There was a really simple reason that I had avoided a pretend visit to India – I was worried that we wouldn’t do it justice! I have always been fascinated by India and to my shame I have never yet visited in person, but Penny asked if we could go for a curry and that was all the reason I needed to plan a day around it! But where to start? It’s such a beautiful and magical place filled with so many people.
We Wore
I couldn’t resist getting Penny her very own Indian costume as one of the things I love most are the beautiful Sarees in their rainbow colours! I wish I’d been a little better planned as I actually could have gotten myself a saree from eBay for very little money but they take over a week to arrive. Penny looked (and felt) wonderful. In fact she is going to wear it for World Book Day now I’ve managed to find her a book to match it!
Someone suggested that we had Henna tattoos but I was a little sacred to try (and very sure that school wouldn’t like it) so I bought some beautiful gold ones from eBay. They are gorgeous and I bought enough to tattoo Penny and I for the rest of the year. The boys would not be persuaded. Yet.
There is something very tribal about tattoos I think and as soon as we had them on I felt like the day had really started.
We Danced!
We found a Bollywood instructional video on YouTube and went for it. I was a weirdly brilliant way to start a day! Funny, fun and I was pretty tired afterwards! Definitely one to try again. My best thing of the day was watching Freddie join in (he insisted on wearing a dress like his sister). It was properly wonderful.
We Watched
The Jungle Book – of course! After our dancing the kids were very happy to sit with a chocolate Tiger lolly and watch this lovely timeless movie. There was a bit more dancing when King Louis came on. So so lovely! There is a new live action one now which might be better for slightly older kids.
I’m not sure that I’ve actually watched it before, but the music is etched on my heart as my sister and I had a record with the songs on when we were very little.
We Made
The chocolate tiger lollies were very posh ones from Marks and Spencer and so we decided to turn the tiger faces on them into little toilet roll tigers. Penny really loves painting and Freddie does too, once he’s got over the concept of sharing the paint with people (MINE MINE MINE). They turned out very well!
We Ate
The real reason for this visit was that I had never taken the children to an Indian restaurant before. I’m not sure why to be honest; Freddie loves rice and ate everything in Singapore and Penny has always loved Chicken curry and poppadum’s. Anyway, we headed off to the restaurant in great excitement. Penny and I shared a Korma, Freddie had a rice to himself and I let Penny have her curry with chips because – why not. It was a brilliant thing to do, Maybe we will visit India every weekend!
Finally, we read….
I had to do some research on this! But we finally found ‘Goodnight India’ a brilliant board book full of all the places in India for Freddie. For Penny we started with Cinnamon about a blind little girl and a Tiger and then at bedtime we read the secret garden because Mary (the protagonist) starts the book living in India.
And so the day was over; And we had had a wonderful time. And I was reminded why I do this strange pretend travel – because its an adventure. Because it makes an ordinary Saturday magical and memorable.
So, with that in mind, we are off to Russia next!!
Namaste.
