“If you stumble, make it part of the dance!”

First day of February saw me hit the walking trail with a vengeance to work up those kilometers. Post walk I sat down to message to all the peeps I had been meaning to catch up with in the New Year. Yup January had rolled over so quickly and I still hadn’t met up / talked to some of my closest buddies. So I sat to rectify that and managed to catch up with few of them in the first week itself. Needless to say, my fitness regime faltered a bit there as eating out always does do that 😉

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♥ Social treats ♥

One of my closest friends bday saw us out for lunch at the newly opened Big Chill cafe in Gurgaon. I had decided to dress up in a saree and was thrilled when J delighted in seeing me so “dressed up” for her day. Pulling out my saree swag for her was the dance of the day for me.

I met up with three more friends and felt blessed that all I had to do was call and they were ready to meet me. In fact one of them carried specially made food stuff for our outing as she wanted me to taste her cooking. It felt so special and humbling.

I had stumbled in my keeping in touch with my closest circle and this month let me rectify that to make it part of my dance of life.

♥ Gypsy Feet ♥

Finally managed to make a plan to visit A in Uttarakhand and can’t tell you how blessed I feel to have such awesome friends. Not only do they host me but cook up delicacies to tease my taste buds. It’s been a little over two weeks and I still haven’t gotten enough of the mountains or the silence which is so addictive.

I just love clicking pictures of the vistas on offer especially of the fruit blossoms which are running quite a riot here. It was such a cinch to say goodbye and can’t wait for my next vacation.

I also made a trip to a very neat boutique stay in Mukteshwar where the weather was even more gorgeous than in Satkhol. Walking around the local village making acquaintances with the goats, birds and the local people is something I will cherish a lot. I will be doing a post on this, so do stay tuned.

I had carried some art supplies for this vacay and managed to work on that a bit. It must be said that coloring in an adult coloring book was pretty therapeutic for me.

♥ Culinary escapedes ♥

Galgal or pahadi lemon is native to Uttarakhand and I am a huge fan of it. A’s aunt-in-law had made a delish pickle from it which we attempted to replicate with much success. Also managed to dry out the peels which both of us are going to powder and use it in our laundry soap. What a win-win situation!! 🙂

Oh and I also ended up making my lemon cake with it, infused with some fresh rosemary from the garden.

So now I have lugged back about 2 kgs of this lemon to experiment with at home. Shall update on the progress of this soon.

Dont miss out on the pics of the various colorful food experiments we ended up doing as always. Not to mention the hot bowl of Maggi on a cold rainy day!!

♥ Health & Fitness ♥

My walk schedule went for a toss with my outings and it’s only when I stepped out for my holiday that saw me racking up the Kms on the pedometer app with a vengeance. Walking in the mountains is more strenuous as it’s all uphill or downhill but I have tried to be pretty regular and happy to say I have a total of 71 Kms clocked up in this month. Just 4 less than my target of 75 Km.

I cant tell you how fortunate I felt to be walking in such pristine surroundings with pure mountain air to breathe in. Yup no mask required here at all.

And even as I contemplated the stumble in my dance, I realized that the effort of walking in the hills more than made it up for the lag in distance covered.

♥ Blogging news ♥

Being up in the mountains means almost zero signals and frequent power cuts. Despite that I am happy to see that I could post twice and have been very regular on Instagram. I hope you have been following my updates there.

♥Books & Movies ♥

February has been a great month for reading as I managed to read about 9 books. I have started taking advantage of the Prime reading feature on Amazon and downloaded some interesting books from there. I ended up reading two books on Indian film actors and both were a revelation for me and highly recommended too. These below are from my vacation reading in which one is from a library of a resort I stayed in.

Not having internet was the blessing as I could manage to read more. What did I say about making the stumble part of my dance? 😉

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Well that’s it for me for February 2020 and I will be back with my March post soonest. Drop me links to your Gratitude posts in the comments please.

Joining up with Vidya for the Gratitude Circle Linky

 

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⇐ You can catch my previous Gratitude post here ⇒