Happy birthday to me!

If anyone would have told me last birthday that I’d be celebrating my next birthday sitting on a clifftop overlooking the stunning Varkala beach in Kerala, South India, I would have laughed at them. The idea of even making it to India would have seemed preposterous, so unlikely and unfathomable, and the thought that I would be celebrating my birthday in the middle of a six months plus trip, would have been even more incomprehensible. Yet somehow, here I am, sitting at a café, watching the sun go down, after a relaxing day of pampering.

It’s been two and a half months since I left Israel and headed out into the unknown, a crazy, busy few months filled with experiences, too many to count. Most people write to me and say that it looks like I’m having an amazing time, that my life is a dream. Right now, sitting on a clifftop in front of the setting sun, drinking my iced lemon, ginger and honey drink, I have to admit that yes, my life is pretty damn good. My eyebrows are plucked, my nails are done, and I’m feeling very festive in a new dress and my gorgeous new custom-made Sri Lankan ring, perusing the drinks menu, trying to decide which cocktail to treat myself to.

I have to admit though, that the last few months haven’t been all rosy. I always thought, mistakenly, that when you travel, whether for a week or a month or more, that you’re always on a permanent high, with the continuous excitement and the adventure of seeing new places, meeting new people and experiencing new things. I learnt very early on that it’s not like that at all, that there’s a big difference between being a traveller and going away on a short holiday. When you travel for a while, things become routine, in a very non-routine-as-we-all-know-it kind of way. Living out of a backpack, wearing the same clothes over and over again, taking sleeper trains or buses to save both time and a night’s accommodation, all these things become normal practices, and you stop noticing that your fingernails and toenails aren’t as immaculately clean as you’d like them to be all the time. You don’t join in the big parties on the beach, and don’t feel the need drink or to stay out late every night, because if you do, you’re just going to be exhausted the next day. At the same time, an unfortunate side effect of continuous travel, is that as you see temple after temple, and beautiful site after beautiful site, some of the most beautiful amazing places can sometimes become almost mundane.

When you’re traveling for a while, you start to lose track of time. Days feel like months, months feel like years, and the experiences you had two weeks ago feel like they happened a lifetime ago. Sometimes, like today, I need to take a moment and remind myself where I've been, where I'm going, and just how lucky I am to be here.

The last few months haven’t been easy for me and I’ve been struggling to figure out why. While I’ve been enjoying myself immensely, meeting and spending time with all kinds of people, and doing so much, I’ve found myself eating badly and not sleeping so well, leaving me exhausted, with intermittent pains and nausea attacks that have been quite unpleasant. While some of it is a result of the lack of routine and unfamiliar foods, I’ve realized that there’s more to it than that, as , instead of being relaxed and carefree, as you would expect from someone who has no responsibilities and no worries, I’ve found myself stressed and on-edge more and more as time goes by.

It took a while and a bit of soul searching for me to figure out what the problem was and how to fix it. While my time in Nepal was relatively relaxed (if you could call Vipassana relaxing!), since the end of November when I arrived in India, I’ve been running around non-stop. Whether it was with the boys at the beginning, preplanning and buying train tickets weeks in advance, to needing to be in Hampi by the first night of Chanukah, to having specific dates for Sri Lanka, and needing to pre-book all our accommodation for those few weeks because we were there during peak season, my time has so far always been dependent on the time-constraints of others. There has never been a time, in all these months where I’ve been able to say “stop”, and to actually stop and breathe. There has always been a timeline, a bus to take, a plane to catch. For someone as independent as myself, used to living and being alone, working around the time tables of others is not an easy thing to get used to. In addition, being with people all the time , as I have been for most of the trip so far, is a definite learning curve, something that I'm still struggling with.

So now is the time to stop and to focus on myself for a while. Properly alone for the first time since I arrived in Kathmandu onmy first stop way back in October, I arrived back in India from Sri Lanka on Thursday night and spent two nights in Bangalore before flying to Varkala, where I am now. Knowing I would be arriving here just before my birthday, I decided to treat myself and stay in a nicer place than those I have become accustomed to while in India, at least for the days before and after my birthday. I arrived here on Saturday night, with a room booked for three nights and no further plans, except for a tentative meeting with a friend who is arriving next week, and, of course, my departure date from India in the first week of February. Realizing that I am currently both physically and mentally exhausted, and that continuing in this condition would be detrimental to the rest of my trip, I have decided to stay here for at least the next couple of week and do an Ayurveda detox program, a combination of panchakarma and diet modification, to help settle my stomach, and hopefully regain some balance. I’m looking forward to being able to unpack my backpack tomorrow at my new guesthouse and to know that I don’t need to pack up again for at least another fourteen days. Just to give a bit of perspective, the longest I’ve stayed in one spot until now, besides Vipassana, was last week in Unawatuna, where we stayed in the same place for six nights.

Today has been a great day, not something that I really expected, being by myself in a new part of the country. Although I opened my eyes early after another sleep deprived night, I was surprised to be greeted with a hug, and a gluten-free birthday cake prepared by the proprietors of the place I’ve been staying at, complete with a crazy sparkler-candles contraption belting out a never-ending rendition of “happy birthday” which we had to silence by dismantling the contraption and ripping out the battery. The outpouring of messages and wishes throughout the day has been overwhelming, and it’s great to know I haven’t been forgotten while I’m away. For all those asking how I spent my day, I celebrated by finally internalizing the fact that travelling doesn’t have to mean depriving myself all the time, and treated myself to a mani, pedi and facial, after which I spent the rest of the day in a cute little cafe on the clifftop overlooking the ocean, relaxing with a book and reading all of your messages when Wi-Fi allowed for it. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt so relaxed and now that the sun has gone down, I’m going to return to my hotel, fingernails and toenails no longer naked for the first time in months, have another piece of birthday cake and hopefully get a good night’s sleep.

Tomorrow I start the fourteen-day course of Ayurveda treatments. It’s supposed to be difficult, and I was warned that I might feel tired and lack energy during the course of the treatment. Considering that it doesn’t sound so different to how I have been feeling lately, I’m not too concerned. As I joked to Katrina and Esther, the lovely women who run Case Eva Luna, the place I’ve been staying at for the last few nights, if I survived Vipassana, I can survive anything! I’m in gorgeous surroundings, the locals are friendly, and most importantly, I don’t have to sever any connections with the outside world. So armed with my belongings, a new sarong for some lazy (exhausted) beach days and a huge dose of optimism, tomorrow I move to Varkala Villas to start my Ayurveda treatments at the Absolute Ayurveda centre. It’s another mini adventure on my trail of adventures, and I’m looking forward to the experiences and the challenges it will bring.