and solitude. 

But then it occurred to me...I don't need to create this place, 

I don't need to retreat into my imagination to find my place of tranquility, I just need to search the corners of my memory.

 Because I've already been there.

Here we are. The Motley Crue.

The boy from Germany, the girl from London and the girl from France.

We had done what is wont to happen with lone travelers ~  grouped together and formed a rat-pack of land walkers, wearing our home on our backs like giant African land snails.

The objective was simple; we were to find a taxi driver willing to drive us way, way up into the hill mountains of Kodaikanal and find a Tamil family willing to bed and board us.

And do you know what? Our crazy plan worked.

Look at the picture above real close. Squint your eyes. Middle right. Do you see that whisper of a thatched roof peeking shyly through the foliage?

That was our home for a week.

Below is Sophie with Silvan, the amazing taxi driver who connected us with this family living in the remotest spot on the mountain you could imagine. It was our fantasy, our nirvana, our backpacking dream come true.

                        

We spent that week living with "Amma" and "Appa" who looked after our every need.

They didn't speak a word of English but when you share house and kitchen, beautiful clean air and a never-ending skyline, language becomes a very small thing when you can touch and sing and smile.

                        

We drank fresh mountain water, bathed under the waterfall, did yoga while the sun rose and let Amma feed us till our stomachs swelled like watermelons.

At night Appa would shuffle into our room all wrapped up in his shawl, pass around his rum and roll charras cigarettes, smiling toothlessly at our broken up English and gestures of communication, by turns  entertained and amused by these western curiosities.

I have never experienced such untouched kindness and beauty in both mankind and nature as I did on the side of that mountain in India in 2009.

I also learned a valuable lesson then; one I'd recently almost allowed myself to forget... that in the natural order of things, we and all of our problems are tiny specks of dust. We don't matter. But kindness, truth and the spirit of adventure can carry us very vey far in this world and maybe, in some small way, let us leave our tiny little footprint on it.

And that fantasy I wrote about, it doesn't need to stay ficition. I don't have to live in my own head...

because I have wings the strength of a mighty Swift bird and strong enough wind beneath them to keep me flying a long time yet.

I read the best quote today:

"I haven't been everywhere,

but it's on my list"

~Susan Sontag

my daily cup.

Lately I'm loving these slow walks to the school bus in the mornings. Layered up snug against the first snaps of winter in the air, naked tree branches and naked fingers clutching my warm morning chai. Soon it will be time for gloves and hats, but I'm clinging tight to Fall's dying breathes for as long as I can.

Maybe it's the British in me but nothing revives me like being tucked or bundled up and sipping good, hot, strong tea. 

It's my go-to elixir for all my irks and ills: British tea perfect for waking up to with breakfast, spicy chai perfect for all occasions, green tea for my skin, chamomile for unwinding, Jasmine flower for digestion, sweet tea, bubble tea, oolong and darjeeling, tea tins and tea pots, mad hatters and owls in teacups. 

They don't call it a tea party for nothing!

Despite my love for observing the seasonal metamorphose, the changing temperatures have been playing havoc with my immune system and I'm up and down with colds and flus more this year than ever in my life.

Although it's miserable it is a perfect excuse to indulge in my tea addiction. Ginger Lemon Honey tea was a discovery I sampled first in India where the dust and pollution meant sore throats were often afoot. This cure all magic remedy was always the perfect antidote to head congestion and I've been reaching for the fresh ginger during my weekly grocery shop. 

Ginger roots are my absolute favorite. So dirty and misshapen, but truly delightful when peeled and used as an ingredient. 

To make:

Slice about an inch of peeled fresh ginger and leave to steep in a little boiled water for about 5 minutes.

Add a tablespoon of honey and a squeeze and a slice of lemon.

Fill cup with more hot water.

Stir and drink.

source

Being sick forces us to take solace in the smallest of comforts. Mine are drinking my revival cups of tea and the promise of a cosy weekend with my Dallas.

Are you in camp tea or camp coffee?

Share!

Breathe in...Let it go

'Yoga Family' Practicing yoga on our guest house roof in Bangalore, India

Before my first journey to India 4 years ago I had dipped my toe into the yoga pool many times; on the living room floor with my yoga video after school, classes at friend's gyms and hot yoga lessons later when I moved out to East London.

I was never the sporty or athletic type but after practicing asanas (yoga poses) my body always spoke to me and thanked me for the balance, correction and mind connection I was giving it. It enjoyed the ritual and discipline of the exercise. 

Fast forward to my airplane landing in Goa: I was a girl enchanted. It was my first solo travel, I bore my load on my back like a galapagos turtle and it appeared I had just arrived at the Arabian Sea's tropical back garden. I threw myself into the bohemian atmosphere...sunbathing next to cows on the beach without a care, drinking from coconuts bigger than my hands could hold, magical night market wanderings and technicolor sunsets proceeded for the next month...all to the soundtrack of Bob Marley and birdsong.

I met many beautiful, insanely wonderful, cuckoo bananas people during that first month in Goa who I still speak to occasionally today...and one of those people twirled me around and sent me spinning like a top down a path that left a deep fingerprint on my soul that will be there for always.

He was a Creole spiritualist from Switzerland, I was younger and quite apathetic, used to my street smart peers from London. We were worlds apart with nothing in common but when he learned of my affinity with yoga he made it his mission to see that I join a Yoga University in Bangalore that he had been to.

The course was a month long, cost a bolder-sized chunk of my travel budget and you were not allowed to leave the compound for the full month while you were there.

This was definitely not part of my 4 month travel plan... but something, an inner intuition, a whisper from the universe, told me to step on to this new and unexpected path that was opened up to me. We parted and he sent me regular emails giving me all the information that helped me apply and find my way to the Ashram....

My month at the Vivekenanda Yoga University in Bangalore shines like a glittering mosaic of splintered images in my memory....

4am wake up calls and dragging our yoga mats for the first class of the day, bare toes to the dirt, while the moon still shone like a silver marble in the indian ink sky/ the rotund and stern faced Padma Shri, our Hindi Yoga tutor, who, despite her size and age could contort herself into the most impossible looking postures for our demonstration/ hours spent on meditation and learning the power of breathe and how to inhale with love and exhale every drop of bad energy from your body/ the powerful seminars on Hinduism and Spiritualism from some of India's most revered Swamis whose words touched me in a place so deep I would sit listening with silent tears rolling down my cheeks.

It was the best experience of my life.

I continued my asana and meditation routine for months after my return home from India but, of course, life gets in the way, routines and priorities change and my focus on yoga waned as I set off on a new adventure to South korea.

Last month my lovely friend Whit joined a yoga and pilates class here in my hometown of Beomgye and invited me to join too. For the first time in 2 and a half years I am treating my body to it's favorite exercise...and it hasn't forgotten. 

Every time I get in that class I feel my muscles smile and submit completely to every stretch, letting me move deeper into each pose with every breathe. 

Most importantly, in this stressful time in my life, it's a reminder of my power to breathe in deep, and just let it all go. 

Iced & Spiced~ Indian Chai Tea Latte

This is a love story.

It's about a girl travelling in India all alone, carrying her world on her back, adventure in her spirit... and leaving a little piece of her heart there when she returned home.

At first it wasn't an easy love. India didn't always seem to love her back. She could be harsh and crushing and cruel. Her streets swarmed, her heat suffocated, her people seemed broken and unsmiling. There were times when she took and she took and she took until the girl felt she had nothing more to give. 

 But then.

A time came when India began to give. She spoke to the girls soul and opened her arms up to her, showed her stars that were bigger than she'd ever seen before, purple skies, bustling bazzars and crumbling temples, eventual smiles from her people, not all broken but beautifully spiritual and inspiring.

It was in these moments the girl knew she had lost that small part of her heart there forever. 

The backdrop to this love story is tea.

 

 I cannot think of  India without my mind conjuring the heady and intoxicating scent of hot bubbling chai that infused every street corner, every train journey, every chai wallah's canteen. 

Sweet and spicy, lip-burningly hot and buffalo-milky. It came in plastic cups, small glasses, clay pots and china. 

Instead of footprints I left discarded tea vessels in my map across India.

My heart squealed when this pin showed me how to make my own authentic chai tea. 

All of the ingredients can be found right here in Korea's Homeplus and the cardamom in Itaewon's International food mart,

1. Honey

2. sugar

3. Cinnamon stick

4. Cardamom pods

5. Ginger

6. Black tea bag

7. Black peppercorns

8. Cloves

Go ahead and give yourself a special treat this week and follow this recipe.

One sip of this delicious infusion of sweets and spices and it will transport you to India by proxy.

Thank you sweet chai for letting my Indian love story continue!

edit: I've been informed that adding a Bay Leaf in with the above ingredients which will add a little more dimension to the flavour. Thanks Darren for the tip!!