2020 India – Mandrem
16th January 2020
Finally, we came to the end of the sightseeing part of our holiday and were more than ready for hot weather and beaches. Our next stay was at another boutique hotel, The Mandala, in Mandrem. It was sold as a yoga and meditation retreat with a program of activities every day which we fully intended to make use of. It turned out that the program was mainly silly stuff, like dancing with dandelions and talking to trees. The only normal yoga sessions were at an ungodly hour in the morning. I had never really done yoga but was mildly interested in it whereas Federika had done quite a bit and was keen to do some but her enthusiasm didn’t extend to getting up so early in the morning. We liked the hotel but it felt a bit cliquey with people in the open-air restaurant competing over what yoga retreats they had been to and who they had studied with.
The accommodation was very quirky and we loved it. It was a two-story construction made from bamboo in the shape of a Kerala Riverboat. 
The ground floor had a small bedroom and a very basic shower. On the first floor was a four-poster bed with a mosquito net covering it. The floor was the funniest thing and sometimes stepping on a floorboard made furniture move at the other end of the room. It was the kind of accommodation you would hope to make if you were cast away on a desert island. 
It had some very bad reviews from people who were expecting something more luxurious, as it wasn’t cheap, but it was exactly what it said on the packet and we were very happy with it. Mind you, I would hate to stay there if it was raining as it couldn’t have been remotely waterproof. The owners were a very nice young couple, the husband being Polish and the wife Indian. They spent the Indian summers in Poland and the Polish winters in India, although they said they were thinking of moving to Poland permanently. At the end of the tourist seasons when the monsoons came, they dismantled all the houses and stored them for protection as the whole site was usually under water. It seemed inconceivable to me but I suppose if you do it every year and have enough help you get into a routine and get it done quite quickly.
It was a very pleasant ten-minute walk to the sea every day. Next door to our hotel was a big yoga retreat that had two or three sessions a day which were always well attended. Further along the narrow path were some souvenir shops and then we arrived at the sea. We spent most of our time on the beach and a couple of times walked along the shore to Arambol where we spent the day. On the way back, just a few metres from the shoreline were lots of people sitting on the sand selling all sorts of things. A lot of jewellery and different crafts, some played music and some offered services like palm reading, massage and lessons on how to be really cool. 
On our way back along the beach, opposite a large hotel, they had erected a small stage covered with ribbons and there was an Indian wedding ceremony going on. There was a small fire in the middle and the bride and groom were in the process of walking around it a few times as part of the ceremony. There was music and lots of beautiful people dressed in brightly coloured saris. We stayed there for ages enjoying it and waiting for an invite but none ever came. 
2020 India
