Namaste

A Passage To India-the story continues.
Breakfast on holiday can be a thing of beauty and in India the full English is alive and kicking. Whenever I go away I seem to wake up hungry and up in the cool, hill-top air of Coonoor, in Tamil Nadu, it was no exception. We were staying in the amusingly named YWCA Wyoming Guest House, a blue and white colonial style building, resplendent beneath the pink and orange bougainvillea and nestled amongst the deep green tea leaves that grow on every bank and plain in that area. Cooked to perfection by a toothless octogenarian, we ate porridge, poached eggs, tea, toast and mango juice before heading out on day one.

The plan was to just take things easy but of course plans rarely work out. The night before we'd met Sultan, a young man very keen to break into the tourist game he'd started taking groups out for hikes in the extraordinarily beautiful Nilgiris Hills, promising to boldly go where no guides had gone before. His trips had been very popular thus far, judging by the comments from the New Zealanders and the Germans that he proudly showed us in his 'Guest Book'. "7 Kilometers" he proclaimed, "then the tea plantation and the coffee plantation." We explained that we were just arrived, still a little tired, one of us was 72 and none of us in need of unseen sights or rare views of mountain creatures, perhaps we could just go in the rickshaw straight to the plantation and have a cup of tea? "No problem my friend" said Sultan.

And so it was my friend and I found ourselves hacking through the undergrowth, heading to the top of the mountain, barely able to see the sky above such was the density of the Eucalyptus trees, while Sultan ran back down to assist my mother who refused to sit this one out. A situation I believe they both now regretted as he virtually had to carry her to the summit. "If you hear an animal," he said, "make a sound", disappearing back into the trees for the third time on his mountain relay trek. No problem there, making sounds in the countryside whenever I hear anything unexpected is what I do best. I am not for nothing a city girl. Finally, we broke free of the tangled forest and knotty tree roots, and reached the top where perched a tiny painted Hindu Temple. The spectacular view was almost worth it: the mists swirling up from the valley below like cold breath in the hot sunshine, fingers of clammy cloud reaching high up the tree covered mountains. And everywhere tea. We lay down on the rocks, like lizards in the sun, and sucked it in.

Coonoor is a bit of one horse town and I think the horse may have left. But it was a good place to start our journey and we learnt that tea actually grows on trees that are specially 'bonzied' to be bush height for the purposes of picking. You'd be amazed at how much time and energy goes into a cuppa. So, after a couple of nights we headed higher to Ootty, Queen of The Hill Stations as it is known in those parts. This is a place that has definitely seen better days. Once the holiday home of ex-pats, Princes and Maharajahs it is now a popular summer retreat for the rising Indian middle-class. Planning permission is clearly not high on the agenda here and all quaint vestiges of the Raj are more or less obliterated by the indiscriminate over-development of a great many new hotels and the resulting tat that follows a deluge to holiday-makers. But this was where we were destined, to meet the Reverend Stephen and his extended family of orphans at the Happy Home. This was for my Mum the aim of out trip, to make the journey she had intended to do with my late step-father, and so she was very happy to be there. The Reverend's aim is to educate the children and give them a good opportunity for a better life and to earn a living, they have just had their first student accepted overseas. We were greeted with enormous warmth and generosity and the most delicious home-cooked southern Indian delicacies, you'd be hard pushed to find a better Marsala Dosa than the ones Margret made. The young ladies, dressed in their Sunday best, put on a fine show of dance and song before we all tucked into cake and treats. While we were there we also visited some of the projects out in the villages where many of the girls learn how to make clothes and crafts for the tourist industry. The pride with which they showed us their work was palpable and we really had an excellent day out.

Then we were off to Mysore. Little prepares for the vibrancy and frenetic chaos of an Indian city at any time of the day let alone rush-hour and as the light faded and the mosies emerged Mysore was no acception. Our driver swerved to dodge the scooters, top heavy with boxes and bags wedged about the driver, his sari-clad wife riding side-saddle on the back, and played chicken with the black and yellow, buzzing rickshaws and hand-painted trucks. The Green Hotel was an oasis amongst the madness, a 'model of sustainable tourism', with some of the happiest and most helpful staff I've ever encountered, even attempting to fix my mother's mobile after a bottle of hand sanitizer had somehow managed to empty itself in her bag, melting not only the casing but the sim card too........just one of the reasons why I never use the stuff. The city filled our eyes, heads and hearts. We marvelled at the Mysore Palace and sweltered in the dusty forgotten art gallery, a gem of a discovery, wearing our amazing black, floppy summer hats (think Joan Collins goes to the beach) purchased for a snip from a keen entrepreneur outside the Palace, before taking a dip in the pool at the Lalitha Mahal Palace Hotel, a sort of cross between St Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London, only bigger. We drank G & T's on the lawn and feasted on delicious Tandoori chicken, coconut rice and fragrant dal and were fleeced by the Pirate of Mysore market, a cute Johnny Depp wannabee with a fine line in chat and chai who sells his 'essential oils' essentially to idiots who fall for his charms. See a photo of our smiling faces in one of his many note books depicting his happy customers, now known as 'the book of shame'.

Right now, in the cold light of a less than spring-like day, it's hard to imagine that somewhere else it's too hot to sit out. But trust me, in Hampi, in the state of Kanataka, it was hitting 35C and that's where we were headed next.......

Top tip: Dove Tinted moisturiser will maintain any tan.....indefinately.

A Passage To India

Where's Spring? I had hoped to return from my Asian odyssey to something slightly more hospitable than the sub-zero temperatures and icy winds that greeted us at Heathrow. However, the good weather appears to be on hold for the foreseeable, so I have little choice but to set the central heating to Bombay, slather on the Dove tinted moisturiser and pretend the holiday isn't over..........Pina Colada anyone?

Despite my plans to miss out the rest of winter going a-rye, it was good to take a trip, albeit a bit stressful. A girlfriend of mine, who also has a friend living in Goa, had decided to join me and my mother on our adventure and see a bit more of India other than the beach. A bold decision but, being the most experienced traveller of the Asian sub-continent in our triumvirate, I did feel a tad responsible for their welfare. Travelling with my 72 year old mother in India was not that dissimilar to travelling with my son in the same country when he was 10, checking they're drinking plenty of water, they've remembered their hat and haven't wandered off somewhere.............I didn't manage to lose her but we did have to get a train stopped as it began to exit the station without us. We frantically clambered aboard, hoisting our heavy cases up with the help of the hundred or so random folk that always seem to be busy going nowhere on an Indian platform. The stopping of a train greatly bemused my travelling companions but in rural India the sight of three memsahibs in distress is often met with great kindness and much help, needed or not. And so we continued our journey, me, Mrs Moore and Mrs. Moore light, from Ooty to the majestic Mysore then on to the hazy heat of the boulder-strewn ruins of Hampi and finally the beach at Patnam.

At the Mudumalai National Park, in Tamil Nadu, I was particularly keen to encounter the Giant Flying Squirrel having seen a large painted likeness of this unusual beast with it's evil staring eyes by the Park reception, next to a sign saying 'Park closed'. It was apparently 'Tiger counting' week, something the fabulous Bamboo Banks camp, where we were billeted, had failed to mention. But as animals are less sure of the Park boundaries than the rangers there were plenty of wildlife spotting opportunities to be had. Alas, the Giant Squirrel eluded us and we failed to spot a tiger but we did see spotted dear, Macaque monkeys and encountered wild elephants wandering in the roadside jungle, and one who payed our bungalow a nocturnal visit. In a scene reminiscent of Jurassic Park, I sat bolt upright in bed, heart beating hard in a 'what-the-hell-was-that' way, listening to the mighty crack of something large moving outside followed by the unmistakable blustery exhaling that only a creature with a trunk could make. Elephants are not known for attacking harmless strangers in their beds but it felt scary. In the places where they roam wild, the locals consider them as vermin, a nuisance that causes considerable damage, like foxes with their merciless chicken genocide, the pachyderm breakdown the fences, trample the crops and rip up the vegetable patch.

The proprietor of our hostelry, a formidable octogenarian Indian of the old school, with Elephantine ears and a trunkated nose, who spoke RP English, had opened the joint to amuse himself and his wife in the latter years of their apparent glorious lives. He drove about his property on a quad-bike, trailed by two Golden Retrievers, a mischievous old man who saw conversation as sport, to catch-out, cajole and cause offense and at which he was a master, gleefully watching his opponent gulp and gasp as he denounced democracy, education.......the wheel. Unbeatable comment: 'Gandhi that crook, my father put him in jail.....'

To be continued.

Top tip: never leave home without Bach's Rescue Remedy

Baby it's cold outside.....

February is undoubtedly the worse month. Well it's definitely my worse month. The end of winter. The end of civilisation, it drones on and on. Endless dull, damp days, the threat of snow a blessed relief from the low-hung sky; a dismal sun glimpsed like a 40 watt light bulb from behind a shower curtain. It's grim up north, down south, east and west. And this particular ragged end of winter seems worse than usual, as if summer belongs to another generation, someone elses memory found pressed like a buttercup between the pages of a dog-eared Enid Blyton book, before the library banned them. A time long, long ago in a land far away, when the hot, sticky heat smelt of ripe tomatoes and Ambre Solaire and yellow-parched grass pricked the back of bare legs, a humming bee buzzing just overhead. Aaaaah, 1976......that was a summertime when the weather was fine.

Happy daze indeed, but I fear summer will stay on hold for a few months more. That's why I'm off. I'm heading for the hills, the Nilgiris Hills that is, in Tamil Nadu, south India. And I can't wait. I was concentrating so hard on booking guesthouses and Bamboo lodges and sleeper trains, I'd sort of lost sight of the bigger picture ie: I'm going on holiday. It will be a mixed bag of low budget, shabby-chic and old-colonial-drinks-on-the-terrace sustainable tourism ending up with a bit of hippy-on-the-beach relaxation in Goa (think Mediterranean summer, light on the cost, heavy on the palm trees).

I first went to Goa an anxious, naive, 19 year old not even armed with a backpack. My boyfriend, a seasoned traveller of the over-land sort, insisted I jettison everything I owned. So, packing nothing more than a spare pair of knickers, a years worth of 'the pill' and as many boxes of tampons as I could carry in my. . . . . shoulder bag, we set off. I was supposed to be starting my degree at art college in London. This was a time before the invention of the gap-year so I lied to the tutors and told them I had been offered an opportunity of a lifetime: to stay with my Uncle who was working in Asia, an opportunity I couldn't possibly turn down, a once in a lifetime experience but I so wanted to go to their college what was I to do? 'Go' they said, 'of course you must,' they said, 'we'll hold your place' they said. So I went. That truly was a year of magical thinking and was to shape everything that came after it. 20 years later I went back to India, this time without the boyfriend but with his son instead. The father flew out to Manali, northern India, and we celebrated the son's tenth birthday.

Now I have a friend who lives in Goa with an open house and an open invitation. She is in the bikini business and as an ex-nanny who once worked in LA, there is nothing that woman doesn't know about beachwear. It's a good ......minute walk to the beach so after such early morning exertion it's time to enjoy a hearty breakfast at my favourite beach side cafe where they make the best Eggs Florentine and an excellent cappuccino, enjoyed under a shady canopy, watching the waves lap the half-moon curve, the sand already between my toes. A world away from my first visit to the once Portuguese state, where we subsisted on bhaji and 'ommolette', the culinary highlight being a coconut cake and a 'Nescafe'. And, after many hours sat staring at the sea or watching the palms sway overhead, back-dropped by a bright blue sky, under a heavy canopy of hashish, we would dream of sitting on cushions, eating Marmite toast and hot baths; luxuries we'd learned to do without on our quest for enlightenment. Oh happy daze.

Top tip: Turn up the heat with home-made chili oil. Toast dried chillies in a pan, add to olive or groundnut oil, whizz in a blender and pour on ......everything.

Young at Heart takes a trip......normal service will resume after March 9th.

Coming Down To Earth

I went to see the movie Up In The Air and I really enjoyed it. Aging delightfully, gorgeous George Clooney was just that (refreshingly grey haired instead of the ubiquitous auburn glow men-of-a-certain age so often sport these days), there's a bit of the unexpected and some of the lines were laugh out loud, in a good way. I don't want to spoil the plot but there's a bit where the young girl says to the old girl something like: 'I hope I look like you when I'm your age'......which had me rolling in the aisle because I've heard that phrase myself. More than once. What do you say? What is the correct response to the back-handed compliment, made with all the naive vim and vigour only the young can get away with?

To miss-quote The Eagles, the lines on the mirror are the lines on my face, there's no getting away from it. So I suppose there comes a point, it would seem, when looking good eventually gets tacked onto 'for your age'. As the years pass it's unavoidable. I do it myself with Dames Judi and Helen, Marianne Faithfull, Julie Christie and many more top women who look great....for their age. Although right now, with the temperature dropping and the threat of more snow overhead 'you look alive for your age' might be more appropriate. I scrutinise necks, jaw-lines and upper arms, counting the lines like rings on a slice of aged oak. I applaud the 'laugh-lines' of others and salute the celebrity brave enough to wear a frown. It doesn't help to be confronted by my bathroom shelves, buckling under the weight of age-defying lotions and potions apparently able to stop the 7 signs of aging. Only 7? Suckered into buying toning, tinting, body-sculpting creams that promise a younger, smoother brand new me.

But I'm not up in the air about that. Who doesn't enjoy a bit of pampering, a soak in a rejuvenating seaweed bath, or the heavenly scent of body oil infused with Moroccan roses, whether they work miracles or not. We're all grown-ups, do we actually believe that the lovely Liz Hurley is really a stranger to the needle, and maintains her radiant look on just a thimble full, albeit a highly nutritious, organic, grown-in-her-garden thimble full, of watercress soup? Looking good, or the belief that one is making oneself look good, does raise our spirits. So we feel better. So we look better. It is of course different for men though. For them old, fat, grizzled equals shaggable (see Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, imagine Cathy Bates pulling Jake Gyllenhaal in a similar roll....) as the song says, 'Keep young and beautiful if you want to be loved.' Apparently, lipstick sales surged after 9/11, a phenomenon first noticed during the Great Depression. Red lipstick, heels and a great rack, mad men are mad for it.

Top tip: Laura Mercier's Poppy lipstick will put a smile on anybody's face.

Let Me Eat Cake

With age comes wisdom and what I've learnt is.....don't fight it, bake it............it's the only way to get through the winter. I've had two massive attacks of cooking fever in the last two weeks, both of which were super successful: Nigel Slater's chocolate hazelnut cookies (dangerously addictive) and Lucas Hollweg's orange and almond cake, both sinfully easy to make too. But why have I taken up the wooden spoon? Because for me, it is the ideal way to calm down and carry on when it all gets a bit overwhelming. Plus, in the case of the orange and almond cake, it makes the kitchen warm and citrusy.........always good on a wet Wednesday afternoon in January.

So, armed with a stack of soft-baked, chocolate hazelnut cookies, I am able to return to the fracas masquerading as my life at the moment, and help my slightly over-excited friend plan her slim, elegant, fortysomething wedding (without turning into bridezilla), get my mother safely into India while keeping my son safely out of Helmand Province (which knocks undone homework into a cocked hat) and attend to the business of working, paying bills, going out, staying in and keeping warm.

The travel plans to the jewel in the crown are coming on a pace but I am not a travel agent for good reason...it's quite stressful. I am more used to travelling with an idea and a map than an itinerary and a timetable, but with a 72 year old in tow I felt that booking early to avoid disappointment was the order of the day. However, despite getting a supremely lucky break on very cheap BA flights, and almost unravelling the mysteries of India rail, the final leg of our journey from Hampi to Patnem has fallen foul of a slight technical hitch: I booked the sleeper train to get us there no problem, unfortunately the AC part of the the train to get us to Goa is full....forever it would seem. And although I would be happy to travel the eight hours with just the breeze in my hair, without AC, I have visions of it all going a bit Passage To India, my mother coming over all Mrs. Moore and no Dr. Aziz on call. Still, when plans don't fall into place, the adventures can begin and nowhere is the saying, 'it's the journey not the destination' more appropriate than in India.

Top tip: guarantee to be in the youthful minority, go to the matinee of anything at The National Theatre