Posts
The
beach turns me on, anywhere, anytime! Elsie Gabriel.
I simply am a backpack babe. An avid traveler since childhood, with a passion for discovering insights into various cultures and social traits that form the very basis of the social fabric of life, the outdoors highly interest me.
My attachments and tryst with waterholes, lakes, beaches and rivers have taken me to explore not only the Powai Lake which I live near here in Mumbai but also the Hoover Dam in Las Vegas, Lakes in LA, Malaysia, HongKong. Mauritius, Swizterland, Holland, Nepal, Lakshwadeep, Bali and France besides numerous other water spots of the world.
I d love to share of my best experiences with some of the worlds greatest sun kissed beaches. My first experience was with the Puri beach closer to home in the Bay of Bengal, way back 30 years ago. As a child in total innocence I would let the waves envelope me, take me away and throw me back on it’s soft sand. Once I almost got swallowed I remember, by a strong current but it didn’t matter then, it was just for a brief few moments, how I had fought back and landed back on the beach as the waves came back in full swing with its usual high tide during noon. Of course I didn’t know or care about the high tide timings or low tide ebbs, but these are memories of my first innocent ‘touch and go’ love of the oceans.
I remember going back to Orissa to see the Chilka lake, the worlds largest lagoon, full of dolphins and various species of birds….as a teen later on too after high school and then after the vacations I had come back home to Mother, baked, black as a queen of spades! I refused to believe I looked ugly! But Mother was lashing out, splashing my face with turmeric and ripened dry gourd scrubbers. Gosh I kept wondering what all the fuss was about, It was only a tan, that would take ages to go away she said!For the love of the sea, I was so sun kissed and blatantly at bliss with my new escapade with the ocean, yet again…..we weren’t brought up with sun screen lotions nor fancy hats to the beach trip notes…… so I didn’t care what the beach did to me…I was already in love……..I had enjoyed pulling the hunchback horse shoe crabs from their race into their holes in the sand and loved to bring in the nets with the fisher folks and curiously simply watch….the rare rich wealth of slithering silvery catch of the sea…..
Of course in Malaysia, I simply loved Lankawi, full of birds and frogs and fish swimming around the mangroves which twined themselves with the ocean waves, not letting go ..like huge walking legs begging for existence…..to my own amazement I simply dived in…..shorts and all, I hadn’t planned on swimming just cruising…but none the less…swimming among the mangroves believe me is an ethereal experience only a budding environmentalist like me would know,,…no silvery sand, no fancy umbrellas around, just me ,the little shrimps and the frogs and the maze of gigantic roots…..I was one with the ocean……..
The aquarium at home has leftovers of my beach escapades like little broken old corals, shells, sand stones…..my world of ocean memories in my own sitting room mind you…………………
The Pacific Ocean offered another delight altogether! In, Bali I took off to Lambok, to the Turtle island…..on a beautiful little plane…..another sublime experience swimming and pampering the rehabilitated marine turtles…..You have to feel them to know that the Ocean is mighty and has so much to offer…the ocean never fails to surprise me..move me… excite me….see what I mean……
Of course there are numerous dates with the beaches which I treasure as I grow and live off memories fondly of my beach experiences…enriching myself and being one with water …..I could go on and on….wait, here’s another one….in Mauritius…..I went swimming at ‘Flic en flac’ which is found on the west coast of Mauritius, Flic en flac derives its name from an old Dutch phrase that literally means 'free and flat land' and is one of the best beaches of the western coast.
I was doing my usual nose dives and playful underwater stunts when I heard the fisherfolks speaking in Bhojpuri…a colloquial hindi dialect… …..God …I took off too…. in the same dialect…’Kaisen bha shabh koi…angreji naikhe awat…?”..and then it was cheers to a new found friendship on the beach…..made friends instantly with them,they later took us to their home for lunch….of course we heard their 3 hours non stop history about the sugarcane farmers coming in from Bihar and UP from India to set up the sugar industry and how they mingled with the french and ultimately…..grew to be Mauritius in culture and a nation……..
The beach brought me back home on its Mauritius shores ,imagine….
How deeply you fall in love is ‘ to each his own’ but god am smitten……and can’t wait to see the beach again……although you don’t always have to wader abroad to see one. I went to the Arnala beach on the Maharashtra coastline just last week and it was gorgeous with black sand and swaying palm trees, quite clean mind you.
The beach never fails to mesmerize me, hold me and touch me, satisfy me…….I’ve fallen hard………see you at the beach……
