What a relief! I never liked the cold, I never liked winters, and being a Swede, people often thought I was a strange creature. And now I was in Goa listening to the Ayurvedic Dr Rohit telling me that cold, be it weather or food, isn’t good for someone of my disposition! No wonder I always tend to head south.

I find it difficult to just lie still in the sun, but the beach in Mandrem is a dream for long walks, long slow walks, long meditative walks, long relaxing walks – just what a person like me needs, especially since the weather is guaranteed to be warm. The Mandrem Beach is simply ideal for the “no hurry, no worry” that I mentioned in my previous blog post. While walking, strolling, kicking sand, gripping mud with your toes, you can observe innumerable star fish, even more innumerable tiny crabs moving at the speed of light (ok, not quite but they are unbelievably quick) and suggestive patterns in the sand.

The only thing that disturbed me was that a song I never liked, Seasons in the Sun, got stuck in my head because of a line in its lyrics: “but the stars we could reach were just starfish on the beach”.