Nemo James

2019 India – Albin’s Glory

15^th January 2019
Our next flight was to Kerala with a short stopover in New Delhi. We had an hour to transfer which should have been enough but at Delhi airport arrivals there was not a single direction to our departure gate so we found ourselves in the international terminal instead of domestic. It meant we were back in a long queue for passport control so we were certain to miss our connection. We pleaded with the man on the gate saying there was no point in going through passport control for a domestic flight but he was not interested. We had no choice but to push our way through the line shouting “We are going to miss our flight” and although there were a few grumpy people, we managed to get through with minutes to spare. I hated it when people did that as most of the time they simply didn’t leave home on time but in our case, it really wasn’t our fault.

For our next adventure we were booked for a week at the Albin’s Glory, an ayurveda retreat on the outskirts of Kochi. It was highly recommended by someone we knew who went there nearly every year. The only thing that worried me was that it was too cheap. An all-inclusive package which included accommodation, three meals a day, a daily consultation with the ayurveda doctor and a one-hour massage,  all for £400 for both of us. I wasn’t expecting much but although our room was simple, it was perfectly acceptable and we had our own bathroom which for me was essential. The grounds were beautiful and backed onto a wide river so we would sit on sunbeds and watch the occasional fishing boat pass silently by. It was so peaceful and what a relief after Varanasi. At lunchtime we all sat at a large table in the garden where they brought the food out to us. [sg_popup id=”17903″ event=”inherit”][/sg_popup]

The menu for the week was strictly vegan with no tea or coffee and of course no alcohol. Federika had warned me so I was prepared and thought it would be good to eat healthily for a week. I knew I wouldn’t be too keen on vegan food but felt sure there would be plenty of things that would be acceptable. I was wrong. I was not a fussy eater and the only the only things I couldn’t eat were horseradish and anything with cloves in it but now I could add anything vegan to that list. I didn’t like most of what they served but managed to get through most of it. There was a particular spice which I really hated and the problem was I was never able to establish what that spice was. On the days they used that spice I ate virtually nothing but I still enjoyed my stay there. Federika liked most of what was served and the other guests kept banging on about how good the food was.

We got chatting to the other guests who all had their own stories to tell. Some had been going for years and said how much the treatment had helped them. There was a nurse who had broken a thermometer and ended up with mercury poisoning which affected her health very badly.  They were a very friendly bunch and during meal times they talked about who was having what treatment that day and that’s when I started to worry. One woman was missing from the table because she had just had her cleansing treatment and was feeling so bad that she couldn’t get out of bed. That apparently was quite normal and some of the guests talked of their experience with other treatments and it all sounded horrific. The cleansing treatment required the patient to drink Ghee mixed with cow’s piss. I was prepared to go along with anything but would draw the line when it came to taking something that would make me ill, especially when there was nothing wrong with me in the first place.

Next morning we woke up to a shared breakfast of dry toast and warm water. It was my morning coffee that I missed the most. The sun was shining and the weather pleasantly warm so we took a stroll to the local village. There was not much there and not even a café where we could have a clandestine coffee. All the guests of the retreat had appointments at different times during the day and ours was late morning. A tuk-tuk driver picked us up and took us on the 15-minute ride to the house of the Ayurveda doctor who was running the show. The road was terrible. In a car it would have been uncomfortable but in an old tuk-tuk it was hard going as he was swerving around trying to miss the potholes. We were shown to the doctor’s house and sat in a waiting room where we had to fill in forms with our names, ages, medical conditions etc.  We waited in turn to see the doctor who examined us and prescribed a treatment for the week. I was shown into a small office where Dr Subhash was waiting for me. He was a quiet-spoken and kindly-looking man who looked at my questionnaire and asked me about myself and what was my medical problem. It wasn’t until then that I realised how I had taken my good health for granted as I couldn’t think of a single thing wrong with me. He asked why I was there then and I told him because my wife wanted to come but I was still happy to go along with it and was sure a week in his hands would do me a lot of good. I was going to tell him there was no way I was going to be drinking cow’s piss but he never mentioned it and I found out later that it was only certain conditions that he prescribed it for.

He asked me about my dietary habits and when I told him I had a sweet tooth he said it was OK, but sweet things should be eaten at the beginning of a meal and not at the end like us weird Westerners do. I was surprised and nodded my head but I was sure he knew that was never going to happen. I went back to the waiting room and shortly afterwards I was shown into a room where two men were waiting to give me a massage. I stripped down to my underpants and lay on the massage table and one of the men put some warm oil on me. I had heard from the other guests that it was the doctor was prescribed what kind of oil would be used. In my case, the oil had a strong smell of onions. It wasn’t my imagination because another woman said she had also been massaged with onion oil so I don’t know what it was about our demeanour that made the doctor think of onions. A masseur stood on either side of me and after establishing that I preferred a vigorous massage they got to work. It lasted an hour and although I was sure it was very good I was never that bothered about massages. I didn’t dislike them but I wouldn’t go out of my way to have one. One hour was a bit long for me and I could have done without the onions. We went to the doctor every day and on our third day I was able to report that there was something wrong with me. The tuk-tuk ride was so hard going that it had given me a backache so the masseurs were instructed to work on the backache that visits to the doctor had given me.

One of the women had a foldup guitar that she always carried around with her. I had never seen one before and it seemed a good idea for travelling although it was a little difficult to play. One night she invited us all to her room to have a singaround. It would have been much better in the garden but that was off-limit at night because of the mosquitoes. There was a nice atmosphere in the room but I never liked singalongs so after listening to a few songs I sang three of my own and then went to our bedroom to read while Federika stayed and enjoyed herself.

One afternoon we went into Kochi to take a look around. It was a ten-minute ride to the river where we took a very crowded ferry across to town. There was plenty going on in Kochi and we started with a traditional Indian dance exhibition. For a little extra we paid to go in half an hour before the dance to watch the performers being made up which was an extremely elaborate and skilful procedure.

The dancing was weird. It was performed by a man and a woman in front with a half-naked man standing behind them, banging away on a tiny cymbal. At one point the woman danced only with her eyes and appeared to be telling a story which became self-explanatory when the man held a sword to her throat. I assumed they were having some kind of marital tiff. Maybe he was angry about coming home to find a half-naked man with a cymbal in her bedroom?

Next, we went to a display of Kerala-style martial arts. We sat on a balcony and looked down into a large pit where the use of various weapons was displayed.

Most of them I was familiar with but what I had never seen was the two long metal flexible bands that spun around in circles that made a terrible noise and being deadly sharp must have been terrifying to be confronted with. They were used in battle and effective because it was impossible to get anywhere near the user as it moved through the air so quickly and any contact with bare skin would have been devastating. Of course they weren’t so effective when bullets and cannonballs came along.

Finally, Federika went to The Kochi-Muziris Biennale which is a well-known art gallery. I wanted to go as well but I was troubled by the call of a beer from a nearby bar and felt it would have been rude of me to ignore the call. That night we had a glorious meal with all the things forbidden at Albin’s Glory. I had a delicious fish in vine leaves and a couple of glasses of wine. It was Heaven.

One night there was a big festival in Kochi so a few of us went to see it. We arranged with our taxi driver to pick us up from the place where he had left. I had no idea where we were so as a precaution I took a photo of a hotel we could use as a landmark. The town was heaving and had a great atmosphere. There was a long alleyway with shops on either side that was packed solid with people moving along slowly.

It led to a large field where a long row of elephants was standing. They were heavily dressed up in costumes that included large golden headdresses. There were men sitting on them holding umbrellas although I was not sure why because there was no sign of rain and it was nighttime. I had never heard of anyone sheltering from the moon.

There were so many people that it was impossible to get close to the elephants but a man approached us and took us backstage. I felt a bit guilty being given preferential treatment just because we were foreigners but no one seemed to mind and we had found that kind of welcome all over India. Being backstage at an elephant show did require proximity to some pretty humongous arses but that all added to the unique opportunity and from there we were able to make our way around to the front of the crowd. The men on elephants stood up and started waving large feathers around while below there was a group of men playing drums and some kind of small trumpets. [sg_popup id=”17877″ event=”inherit”][/sg_popup]

The elephants were just standing there looking very bored and they had no more clue as to what it was all about that we did. We walked around the rest of the area and soaked up the atmosphere which was of sheer joy.

When the time came to meet the taxi driver we had no idea where the arranged place was. Federika usually had an amazing sense of direction but I suppose because of the sheer mass of people she was as lost as I was and the two women with us were even more clueless. I started showing people the photo of the large hotel I had taken but surprisingly, no one recognised it. We were half an hour late when the taxi driver suddenly appeared and took us to his taxi a few blocks away.

On our first day we filled in a long questionnaire which amongst other things asked about the kind of food we liked and our lifestyle. On our last day we were given a sheet of paper with our doshas which had something to do with the five elements. Federika was pitta-vata and I was vata-pitta. There was a list of foods we should eat and another list of ones we should avoid. I looked up the validity of following a diet determined by one’s dosha and found that there was no evidence to suggest that it worked. Considering the world was full of people who smoked despite the overwhelming evidence that it would probably kill them, I found it hard to believe that there were people who would give up food they liked in support of an unresearched theory. I had no doubt that there were plenty of people whose lives were changed for the better because of such a diet but I was not going to be one of them. Federika was much more open-minded than me and intended to be guided by it but I was not going to put any money on that happening.

It was a good week but we were happy to be leaving. The surprising thing was that with me eating so little I was sure I would lose a lot of weight but that wasn’t the case. It was probably because on the days when there was nothing I could eat, I had to fill up on bread.

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