A Helping Hand

I’ve had a post I’ve wanted to write since my last days in India. Today is the day to finish it!

My plane was scheduled to leave India at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday, January 9th. That meant I had to be at the airport at 1:30 a.m. that morning. I have found that it works best for me to stay at a hotel in the vicinity of the airport the day before to make sure I get some sleep before starting the journey back to Seattle.

I decided to leave the ashram on the evening of January 7 and take a taxi to Kovalam. I arrived at the hotel at 10 p.m.

If you read my posts throughout the visit, you might remember that I had stayed at hotel in Kovalam when I arrived in India. At that time, I discovered there was road construction between the hotel and the restaurants. There was no way to get food without walking through the construction area. That is common in India, but it meant that at times I was walking through hot tar and gravel. Needless to say, the soles of my shoes were a mess.

When I walked to the restaurants on January 8, however, the roads had been finished. I was able to walk down a street that was free of potholes and hot tar!

There are many restaurants that border the beach. I decided to go to one called a German Bakery and get scrambled eggs, shrimp and cucumbers. Afterwards I went to the gelato shop and got chocolate gelato. The food in both restaurants were works of art.

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Then I decided to walk down to the beach.

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When I was standing on the balcony of my hotel room, later in the day, I noticed that I could see a different beach.

It occurred to me that the hotel might have an exit that opened up to a path that led to that beach. I asked at the front desk and learned that was indeed true, if I walked down another flight of stairs, I would find the exit.

After leaving the hotel, I started walking down the path. One of the first things I saw was this beautiful shrub.

Then I walked through a short tunnel. I thought this rock was interesting.

Along the way I had to make some choices. When I saw this turn on the path, I thought “I don’t think so” and continued on.

This choice seemed much more likely to lead to my destination.

Soon I was near the beach; but I ran into an obstacle. To get to the beach I would have to go down many stairs, and there were no handrails. I had my cane, but I was having balance problems and didn’t feel stable enough to do that. I would have to be content with just looking at the beach from afar.

At that point, a young man who was with a group of his friends saw my dilemma, walked up to me, and offered his hand. He then walked me down all of the stairs! I felt so grateful.

I enjoyed being at the beach but soon realized it was nearing sundown. It gets dark quickly in India, so I knew I needed to head back to the hotel. I looked at all of the stairs ahead of me.

I had no doubt I could climb the stairs with the help of the cane as I am more stable going up stairs than going down them. So I started walking back to the hotel

I hadn’t taken many photos as I walked down to the beach, so as I returned to the hotel, I took some pictures looking backwards, so I would have them when I wrote this post. I’m not sure, because of the placement of the rocks, where in my journey these last two photos belong. Since I really like them, I decided to end the post with them!

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