How to holiday in India: Alibaug

The waves gently shush the shore, the palm trees crackle in the breeze, the songbirds tweet and caw and whistle as they dance on the branches of the gnarled, weather-beaten trees in the garden. The morning breeze tickles my neck with my hair but despite its movement, I can feel the heat of the sun already trapped in the air surrounding our porch. A wrought iron gate separates me from the beach just a few footsteps away; a strip of grey-brown sand which stretches down towards a grey-green sea which evaporates up into a cloudless, pastel sky. It’s not yet 7am but I have been prodded awake by an impatient Jasper and as I squat by his side, counting the boats bobbing about in the bay, I am extremely happy to be awake. 

We are in Alibaug, a coastal region in Maharashtra, almost directly south of Mumbai’s peninsula. We arrived on the car ferry on Friday evening, although we were only foot passengers, and will begrudgingly return to the city on Monday, after taking advantage of a long weekend to escape Mumbai’s relentless racket and claustrophobic chaos for three nights. Our home for the weekend is called the Little Hut and is one of a row of beachfront bungalows owned by the Bombay Sailing Association. A friend being a member of the association is the reason we are allowed to occupy one and this is now our second stay in the same hut. 

The Little Hut is not all that little, if you are comparing it to Mumbai apartment sizes, but it is simple. Simple in the way that it has everything we need, but is spartan in its decor and furniture, which has the effect of making me wonder why on earth we need all the clutter we seem to have in our own home. There are two bedrooms, each en suite, a kitchenette and a large, covered porch with a dining table and sofa set. Around the porch, just a couple of feet lower, is a partially paved garden area fenced off from the neighbouring huts either side, one of which is occupied, the other which sits derelict. Two, tall palm trees reach out over the front fence, straining towards the sea, ready to drop their coconuts on anyone who walks too close and, together with the hot pink bougainvillaea sprinkled through the hedges, remind me how lucky we are to live in the tropics. 

The only shame is that the beach is what might be best described as a ‘working beach’: fishing boats hug the shoreline; the carcasses of whisky bottles, toothpaste tubes and mismatched flip flops lie in a disordered chain at the point where the tide turned and abandoned them to rot in the sunshine; mangy, stray dogs run wild at dawn and dusk, and all manner of cars, auto-rickshaws and scooters ferry people and goods to and from the large and bustling jetty which greets boats large and small on their arrival from the city. From the safety of our garden, however, we can overlook the state of the beach and gaze directly out towards the horizon. 

While we are here in Alibaug, we spend almost no time at all indoors. From the moment Jasper chatters us awake each morning, until the last scrabble tile is back in the bag after Dylan’s and my nightly al fresco deathmatch, we are outside: something not easily or enjoyably done in Mumbai. The air here is sea air, fresher and cleaner than its city counterpart and with its flow unrestricted by buildings. I think it’s the dramatic shift from city life to beach life which makes us feel as though we are a million miles from Mumbai and, therefore, like we have been on a far more extravagant vacation than just hopping across an estuary and looking back on our real life from across the water. 

This trip has coincided with Holi, the Hindu festival of colour which (as always) celebrates the triumph of good over evil, and also Krishna and Radha’s love. It is a vibrant, happy, loud, energetic festival but unfortunately, Jasper doesn’t enjoy it. We experienced it for the first time last year, at our former residential compound and, between the music blasted to the point of distortion, the fast-moving, over-animated faces masked in coloured clay and the ecstatic screams of children ambushing one another with water pistols, Jasper went into full koala mode, refusing to be set down at ground level and clawing his way into either my neck or Dylan’s (depending on who was standing further from the action.) The different colours of chalk pasted or dumped on peoples faces and heads (depending on the closeness of the relationship between the holi players involved) represents different well-wishes for the onset of spring; green for fresh starts; yellow for vitality and joy; blue for love and calm. Blue is also the colour of Krishna’s skin and mythology has it that when Krishna complained to his mother that Radha had a far more beautiful, pale complexion, his mother suggested that he colour Radha’s face to match his own. 

I thought that perhaps this year Jasper would be bolder and more open to joining the fun, but he is still reluctant to participate; and by reluctant, I mean he flat out refuses. I took him down to the Phoolon Ki Holi (pronounced ‘full-oh-kee koli’) event at our compound, a more spiritual version of the festival where flowers are thrown instead of water and colour. The fragrance was incredible and the atmosphere electric with love and laughter, but still Jasper clung to me and ordered me to take him home. Maybe next year…

Still, we have taken advantage of the rest of India celebrating Holi on a Monday public holiday, to enjoy our weekend away from the city. And we have taken even fuller advantage of the garden at our little hut to spread our own, colour-free, conservative-volumed, pistols-at-dawn style festive cheer. Armed with a bucket, three water pistols (one held together by tape and plastic bag after Jasper smashed it in a toddler rage), some AC/DC and a spring in all our steps, Dylan and I tried (and mostly failed) to teach Jasper some tactical manoeuvres while ourselves evading one another’s not-so-friendly fire. No amount of fancy facilities in the world can replace the pure, unadulterated joy of running around a garden with a water pistol. I speak for myself, more than for Jasper, although I am sure he also had a lot of fun. 

One of the biggest bonuses of our hut is that it is tended to and catered for by a lovely housekeeper called Asha. She arrives at around 8am every day, in time to cook us our second breakfast. Prior to her arrival each morning, I have already made tea and coffee for Dylan and myself, and heated some pastries carefully carried over from Mumbai. After our second breakfast of dosa (Jasper and me) and omelette (Dylan), Jasper has taken to assisting Asha in her duties: namely sweeping the porch and, his absolute favourite activity, watering the garden. Give this boy a hose pipe and he’s happy as a pig in mud. DON’T give this boy the hose pipe and you end up with smashed water pistols. Dylan and I actively encourage his desire to help around the house, with ‘yard work’ being one of the life skills we haven’t quite figured out how to deliver on while living in an apartment block. But this is not necessarily how most hut guests behave, we have learned. On chatting to the hut manager when we went to settle our bill, we discovered that Jasper’s yard cleaning activities had caught her attention on the security camera footage and she bombarded us with questions about why he was so eager to help. I am not sure she quite understood my explanation that it had very little to do with him wanting to clean, and everything to do with the stories he was narrating while brandishing the hosepipe like a fireman, or the broom like a knight’s trusty sword, banishing ants from the steps of our castle. 

Our previous trip over to Alibaug, a month ago, was for a rugby weekend. That is to say, Dylan’s Sunday morning touch rugby which usually takes place on a school field, instead took place on the beach, followed by a poolside BBQ at the beautiful villa of the same friend whose membership of the sailing club put the roof over our heads on both visits. On that occasion, we only stayed two nights, and had little opportunity or need to explore more than one local eatery. But this time around, ready with recommendations and a better sense of direction and distance, we tried a few different places, one of which we are going to go as far as to say makes the best pizza we’ve had in India. As I am sure I have mentioned before, we keep very different hours to most Indians, and this means that many restaurants which would usually require a reservation, are ours for the taking at the times we are looking to eat. We cruised into the Buddha Cafe at the Moonstone Hammock glamping site for lunch, and Kiki’s Restobar for dinner on the Saturday of a long weekend, without so much as a wait for a table. Admittedly, the atmosphere is hardly pumping when you’re the only people in the place, but if there is one thing we’ve accepted about ourselves as a family, it’s that we really do enjoy each other's company. 

We love our own space, we love solitude, we love fresh air, we love Jasper’s chatter which is only audible when the surrounding area is quiet, we love being able to give him our undivided attention, we love the spontaneity and flexibility of only coordinating with ourselves, we love the fact that we all fit in one auto-rickshaw, we love eating our morning pastries together, we love staring out to sea together, we love keeping our own schedule and we love creating family memories together. What we don’t love is the return to the city at the end of a break, but a break wouldn’t be a break if we didn’t have something to return to at the end of it.

I'll leave you now with a photo of a bubble, with our tropical weekend paradise trapped inside. This photo took a lot of effort to capture, with me on bubbles and Dylan on camera. But I think you'll agree, the effect is nothing short of magical.