Marathis on Tour
I’m not sure if this is a thing with Maharashtrians in India but Indians in the UK generally tend to go to isolated sea-side towns for bank holiday weekends. Some of them hire coaches and pile on with all their kids for a three-hour drive to Kent to meet more Indians. Some of them squeeze as many people as possible into one car to make a trip to Brighton and complain about there not being any Indian restaurants there, it all really depends on the crowd, but normally short and sweet bank holiday weekends are always a winner especially when you are travelling with a bunch of other Maharashtrian families.
Last weekend – the final bank holiday weekend of the year, I decided to visit a small seaside town in South West Wales (Pembrokeshire) called Broad Haven with my Maharashtrian family friends and was not disappointed…
Surprisingly, this trip was planned two months in advance which is shocking since I never normally plan anything, even now I’m not sure what I’m doing tomorrow let alone next weekend. It all started with my aai telling me that we could potentially be going on a trip on August bank holiday weekend to Pembrokeshire; I’m going to be honest and say that I had to Google where this place was, all I knew at the time was that it sounded far away and that would mean a long drive for me. I found out it was five hours away. Normally I would avoid such holidays, so my default answer would have been no but I thought before speaking this time and realised that while I would normally spend a long weekend seeing friends I see all the time, it might make more sense to go on this sea-side town trip; plus the covid lockdown down has meant I can’t go on actual holidays so this was the closest thing to going to Mauritius.
The two weeks up to the trip it somehow went from being two families to being around five different families, this is totally normal for Indians going on trips, we find more Indians to come with us out of nowhere, however when you are going to a remote towns in the middle of nowhere it’s more like the more the merrier. As Pembrokeshire is a non-stop five-hour drive from London, my family and I decided to drive on Friday evening to my family friends in Cardiff first.
Maharashtrians outside of India have a habit of living in the most random places in the world e.g. Switzerland, Texas and even Cardiff. Nestled in the fields somewhere in Wales there is a bunch of houses; and these houses are entirely taken up by six loud Maharashtrian families, a little Maharashtrian eco-system if you will. They all live one or two streets from each other so it’s always nice being able to see all of them in one go whenever I visit. As my aai drives like an old lady we reached Cardiff in four hours and were immediately met by hugs from the Wagle family and force-fed spicy bowls of kheema and naan. I adore kheema, but I also have a strong aversion to too much spice (yes I know, sometimes I question if I am Indian too) so I try and avoid eating at the Wagles where possible because they hide secret chillies in everything they cook. They mean well though so I decided to eat the kheema and counter it by eating half a tub of dahi before my head exploded. The night turned into walking down the road to another Maharashtrian familiy’s house for dessert before retiring to bed to make sure we were well rested for the drive up from Cardiff to Pembrokeshire.
Aunties. Why do they insist on having cups of tea in the morning while yelling at the top of their voices? I secretly think they do it so that children will wake up without thinking they were woken up on purpose. Nevertheless, we made sure we packed our bags and decided to start driving before lunch time. I had made a huge mistake of drinking a cup of coffee before the drive so half way through I started to realise I needed to use the loo… I always do this. Just as I was starting to get emotional, I noticed a service stop and we pulled in – I sprang out of the car and sprinted for my life to the bathroom before emerging a few minutes later feeling like I had accomplished something great. If this had happened to me in India I would have been made to stop at the edge of a massive mountain or at a creepy dim-lit “family run vegetarian restaurant” to use a black hole in the ground. So thank god this was not the case.
The kaku driving the car also drives like my aai – slow. We reached Broad Haven just after lunch time. Broad Haven is a small town in Pembrokeshire right on the coast, very hilly, very windy, and probably with a population of twenty.
There are two restaurants and a corner shop, I know this doesn’t sound like much so far but it’s mainly known for its gorgeous little beach and long coastal walks. There are lots of little seaside towns like this dotted around the UK coasts but the great thing about this town was that it was not crowded at all, it was clean, peaceful (that was until a band of nearly twenty Maharashtrians descended on it). Once we parked our cars, we hauled our bags up to the apartment. I was a little confused as to why people had so much luggage with them until I realised half the bags were filled with Haldiram snacks, Tilda Basmati rice, vats of varan, and different bhaajis in Chinese takeaway boxes. I was not even surprised; this is totally normal for us – wherever we go we make it into a little India. We may have been in Broad Haven but in twenty minutes we had converted our apartment into Maharashtra.
That evening we decided to go to one of only two restaurants in the town for dinner…it was at this point that I realised why we had a lifetime supply of Indian food with us. Not to be a traitor to the UK but food from the UK tastes of nothing.
I had ordered salmon for dinner which turned out to be two 5cm by 5cm squares of salmon, six little potatoes, a splotch of pesto and a side of “veg” (which was more potato and steamed carrots). What this dish should have been named as on the menu was “family size portion of potato with side of salmon”. The only flavour on the potatoes was earth (probably from being grown in the earth) and the salmon tasted of air.
I do love mild food but not only did I put on a stone from this carb-fuelled meal but I also found myself daydreaming about the kheema from the night before.
*If you are planning to go on a little trip like this any time soon be sure to pack as much biriyani, bhadang, varan bhaat and spices as possible. You will not regret it.
I had to sleep on my side that night to digest the bag of potatoes I had just eaten which had, but on a high point all that food allowed me to sleep like a rock. Yet again, the aunty alarm set off at roughly 7.30am and we all decided to spend the day on a long coastal walk. I’m not exactly into long nature walks but as it was such a beautiful town it made sense to do a little exploring on the cliffs and get some good Instagrammable pictures. It is important to note that the gale force wind next to the coast WILL blow you away so wearing a heavy coat is important. My kaka went the extra mile and shoved bags of shengdaney into his pockets that would no doubt come in handy for the multiple breaks we would take.
Indians are not made for things like walking on hills, mountain climbing etc. we are instead known for our practicality, and ability to become doctors rather than things to do with physical prowess.
It would have been a little odd for people to see a group of Maharashtrians make their way up onto the cliffs to walk along the coast; but nevertheless, we headed off in the morning with our shengdaney.
I’m not sure at what point this happened but instead of this being a two-hour walk tops it turned into a five-hour hike. All the mums decided they were Lara Croft Tomb Raiders and could go hours walking on these cliffs and the overenthusiastic kakas joined in with that too. It seemed only the children were the practical ones.
This didn’t stop however the shouts of “THAMBA THAMBA BREAK GHEUYA” from at least one person every twenty minutes. Half the time on the cliffs were definitely spent sitting on the heather eating shengdaney.
The scenery was stunning, rolling cliffs covered with purple and yellow heather, clear blue beaches covered in dark slate and pebbles it was like something out of a Jane Austen novel only with Maharashtrians (Maharashtrians with no sense and sensibility). It wouldn’t have been a surprise if I had seen Julie Andrews sprinting towards me singing the Sound of Music.
It wouldn’t have been a surprise if I had seen Julie Andrews sprinting towards me singing the Sound of Music. Most of all not only was the place stunning but it was clean, and totally isolated, totally unspoiled by people. However, the walk started to take a bit of a strain on everybody and I was dreading the idea of having to walk all the way back to Broad Haven.
There is always that one overenthusiastic kaka or sporty brother who thinks he’s Gandalf and tries to convince everybody to walk back. In the end he was defeated and we got into Ubers.
The rest of the day was spent on the beach in front of our apartment which involved no hiking, no slipping on mud, no potentially getting chased by byson from the neighbouring field, and no falling off cliffs.
I’ve always known that I am safer on the ground. It was a beautiful day and normally people on beautiful days tend to sit back, relax and enjoy the sun (because we never actually get any sun in the UK). However, being a group of Indians, we don’t seem to have the ability to sit quietly, we would rather make things more entertaining so what better way to do it than to play a game of cricket on the beach. Suddenly all the boys and kakas in the group turned into Sachin Tendulkar and started playing the most intense game of cricket I have ever seen. So intense that the surrounding local people stopped what they were doing and became serious spectators too, it was like a scene out of Lagaan (except nobody broke out into a song and dance of Ghanan Ghanan or Chale Chalo).
After our game of cricket, we went to another restaurant for dinner. I ordered a standard chicken burger which turned out to be as dry as my ex boyfriend’s personality unfortunately. Whenever I make a chicken burger at home, I HAVE to toast both burger buns in thup on a frying pan. Otherwise it’s just a slab of chicken between two bits of pav. It’s the same way when you order a pav bhaji – if the bread isn’t smothered in butter and toasted you might as well throw a tantrum and run out of the restaurant crying. Thankfully the lavender and lemon cheesecake saved the day so I would suggest anybody doing these trips should eat their seven course Indian meal at their accommodation and then come out for dessert. Welsh people know exactly what they are doing with pastries.
There’s always a fuzzy, warm feeling on these kinds of trips; it definitely brings everybody closer even regardless of the food or lack of bathroom privacy. I had a mixed bag of feelings waking up the next morning because it was time to say goodbye and spend hours driving back home. Call me cold or emotionless but the reason why I hate saying bye to people is not because I will miss them terribly, it’s because Maharashtrians do not know how to say goodbye.
Normal people saying goodbye: “See you soon, drive safe!”
Maharashtrians saying goodbye: “Chala bye ha. Arey have you taken this extra bag of chiwda? Natasha make sure you look after aai. Arey chaha ghe na, no you must eat something too. Why don’t you have lunch only and then go? Nahi ok ok bye, actually thamb, nahi sorry, mistake. Natasha tu tujhi bag ghetlis na? Ghari gelyavar phone kara. Please ha. Nahi asach. Ya fantastic trip, majha ali. Ya. Ya. YAAAAAAAA. Ha ok chala. Chala bye…”
If it were up to me, I would sneak off at the break of dawn while everybody is asleep without saying bye and then only say bye once I have reached home. Instead I have to physically push my parents back into the car before they say five more byes while we drive away.
Arriving back at home from any trip means I need to immediately throw myself back into work or some kind of routine before the loneliness sets in and it always does. Before giving myself the opportunity to sit in silence and reminisce I always empty my suitcase, put clothes for washing and make sure everything is ready for work tomorrow. But that silence always follows, and then I start thinking “ah we should have stayed another evening” or “that was really fun actually we should do that every other weekend”. But then I remember how much I missed my aai’s cooking and sitting in my own house. Who doesn’t love a holiday right? But a better feeling is coming back to your own house, having your own routine and best of all, having your OWN bathroom.
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