Sun, Sand and Smiles : Part VI

As you can see, I can't enough of the view. It was just magical. The two musketeers finished their nightly rounds of Mentigi estate and unknown boats and got back only at 3 AM. But they were up and woke up everyone at 7 AM. Simran had promised that she'll make breakfast for all of us. So after wow-ing at our view, i decided to do some yoga, I mean this view asked me to spread out my mat and flow with my surya namaskars. Have I spoken about how we stopped the cab guy yesterday because we saw beautiful looking watermelons on the way. We bought one. And Simran and Uttesh, decided to eat the watermelon. I don't knw if they used a knife to slice it open, or what, but they definitely didn't well, eat it like normal people will eat a watermelon. That is like this:

Instead, they decided to take one half and two spoons and scoop out the fruit. Actually considering the state they were in, Im shocked they managed to do the little they did :) ! Anyhow, thankfully, the other half was still intact and not murdered. Two boys who worked at the villa, came and cut the watermelon for us (the proper way) and put it in the fridge. Simran started making breakfast.I was doing yoga, so i didn't see her in the kitchen, but she made us good egg burji and toast. Or maybe I should invite the boys to be a guest for this blog to describe what they saw! From my downward dog, I looked up to see the plate and it looked fine to me, but these boys were laughing in the background. Then Uttesh took over and made us cheese omelette and grilled the sausages and ham and salami. The Sim went down to sleep for a bit. Stu joined us for breakfast and we all sat and enjoyed the view and the awesome eggs and toast and meat! The toast, that bread that we ate there is something else. The boys from the villa had made us a huge pot of coffee, really sweet coffee, that none of us could finish. And my personal favorite : bread.-butter-jam..it's just something else dude. We all got ready, woke up Sim. Aziz came to the villa, but we were all to busy getting ready, So he said he will meet us downstairs.

Our hero and heroine, all ready to explore Lombok and the Gilis!

We covered our body with tons of sunscreen and started the super long descend down the hill to the beach. We met Aziz there. Ok, I have to get this out of my system or it will bother me every time I write Aziz. Sorry for the digression. I couldn't say Aziz for a long long time. There are just some words I can't say OK. And I get awesomely confused between J and Z. So I kept calling him Ajeez. And even saved his number on my phone as Ajeez. And these guys laughed at it. But I eventually after practicing with Stu for 5 mins, finally learn to say Aziz. The trick was to remember how to pronounce 'disease', very stupid thing, but I actually learnt like that. Haha. Fine enough of my story. So AZIZ gave us the download on diving and said he would take us. I have never dived in my life, none of us have. Actually I don't know about the boys, should ask them. So the plan was to get comfortable in water today and then dive tomorrow. So Aziz decided to take us out snorkeling. We did a few breathing exercises and then set out. I freaked out mid way, my snorkel had a hole in the tube and I kept getting water in my mouth. For a long time, I thought it was me and that I wasn't breathing properly and was still using my mouth to breathe. And the eye gear kept slipping as well. But at oen point my eye gear slipped and my mouth was full of water and I panicked. And Aziz came rushing thinking I was about to drown. I just needed to re-adjust my mask, and spit out the water I had drank! SO he carried held me while I was stabilised. And only after I wore his snorkel and he wore mine, did we realise that the snorkel had a problem, I snorkeled for a bit more, Simran and Uttesh went further out. Akshay and Stu were behind us. And eventually i swam back to the shore. The beach was very sandy. So washed ourselves and grabbed a few beers and decided our course of action for the day. Aziz said we could rent a boat and head out to the Gilis. We decided to rent a speed boat and head to Gili T. Aziz gave us a few pointers, told us he also has a house in the quieter side of Gili T! Gili T is known to be the party island among the three gilis, we thought we'd spend the whole day exploring the island, riding around in bicycles, watch the much-talked about sunset, swim a little, snorkel a little and have dinner and then head back at 10:30. So we asked the speed boat guy to come pick us up at 10:30. And off we went! The speed boat was faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssssssstttttttttt. Very fast. And most probably the same one that Uttesh and Simran partied on the previous night.

Te view from the a cluster of trees at the Mentigi beach, we waited here and had a few beers, while Aziz spoke tot he speed boat guys and

A few pictures of us just chilling. Very dark pictures. It was relaxing to sit there you know. Like just sit, with nowhere to go and nothing to do no one waiting for us. So beautiful it is sometimes to not have an agenda in life. Exactly what a vacation should be :)

The beach wasn't all that great, like you won't hang out on it, and very very very sandy.

One of these boats is freshly painted, that must be ruined somewhere thanks to our night riders.

We got off at Trattoria (!), an Italian restaurant and fixed that pick up point with our boat man. Gili T. was just waking up I think. We walked along the one maid road of Gili T, looking around, looking at places to eat. We were super hungry and decided to get food at one of the restaurants. It was right next to the beach and the view from there was this, sigh :

the gang!

We decided to order loads of food and drinks, I had my banana smoothie and we were stuffed. We decided to rent bicycles and ride around. The restaurant also led onto the beach and Stu and I went down:

We asked around for cycles and finally rented 5 and rode! I love cycling, it's just absolutely beautiful when the wind rushed through your hair. It reminds me of my childhood and invariably of Stu, Simran, Latu and me cycling in Mhow, riding to the library and back, and just basically, taking our ladybird cycles with baskets and riding around our area. And here we were the three of us, without Latu though :(, riding around. The one main street of Gili T was very very very crowded, loads of folks walking and loads of people riding as well. Aziz had told us about a turtle conservatory in the island and we wanted to check it out, we rode until we reached the end of the road and there was just the sea ahead. Parked out bicycles and laid down our towels and slept. Just the girls. The boys went to explore the waters and snorkel around. We slept. I haven't. It was hot and sunny, we were under a tree, and we slept. And then the boys came and work us up. We rode back along the same way looking for the conservatory, I was frankly still in my sleep and could have easily bumped into someone. Thankfully did not. And finally we found the turtle place. It wasn't anything fancy, but so many turtles! Three tanks, the first one with really small baby turtles, the second one with relatively older ones and the last one with big ones that were biting each other.

After we left that place, Simran found a shop that sells coconut oil and she pointed it out to me. Now, i didn't know she was being sarcastic. And I really wanted some oil to condition my hair. All the sea water and sun had ruined it. And I was desperate to oil it. So I went in and bought a bottle. Only to see her standing outside with this "I don't believe you' look on her face' and so my lessons with akshay continued :| . Then we spotted an ice cream shop and stopped. Typical vacation type randomness behaviour. And then we finally decided to chill again. So we rode to the quieter side of the island and stopped at a cluster of trees and wanted to sleep again. Akshay and Stu rode ahead, clicked a few selfies and spotted an awesome spot to watch the sunset and came back to tell us.

In the meantime, Uttesh, Sim and I slept a little and i got this urge to go into the water and got up suddenly and ran to the ocean. And played around a bit, swam around a bit and then just floated, I don't know how to float, but the water was really shallow, so it was almost like me lying half immersed on the seabed. And there was blankness. Everything that had happened in my life in the last one year, crossed my mind, almost like a movie and I smiled to myself as I saw the sky above. My ears were in water so I couldnt hear anything, the guys were calling me and akshay had to walk to where I was playing dead and scream for me to get out.

And then we finally camped here for the day :

Akshay used his sunglasses to take many many many pics. You'll see.

Uttesh through Akshay's sunglasses. Pic # 1

Random selfies. Sim is sleeping behind us!

The boys, I think Sutu took this one

I love this pic! Also courtesy Akshay's "Through My Sunglasses" series

He continued his experiment. He did manage to take quite a few good ones, that i'll have to agree

The sunset

I can't remember what we said for them to make these faces :|

Google+ decided to auto-awesome our sunset!

This was a 360degree view of the gang on the beach!

The sunset was beautiful indeed. We joked around for a bit, got pensive with the view in front of us for a bit, took many many many selfies.Took turns to play photographer. Akshay used his awesome sunglasses to take some awesome effect-walle pictures. And then Uttesh decided to capture our lovely couple :

Ok, this was a lame attempt. By Akshay

And finally after some ten thousand pictures Google+ did this. Original photographer credit goes to Uttesh :)

After sunset we rode back to the main restaurant area. Returned our bicycles. Akshay and Stu bought us cakes and cupcakes. we also shopped for really pretty silk stoles/sarongs. And decided to eat dinner at this place called Scallywags. It had a seafood grill, where you could pick up anything you wanted and they'd grill it for you.

Just look at the seafood.

The gang at Scallywags

We all ordered our individual things, and axe decided to go for the salad buffet. Which we made FULL use of. Like i think we refilled some 4 times. I mean we were hungry man. After all we had done ...umm...nothing the whole day. That makes a person hungry ok.

After dinner we picked up a few cans of beers for the night and decided to wait at the beach for the speedboat. We waited for a 30 mins, played Stapoo on the beach, sang and danced a bit, with the music that was floating out of the restaurant next door, wrote our names on the sand. Drew the Indian national flag for independence day (which was the next day) and did some random masti like that and finally decided to call Aziz to ask the boat guys to come get us. After a few more minutes of waiting, he came. And we head out home. Uttesh decided to hang outside the boat and experience god-knows-what. With the speed with which the boat was going, I was afraid to sit inside it, I don't know how this boy hung onto the railing in that dark with the sea all around. brrrr...

And then we reached Mentigi. Now Aziz was sweet enough to wait for us at the beach with his truck to take us up. Who in their right minds would want to climb the hill at 11 PM no? Well, me and uttesh, were a little too enthusiastic. So enthusiastic, that while the other climbed behind Aziz's truck, we decided to run. Run. RUN. We started well, like all runs do and in 5 mins, we were dead. And we hadn't even covered 1/4th of the way! And we ran, walked, ran walked, and then crawled almost, Uttesh tried pushing me and then finally we held each others hands like we would die on this slope and finally made it! and then went and died on the sofa. We still reached faster than the guys on the truck did! But we literally for about 10 minutes, had no energy to breathe or speak or move even our eye lids voluntarily!

When the other three joined us, Sim went for a shower and Uttesh, Stuti and I crashed on the bed and then akshay came and nudged himself between the three of us. Finally everyone went for a shower and I continued to sleep until Sim woke me up and I joined the guys in our big pink common room for a drink. Little more nonsense onwards, Sim slept, and the rest of us played dumb charades. Akshay and Uttesh in one team and me and stutu in one. As compared to the other three I sucked. Sigh. Finally we decided to get some sleep. I have very flaky memory about this night for some reason! I think Sim finally woke up when everyone decided to go to sleep and then Sim, uttesh and me sat and spoke about ghost stories. And we stopped as soon as we began because everything around us started banging, doors and windows and the wind howled outside. So we all just stopped and looked at each other and decided that talking about prospective matches for Uttesh was a safer topic to stick to. Finally we all crashed. We were to go diving the next day! So I'll finish this post with cute solo pics of Sim, Stu, Uttesh, Axe and Me from our sunset time: