Hello lovely Claire
Jasmine is feverishly writing exams for senior school entrance this month. She is such a darling and is being so diligent 🙂 I could have asked you to do a good luck message but it is a bit late for that, so could you do a ‘Well Done Jasmine’? Maybe in flowers or sand or fire – who knows…
With love

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Hello lovely Jaz and Bron

What a lovely little challenge to do! I wanted to do it in either in lots of colourful flowers, or completely in Jasmine if I could get hold of enough. And, if I did it all in Jasmine, I also wanted to use chillies, star anise, and cardamom interspersed for colour.

However, I got the challenge the day before we were due to leave Hampi and having cycled around whilst Kev was sick I knew I couldn’t find enough flowers. So I decided to do that challenge when we got to Kayakumari. We left the following night and travelled the little over 1000km to Kanyakumari getting there at about 2pm on Thursday afternoon. It was very windy so doing it outside on the beach was out of the question. I knew I could get hold of garlands for flowers but wasn’t sure where I could do it. I considered doing it on the white sheet on our hotel bed, or on one of my kikois, or inside a deserted pagoda we’d passed earlier that day. Kev cleverly suggested that we use a piece of fabric from the market. So after we’d eaten we went shopping in the market. Kanyakumari was MENTAL. It was HEAVING. Shouting, honking, beeping, squawking, getting pushed and bashed. We must have been there during a particularly big religious festival judging by how manically busy it was with frantically shopping Ayyappans. We got prices for garlands and fabric, haggle haggle haggle. Eventually I found a piece I thought Jaz would like, a lovely woollen piece of purple fabric with green trimmings.

Dismantling the garlands into individual flowers took quite a long time – they’re weaved so intricately and tightly together. I sent a lot of love to the people who had put them together whilst I sat there pulling them apart, trying to be so careful that I didn’t ‘hurt’ them as I went.

Frustratingly (my last day in India) I got struck by a vicious bout of food poisoning. I had to keep on with the message though because the flowers were wilting rather quickly. Again, I have a lot to thank Kev for – I might have needed to redo the whole thing if it weren’t for him carefully taking the garlands apart when I was… uhhh… otherwise occupied. I was up late making the message, keeping Kev from sleep, but we got there in the end.

I really hope Jaz likes her message. When I see you I’ll bring along the piece of fabric I used which is now hers.

xxxx