50.7950° N, 1.1175° W Gosport

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore
~ L Frank Baum

 I must warn you readers before I go any further that this is my first real trip to the UK, so I'm likely to sound like a gawky tourist. 

 My travels started in Goa yesterday 21st at 11am with the flight to Bombay being delayed by 30 minutes. Not so bad since it gave us a few extra minutes to drop by and wish Aniket a happy 21st. Thankfully the trip to Mum's place and dinner with the sisters was a quiet affair, highlighted with a video call to Shayann so we could cut a cake for him, long distance.


 The sisters dropped me to the airport at 4am 22nd. The flight was uneventful but for my being surrounded by holiness - I had the middle seat in an area stuffed with swamis traveling to bless the British NRIs. So far so good.
The UK Border (yup that's what they call their Immigration counter) proved a tough cookie though. Took me the better part of an hour to cross over. So I was ravenous by the time I got to the National Express airport stop 

 It was a good thing I feasted on the most delicious salmon and cream cheese sandwich as my bus ride to Portsmouth turned out to be a 6 hour marathon. That was followed by a quick ferry ride to Gosport and a brisk 15 minute walk to Spring Garden Guesthouse and I'm finally here! 

 And this is what Portsmouth looks like from the ferry, 
and Spring Garden Lane at 8pm! 

 10pm now and finally the street lights have started up. Good night all.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Level 1 Clipper training

Image
Time flames like a paragon stove and what burns are the minutes I live ~ Irving Layton, The Selected Poems Day 1: The Importance of Attachments The first day of training was so reassuring. Felt just like home….rains on the first day of school. Dull dreary weather and the first look at your new school mates and class teacher. And just like school, I was exhausted by the end of the day. Of course it was a lot longer at 12 hours, from 8am to 8pm and crammed with information. I finally got to exercise the muscles in my head – Paul, our skipper, made sure of that. We learnt all kinds of knots, bowlines, clove hitches, figure of eights..he would be speaking with us while his fingers were busy tying knots..muscle memory he calls it! For the most part it was about safety. What can possibly go wrong with the boat, how to prevent it and what to do if there is an emergency, like a MOB. No not the one around celebrities, a Man Over Board. Which we practised with a dum
Keep reading

Level 2 Clipper Training

Image
Level 2 Day 1: Abandonment After a week spent learning how to rescue a man over board, we started this week with a day long exercise in figuring how to stuff the panic and get onto a life raft in case our boat has an accident. You know, if there's a fire, we crash into an ice berg or another boat, or the mast decides to part ways with us and we have to abandon the boat. A very sunny and happy day indeed. A morning classroom session was followed up by two hours in the local school swimming pool, learning how to step off the boat into the water, with our life jackets on, swim using just our arms, rescue an injured mate, inflate a life raft, and get into it from off a boat or after jumping into the water, alone and with all the crew. That was rounded off with an introduction to the new skipper and first mate. This time we have Andy for Skipper and Carl as First Mate. Carl’s grandfather worked with the Indian railways in Calcutta! Quite a waste of a beautiful summer day that c
Keep reading

Taking the Leap

Image
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied”                                      ~ John Masefield All my bags are packed and I’m raring to go. Round the world on a sailboat. Or at least as far as I can stretch my monies.  I’ve signed up for the Clipper Round the World Race 2017-18; a race that takes novices like me, trains them intensively, then puts 20 of us and a capable skipper on a 68 foot long boat to race against 11 other similar boats, all around the world. It all started when Dilip , the first Indian to sail solo around the world, nonchalantly said that anyone can sail around the world.  I was like, really!? Anyone!? Then he told me about Clipper . So, I promptly applied for this year’s race. A friendly chat with the race officials followed and I was offered a place in the Race. The way this works, Clipper puts everyone through a grueling four
Keep reading