Thekkady, India
Having hot oil massaged into places no stranger should go is quite the experience but Ummi, one of the Shalimar Spice Garden's masseurs is a wonder-worker, pouring heated libations onto my head, face and every crevice of my body as I lay prostrate before him.
The Ayurvedic spa is an oasis of deep calm. Behind the little black wooden doors are a couple of treatment rooms looking out on a beautiful little garden and as I give myself over to an hour of pretty intimate man-handling whilst solely in my birthday suit I find it easy to drift away into quiet contemplation, followed by an almost hypnotic trance.
Coman is in the room next door and when we both emerge, glowing with oil and blissfully serene, it’s about as much as we can do to make it the 30 yards to our room and collapse on the bed, wrapped in our robes, falling fast asleep. We’re rudely awakened after thirty minutes by a text wishing us Happy New Year from a friend trying to get in with their greetings early. Oh the joys of technology, but thank you for the kind thoughts… you know who you are!
Showered free of the healing oils and dressed for dinner in one of my newly designed shirts, we venture out to see what the New Year’s Eve gala entertainment promises for the night ahead. For the past thirty minutes David Guetta has been blasting out of the speakers but it transpires that is just an early disco for the kids. The adults have a more sophisticated, and distinctly Indian, night ahead of them.
Tables are laid out around the pool with twinkling fairy lights in the trees. A stage is constructed across the other side of the pool and in the building behind it a longboat has been laid out like a table with thirty or so Indian dishes simmering away in a buffet. Other food stations are dotted around the grounds including a salad bar, a pasta station, a street stall making rotis, a toddy shack (fermented sugar cane), fresh coconuts being macheted open and a bar selling drinks of all varieties.
Before the food is served however, the entertainment programme starts. We are treated to dancers, singers, musicians and martial arts displays, all from various parts of Indian culture but with the emphasis mostly local. We even have some more Kathakali theatre although it only lasts twenty minutes this time. Coman and I are so relieved at the speed of the performance we actually get on stage and have our photo taken with the actor playing Bhima to thank him for racing through his turn at the cabaret.
Bizarrely, as this all happens there is a multi-coloured 2014 sign behind them, which we hope hasn’t been left over from last year. Thankfully as the countdown starts and the music reaches its crescendo, the sign is ripped down to be replaced by a hastily printed piece of paper with 2015 written on it. No Big Ben chimes here, instead we ring in the new year with 'Gangnam Style’ and some crazed dancing from the hotel staff which inevitably ends up with one of them falling in the pool.
By now Coman and I have been befriended by an Irish guy Peter, his wife Debbie and their nine year old son Sam, who have spent the past three weeks travelling around Kerala. We’re all give huge sparklers to wave around, and the place goes completely mental for five minutes with the kind of abandon that would have Health and Safety in the UK prosecuting the entire town for wilful insanity.
It’s topped off by someone flinging an empty box of fireworks on to the bonfire in front of us without checking quite how empty they are first. A rocket flies past Sam’s head while another explodes by his feet, but hey, we’ve all had a few drinks (except Sam of course) and no-one actually gets hurt, so what the heck, let’s party!!!
And then, at precisely ten past 12, they switch everything off and everyone goes to bed within seconds of each other, leaving Coman, Peter, Debbie, Sam and myself suddenly in silence and all alone by a pool that moments ago had a crazy-arsed carnival going on with all hell breaking loose!!
We’ve still got the best part of a bottle of red to go, so Debbie takes Sam off to bed while we stay up chatting with Peter in the dying light of the exploding bonfire for another hour or so before we decide we really should hit the sack as well.
Hello 2015, here’s to a fabulous year…!
