I woke up to the memory of the laughter, the night before. The three Aussies at Serenity, George, Luke and Drew regaled us with pictures of their cats and dogs. One of the funniest was Luke’s cat Cfor. As in, Cfor cat. And how hes a happy cat who is so large that you can’t see his legs.
Then a New Zealander, Matt had his animal tales. And Tamar had some other Israeli stories. There were two new people – Ori, the doting father and the girl (friend of the recently exited Ifat).

After dinner (did I mention before, yummmmmy?), the three groups of wanderers that gathered firewood insisted on a bonfire. So Byron gave us a sheet to place the fire on, and an iron fire blower contraption. The guys got to it. Arvind is quite the accomplished fire maintainer.

Morning came in like usual. With some unusual amount of fogging near the water body.

And then, it was like no rain had happened!! We had brekker as usual. We bade Tamar and the three Aussies goodbye. Arvind exchanged numbers with a Bangalore boy who wanted to buy a bike.

These guys set off for another set of day treks and I chilled out. Within a couple of hours, Arvind and Madiha came back. They left late and got lost, and returned. So I had company for lunch.

Interestingly, a Tamilian family I saw had this guy who came and asked if I had trained once at Aruba a few months back. Imagine meeting a workshop participant from Navgati halfway across the country. So we had a nice reunion and off they went, while I hung out at Loretta’s and drank more tea.

Reena and Ath came back from a really tough trek, all beat. They and Madiha seem fully ready to take on tomorrow’s trek back. Only chicken is me, now. And I was the worst, to start with. Sigh. Tomorrow, be kind to me.

I’m also finding 5-10 min breaks to burst into tears. I need to really get help to get out of my melancholy. I need professional help. One of the first things on my list once I return to Bangalore.

Unrelated but interesting: I got a call from mum that Babu anna (a cousin) was visiting from Calcutta and that he liked the little wind-up music box on my desk. I had bought this little music box that played “Can’t take my eyes off you” to remind me of one I had as a kid.  I told her to happily give it to him because he gave me the key chain I had as a kid, which became the key chain for my bicycle lock, of my first two-wheel bicycle – a spiffy fire-engine red kid-sized MTB that is now probably a horcrux. Mum asked if it was okay for Babu anna to take the key chain since he seemed very taken by it, and remembered having one like this when he was young. I told her the story and said I would be pleased if he would accept the gift. I love it when life comes full circle!