Vacation update: Part 1

so what did we do? started the vacations with a bang! road trip to Goa. It had been some time since the four of us alone had gone for a trip.. The kids were super excited as usual. We started around 5 am, roads were great and we reached there around lunch time. The trip was fun, it was not the usual “When will we reach” on loop.. the kids were more interested in looking outside, talking about things, playing I Spy, listening to Harry Potter (btw that’s a super duper hit! The BH has never read any of the Harry Potter books and has been very dismissive about them.. but these audio books have got him hooked! And they are perfect for the long drive). Reached the resort, had a good lunch and crashed.
They had a pool in the restaurant and that’s where we spent the evening. Had got arm floats for the kids and after a lot of “I’ll drown.. I want to go back” from Mowgli he finally got the courage to stop clinging to me like a limpet and slowly let go of his one arm.. floated around holding my hand and then slowly let go of that as well. Then there was no stopping him. Wobbling around in the water calling it swimming.. trying to take Bambi with him.. he was enjoying himself. Bambi on the other hand was cool from the beginning. No hysterics, she held on to one hand, quietly but firmly refused to let go and was happy floating around.. the contrast between these two!!!!

The next couple of days were bliss. Wake up.. breakfast.. drive down to any beach…. Lunch…. Drive back… relax at the hotel… pool.. dinner.. sleep Made it a point to visit all the restaurants we had shortlisted.. Yummy seafood grill at Suza lobo… the awesome shack at Curlys.. pastries at Britos.. and Martins corner.. came back all brown and relaxed. Bambi’s reaction when we pulled into our driveway was “No… Bambiku beachila povande.. no veetil varanda..”… yes, that was exactly our sentiments!

The next weekend, the kids got ready to go to Kerala for a long holiday to spend some time with their grandparents.. two weeks at my place and two weeks at the BH’s. Bags all set, super excited ( that was us and the kids.. not the grandparents!). Drove down on Friday. Met up P and S and Sasha baby.. Had a super duper fun filled lunch with A also around.. Talking.. eating.. ordering again and again.. … and ending up with countless glasses of lime tea. the bill came...we paid it and then proceeded to order again … totally exasperating the restaurant staff. They finally started sweeping the place and under our feet before we got the hint that we were the only ones inside and they wanted to close the place. Had a good time! It was fun at home as well. After a long time, we had a full house again. My sister and her husband, us and the kids, cocoa it was like a madhouse. We drove back on a Sunday leaving the kids behind. It was so quiet in the car. It felt really strange. You don’t realize how much the kids are part of everything that you do.. its only when they are not there there seems to be a small gap.

Anyways back to ur quiet house , it was a good break for us.. all our activities are revolved around the kids.. they are with us wherever we go, mainly because there is nobody at home to leave them with. So it was a very quiet feeling when they were not there and we were doing our own thing. I’d forgotten what it was like to read in bed before going to sleep.. its been so long that I’ve had that luxury… what did we do? The BH as usual moped around for some time missing his kids and his dog and generally hatching harebrained schemes like lets go bring them back this week and what not and I routinely squashed all his plans. Got a lot of work finished in office and at home. Painted a blackboard wall in the children’s room.. gave away a lot of stuff to Goonj.. cleaned and rearranged the balcony.. ran at the park everyday morning.. ate out and negated all the effects of running… and the big one.. we went for a bike trip to OOTY!

Ever since we bought the bullet, the BH has been cribbing about not being able to go on long drives. He did go on a solo trip to Wayanad last December and enjoyed it thoroughly. But I’d never gone on a long drive..(come to think of it I’ve never gone on a long bike trip). Shortlisted couple of destinations and Ooty seemed to be the best option.. 6-7 hours from Bangalore.. the drive promised to be a good one.. so off we went on a Friday morning. It was great. What I realized is a bike trip is very different from a car drive coz ona bike there is nothing to distract you. Its just you and your thoughts and the road. No music, the same position, its almost like meditating. And its weird the kind of thoughts that come.. I made a remake of the Malayalam movie Traffic into Hindi in my head, with Vidya balan doing Anoop Menon’s role and aamir khan doing Srinivasan’s role. Don’t ask me why, it just came into my head. We stopped every hour to wriggle around, to have chai, tender coconut. The funniest part was when we would walk into hotels with our helmets tucked into our elbows ala Top gun style and strut around seeing everybody stare at us. We tried to project that “yes, we are doing a bike trip..not its not a harley, but you see it’s a bullet.. that too the 500 cc one.. we are very adventurous very cool cool guys, you see” attitude. It was only later we realized that once we removed our helmets and glasses our entire face was black with white circles around our eyes. The pollution and the dust on the roads and that’s why people were staring at us!!!! Major embarrassment followed!

Reached ooty in one piece. Continuing the tradition of doing things differently we decided to walk around the city. It was good, not as tiring as we thought it would be. Definitely something different. We should try it with the kids also, not that I see bambi walking for even half a kilometer. She is one lazy bum when it comes to any physical exercise. Anyway, while walking and talking we bought voiced the same thought..’why don’t we buy another dog?’ apparently during the medidating bike ride where both of us were alone with our weird thoughts, we somehow had the same thought!!! I was thinking that it would be nice to have two dogs and an independent house with some ground for the dogs to run in and blah blah blah, the BH was also thinking the same! Telepathy and all. Since IMPULSIVE is our middle name, the BH immediately called up a couple of dog breeders in Ooty and wanted to buy the pup from there. Hahaha, no we did not think of how we would bring the pup back on a bike, I had a cute vision of snuggling it under my jacket.. anyway no pups available. So we decided to buy from Bangalore itself. No more illuminating thoughts, had a nice time there, decided to do this every year, planned future trips to Ladakh(as usual), talked about buying house in the hills(as usual) and then it was time to go back. Now THAT was a disaster. We were tired after the first three hours and the traffic and the heat didn’t make things easier. At one point we even thought of stopping at mysore and staying there for the night. The BH was dead tired, my bums ached like mad and at every traffic light we bought got off the bike. We literally crashed into our bed when we got back!