So, New Year’s in India!
So wonderful, so bizarre.
NY Eve day started with (remember, “yes” to everything!) a spice plantation tour where I learned more in an hour about how spices grow and are dried/processed than, well, I ever learned. And walked away with another 1/2 kg of spices, ginger, chocolate and Indian coffee.
Five spice is a single damn plan! I’ve spent my entire life thinking it was a cheap-ass excuse for lazy cooks but it actually naturally has five separate flavours. Who knew??? (OK, you did…, but I didn’t and it’s my blog…)
Kumorakam lake, Karala State, South India. Tamil Land! The land, the people and the hotel, are stunning.
Karala Dancers at sunset
So sunset cruise. Reset my camera after taking a full morning of photos with my camera set up for fluorescent light (not great for natural light shots). Cocoa beans and coffee, and coriander and pineapple and turmeric, and orchids and vanilla and… bunch of amazing stuff have looked better! (So, no photos).
Have I mentioned I keep randomly adjusting my camera settings with my nose (on the touch screen) and not noticing as I glibly keep snapping shots. Not a big deal if I’d remember to check the settings once in a while, but that seems to be beyond me as I’m super excited at seeing stuff and trying to capture 1/100th of it.
Saw the last sunset of 2017 from a boat out in the lake, accompanied by Indian drummers and a flautist (I know that word cuz I played the flute and was good at it, until I decided to hitch it up (?) and switch to saxophone. How’d that work out?
Sunset and lake and boats and music was all amazing and yur gonna have to take my word for it, because, I had something wrong on the camera! Lol, the images and sensations are firmly ensconced in my head, so when we figure out the Vulcan mind meld thing, we can share. Or…I can stand in one spot and make amazing hand motions to describe the sunset, boats all over the place and palm trees, and boats, and birds, and those people from New Jersey….
So, “I shot the Sherrif”!
The hotel staff have been setting up this massive buffet and seating for maybe 150 all day. Biggest damn buffet I have ever seen (and I grew’ed up in the buffet biz). Big stage, slinky black dress MC (she is hot), local dance performances in amazing garb and make up (see vid on Insta!), Indian cover band (80’s rock, Brian Adams, Gangam Style and “I shot the Sheriff is the lead I song. It kind of set the tone for the evening (they had been warming up earlier with Bryan Adams). They gave the single white guy a table right at the front….😳 (“please don’t talk to me Ms. MC, or pull me into one of the contests, please!). She didn’t!
Then couples dance contest (toe cringe), kid punk dancers and then the DJ.
ALL of this MC’d in English, because there are so many languages in this country, and moreso the south (with Tamil and Malayalam here in Karala) that the common language is English. It’s a bizzarre collection of Indian culture and western pop.
Sunset flowers
It’s amazing! (and a fog machine to boot!)
We just slipped into 2018 here, brought in by Bollywood House music (Cheering to myself, but to everyone I know, with one of the three bottles of wine now sitting at my table)
And, the cute waiter from lunch who is very friendly has loaded my up with three bottles of bootleg wine for tomorrow (??) as there is no booze available on New Years Day. And then chased me as I left with a fourrh bottle.
Party at my place y’all!
Happy 2918 to all!
May we all be blessed with mis-adventure, new friends and cherishing how lucky we are in our lives!
Love from Kumarakom, India!
