The Fairy Tale Beach Cabin
Day 19 (Day 6 of Wonder-Bike Adventure) – 8th May 2018
Time to move on to our next destination. We intend to get to
Maravanthe Beach but will take it step by step – or wheel by wheel. First the aim is
to get to Udupi, around 70 km up, and then we’ll see.
It’s early as usual – 7 am and we’re off, headed for Route
66, right beside the sea, which we sometimes see and sometimes don’t.
The heat. That’s our most impactful challenge. As the sun
gets higher so does the heavily moist heat, though the advantages of being on a
bike with air circulating freely are a mega plus.
We come to discover that motorbikes don’t pay tolls on
highways in India! So we get to experience a better road for a while, though
even highways have those huge road humps that make me have to grab onto Pedro
and lift my backside off the seat so as not to feel the bump so strongly.
The heat, the road humps, the pot holes and my sore
backside, the noise, the movement… There are moments when I feel overwhelmed,
exhausted but never unhappy. How could I? There is so much abundance in my life
each and every moment! Life is so generous to me always.
The duality of feeling these waves of overwhelm at the same
time as I feel infinitely grateful, in Love, at Peace and innocently Joyful
make me listen to Love’s whispering Wisdom:
What if I am in a
situation I do not Love and cannot change in that moment? I can change how I
feel about it by practicing unconditional acceptance. I realize very clearly
that sometimes making a Conscious Choice does not change outside circumstances
but invariably changes my inner world, therefore bringing me back to Love, no
matter what.
Round about 50 km of progress and I just have to stop.
Fortunately Pedro is also considering a stop so we find a nice place and hop
off the bike for a rest at Kapu Beach. It’s around 10 am and we are already
considering: what if there were a nice beach cabin right here?
We ask the young lifeguard on the beach if he knows of any
place to stay and though his English is rudimentary we manage to get the
message across. He asks us to follow him and indicates a sort of a resort. Not
really what we are looking for. He then calls a friend who has a house right in
front of the beach, but as we go in it is not exactly to our liking.
We eat an ice-cream – our first in India (other than the
spoonfulls at the hotel) and elect our next stop to be Malpe, a beach another
20 km further on.
We decide to take a road that runs in between the sea on one
side and a river on the other, a thin strip of land with fishermen’s villages
all along.
Wow! What a scenic experience! We take off our helmets and
feel the wind blowing through our hair, refreshing our hot skin and giving us a
taste of its raw freedom. This no rules feeling is something so rewarding,
something one can only feel in remote places where things function under a
different domain of acceptability.
I am mesmerized the whole way through. We go right to the
very end of the road where the strip of land ends in the sea. We soak it all in,
brimming with delight.
We have to go back to catch the connection to the road that
heads up and ask around for Homestays on the way, but we find only one which is
too large for us. We would have loved to stay somewhere around here but
apparently Homestays are not a business the people choose to explore in this
area.
Malpe, on the other hand, turns out to be one of those beach
holiday hubs where everyone comes to spend summertime. The beach is rife with
water-sports and there are people, mostly youngsters everywhere.
Fried fish
coated in a red paste is sold at street stalls, as well as iced beverages and
other seafood delicacies which we refrain from trying due to the intense heat
and its possible effects on the fish and seafood sitting out in the sun.
We look around for cabins, cottages, homestays and find
several but still our decision is to keep on going. There are too many people
here.
We have a peek at google maps and head for a place called Beach
at the White House, some 6 km away from where we are, at Hoode Beach.
When we get there it is round about lunch time – 2 pm. The house is beautiful, large and yes, white.
A lady comes out and says she has family staying so they are
not renting rooms for the night. Oh well, we’ll just have to look somewhere
else.
As I am getting on the bike for us to leave, the lady comes
back out and calls us. She has a friend there having lunch with them who has
just restored a fisherman’s cabin, a mile down to the right. The gentleman
is willing to let us stay there as inaugural guests if we don’t mind to sleep
in a completely empty cabin, with no real commodities, which is the actual purpose
of the place: to be authentic.
Well, why not? We ask how much it is but the
gentleman, called Atul, does not want to charge us.
The lady will give us
mattresses for the floor, sheets, pillows and towels and we can stay there for
free.
You see what I mean about life being always so infinitely
generous when we are open to receive its unconditional gifts?
We are still a bit incredulous but super happy for this
offer. We can’t thank Mr Atul and the owners of Beach at the White House
enough!
Atul takes us to the cabin in just a few minutes and it is
everything we had asked for! So cute and right on the beach, under the coconut
trees.
Inside it is completely renovated and there is a bathroom,
with running water and even a small stove which we don’t intend to use.
The floor just needs a clean up because it’s dusty from the
construction work so we ask for a bucket and since all we have are some very
efficient dried coconut leaf brooms, we use those to sweep the water we throw on the
ground out of both the cabin’s doors. Soon it is all nice and clean and
ready for the mattresses on the floor and we even have two chairs to sit
outside and contemplate the sunset later on.
Idyllic. The whole scene is surreal. It seems to have jumped right out of a children’s fairy tale.
I am sooo relieved! I just couldn’t take any more riding
today. Not that we rode much but the heat and the intensity of the whole
experience makes me want to just stay still and rest, absorbing it all.
I comment with Pedro that this is like a bootcamp resilience
experience where one hones one’s capacity to sustain extreme conditions so as
to find other more pleasing ones extremely easy to bare. So when we get back
home we will feel stronger but also be able to thoroughly enjoy the milder
climes and intensities.
The funny thing is we cannot say that less intense is
better… or worse. It’s all just life happening, or in other words, us being
life.
With the sea rolling into the sand right in front of our
cabin, we get ready to dive in and feel its warmth. The water here is like a
gigantic warm bathtub, the waves are mild and it is so shallow we can walk
far in.
A curious yet beautiful peculiarity of this cabin of ours,
is that it rests right across from St Mary’s Islands, one of Karnataka’s 4 geological
monuments, a rare columnar basaltic lava formation with coconut trees growing
on them and this is said to be the first place that Vasco da Gama landed on
back in 1498, when he arrived in India and baptized the Island he fixed a cross
on as “Padrão de Santa Maria”, which is where the islands got their name from.
So we are literally standing on Indian soil, looking out
onto the sea route that first connected Portugal and India.
Pedro goes to the nearby village to get some fruit and coconut oil for us to rub on our skin, as Atul has advised, for a beautiful sea spa sentation on our skin.
When he gets back we oil ourselves from head to toe and embrace the water, bathing and playing until I just feel like lying on the warm sand
to dry off and Pedro prefers to sit on a chair… the sand doesn’t look all that
clean.
There is a strange smell we cannot identify, because it does
not seem to be coming from a pile of rubbish nearby but rather from the sea
itself. We try and put a name to it but we cannot.
After lazing around for a while we need to get dressed and
go up to Atul’s house. He is rebuiding an old house nearby, which he also intends
to rent out when it is finished. As the sun is going down fast we have to get going
so we can still catch some daylight.
The house is quaint and full of beautiful antique
reminiscences, local handpainted scenes on the walls, a very well restored wooden
ceiling, a small patio and a large coconut grove right in front, all the way up
to the beach where Atul says he goes and bathes early every morning when he is
around. Lovely place!
Once again we have a meaningful conversation about love and
life and he shows us this heart shaped tree trunk he found, where he wrote “Loving
is Living”.
I know I’ve said this before, but one of the things I
thoroughly enjoy is being able to have deeply meaningful conversations with
just about anyone we come across. The common language of our Souls seems to be
clearer here and communication easily slips into what lies beyond Illusion. I
suppose this is what makes people come to India from all over the world to
experience a deeper connection with the Divine. This land, even the air here, is
impregnated with Divine Wisdom through and through.
One of my choices when I came to India for the first time
and now again, has always been to connect with its grand wisdom, with the enlightened
consciousness of this abundant Mother and to receive all of its bounty as I
open up fully to BE all that I Am. And I can guarantee that my Choice is
completely fulfilled.
Atul invites us to go for a drink in Udupi, the nearest
town, but we prefer to stay behind and go and eat some of our fruit, before going to our floor matress bed.
As we retire, here comes the thunderstorm and the heavy
rain. I don’t know if it’s because of the ceiling being bare roof tiles or
because of the coconut trees shaking in the wind right above our cabin, but Heaven
seems to have burst open in a heavy torrent of cascading water and booming thunder,
the likes of which I don’t think we had felt as strongly as today.
The power goes off because of the lightning slashing
ruthlessly on the trees. It starts raining inside but we put
the bucket under the dripping water and hope it doesn’t manage to get to our
matress… Well, we know it won’t. It’s not consistent with our choices 😊
A group of rowdy youngsters drinking beers takes cover under
the eaves of the cabin and we wonder what on earth they’re doing outside with
such a powerful storm going on.
We have no electricity, the youngsters are outside laughing
and talking loudly, probably unaware that there is someone staying in the cabin,
as it has been empty for so long and the storm is booming. However, we do want
to sleep.
Then, out of the blue, loud techno music starts pumping out
of a car radio and I breathe. There is nothing I can do outside of me to change
what’s going on so the only thing I can do is stay in my Serene Safe Space, in
my Centre, in full Acceptance of all of the circumstances and of my choice to rest.
After a while the noise stops bothering me and the next thing I know all has quietened
down… except for the muezzin’s prayer call from a nearby loudspeaker, some time
before sunrise.
India is a land of Acceptance of all creeds and here Hindus
coexist mostly with Muslims and Catholics, though there are other faiths as
well.
Acceptance is my key to bliss. After all of the night’s
challenges I ask myself what’s with my Conscious Choice for Peace and Serenity
and I smile as I understand that no matter what goes on outside I can reside in my permanent
inner Peace, knowing that this too shall pass.
I am very very thankful to be with Pedro right now. Going through this whole experience on my own would have been even more challenging and having each other's comforting and loving presence makes all the difference.
💙💚💛💜
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