Sixth sense

The big day was here! We woke up as usual, finished up our routine, wheeled our bags out for pickup and walked out of the hotel. The kind receptionist at the hotel had told us already that to resume our walk we had to go a specific way, or we would add a couple of kilometers to the walk. Having had that experience before, we followed her instructions and  walked out in the dark and crossed the road just as she asked us to, when a lady, obviously a pilgrim walked up to us and asked us if we knew how to get back on the Camino. So we asked her to just walk with us.  

And that is how, for a few hours we acquired a new friend. She was from Los Angeles and had walked much farther than us and was actually with a group, but preferred to walk by herself and so had left earlier than her group did. Unfortunately, she also had a sick doggy at doggy daycare back home and was calling family back home for updates and such and we felt sorry that her last day was marred by such worries. 

She perfectly matched our pace and so we walked on. We hit our first break about an hour and a half into our walk and as usual we enjoyed our coffee with toast and croissants. I forgot to mention Spanish omelettes here. Potatoes and eggs in a dense omelette, something that was familiar to me though because I made it at home pretty often, it was filling and tasty. Another yummy treat we enjoyed was the torta de Santiago,  a delicious almond meal cake that we ate first in Portomarin, and again, this was something I made at home but tasting it in Spain made it extra special. 

We resumed our walk and kept a wary eye on the grey clouds gathering in one corner of the sky and the wind that seemed to be picking up a bit. When we took our second break, our friend chose to keep walking and promised us that we would meet at the Cathedral. So we became a trio again. And the kilometers kept peeling away,15,then 12 and then 10 where there was a marker to celebrate the proximity to the Cathedral.

 Vincent had cajoled me into checking out a Panaderia in a little place about a kilometer off the track. We dutifully walked there, only to find it closed...most villages we walked through were tiny hamlets and agriculture was the main business I'm assuming. So there was no 9 to 5 office to go to. Hence the lazy like Sunday morning feeling all the way. 

 The Crusades were part and parcel of Christian history but the Camino had been too. It seemed to have fallen out of favor for a few centuries but regained its popularity in the last few decades. I could imagine pilgrims from centuries ago, walking the same path we walked, wondering when they would catch a glimpse of the cathedral. They obviously had had a much more harder time than we did, what with our luggage transfer service and such. They probably didn't have Merrel and Hoka shoes and Osprey backpacks and REI socks and Columbia hats and quick dry towels and warm beds and hot food. They probably walked barefoot, relied on the goodwill of the monastries strewn along the way and the charity of strangers. They didn't book hotels ahead of them, or stretch their feet on cushioned beds at the end of the day. They didn't have restrooms at every place the need arose to relieve themselves. They didn't shoot the breeze at the end of the day at the ever present restaurants and bars now along the Camino. They came from all around the continent. I have read in a lot of historical fiction/ non fiction about monarchs making the pilgrimage. But all of them, kings and paupers, had the same goal we did. Walk to God, the omnipresent being, waiting in a Church for you.

Our goal was to get to the Cathedral for the noon pilgrim mass and we seemed to be making good time. The wind picked up though but it was cool comfort for sweaty walkers and we relished it - until, the splatter of rain drops jolted us to reality. Out came the ponchos and we quickly helped each other cover ourselves and our backpacks up properly in the now blowing wind. And we kept walking, the rain wasn't heavy exactly, but the wind made it difficult to walk easily as we had did all these days. The kilometers, however kept winding down. 

With almost 5 kilometers left, we spied the town. Wow!! More than a year of anticipation, and here were were, we could stretch out our hands and feel the prize. We hurried along. 

One of my friends had a tough time with her feet hurting badly, but she asked me to hurry and not wait for her, because we were just a few kilometers away and it was close to 11.00 o' clock by then.

The rain died down and we walked on. Almost 2.5 kilometers left, the town began and then all our walking was through main streets and traffic. And we walked on. 

Finally, finally we walked in through a narrow street and right into the square in front of the Cathedral! It was anticlimatic in own way. No fanfare..you don't walk towards the Cathedral in front of you ..you enter through a side path and suddenly you are there! Ah, the magnificence! 

But it was 11.50 a.m and I had to hurry to get to mass. My sweet co-pilgrims, literally stripped off my poncho and my back pack and pushed me off to go to mass, promising to wait in the square for me. I walked to the side door, only to find a loooong line of people, mostly pilgrims I assumed, waiting to get in. I got in line and managed to walk into the cathedral 10 minutes past 12.00, but in time for the First Reading.  Translator in hand on the app on my phone, I found a huge column close to the back, in the fully packed Church, to rest my tired back on, and attended the Spanish mass. The culmination of all of our efforts. Sharing the sign of peace, brought tears to my eyes. Strangers all, but sharing the promise of peace in a 815 year old Cathedral, what more could one want?

Life throws so much at us, good and bad. But at the end of the day, it is our ability to see beyond our physical being, the mortal coil, to what lies beyond, that certain feeling, that awareness that makes us who we are. I am someone who prides myself on learning the hard way ( or maybe, easy way, thanks to Noe?), that life is merely the mundane act of breathing and eating and excreting and rinsing and repeating. Everything else is optional. Take away food and water and you are dead. Take away anything else, you are still alive and kicking. Unhappy maybe, but alive nonetheless. So happiness is ironically, optional too. But Maslow was right, once you have an assurance that your basic needs are met, you look outwards and upwards.

Beauty catches your eye, touches your heart, moves you. Poverty and want saddens you, makes you depressed. Love awakens you, sustains you. Betrayal breaks you,causes you to crumble. But through it all, your body muscles on. Hunger cannot be assuaged without food, but happiness can defer food for later. So, your mind and body are intertwined and inevitably symbiotically wedded, for better and for worse. 

Tweak one and you tweak the other. 

For three 50+ year old women, who aren't exactly fitness freaks, this 114 kilometer journey was a challenge. Mind over body. One foot in front of the other. Rest and repeat.  Feed the body, feed the soul. Stretch the body to its limits, and let your mind take over. Resilient.

But you turn the corner on that narrow side street and look up, mouth agape...and your body disappears...it is all mind. You drink in the majesty of the cathedral,which to me seemed wider than tall. The square seemed enormous, but inviting, beckoning you to come and rest your weary feet and aching body. The smooth,  cold stony floor of the square feels cool and almost massages the feet. The crowd mills about, loud and ecstatic, but you can still focus.  The cathedral looms over you and you feel tiny, insignificant. But you also feel big. You have achieved what you set out to do. You might have only started in Sarria, but you got to the Compostela de Santiago. And that is that.

Ultreia et suseia - forward and upward. Buen Camino!

All the five senses

Day 5 dawned bright and sunny. And we were feeling high because we had rested pretty well and we just had to march downstairs to resume our walk. 

We brewed some coffee and ate some croissants and pocketed some of the fruits for later, dragged our luggage downstairs for pickup and walked out the door.

It was dark as usual and we took off with our usual enthusiasm.  There were walkers already on the Camino and soon we fell in step. This time our steps were more determined because the end was almost in sight. One more day and we'd be done.

Oh, the beautiful sunrises we saw everyday..usually we were more than an hour into our walk when the sun rose. And so we were treated to glorious sunrises every day. And in this age of phones having excellent cameras, we were able to save these memories for later.  I was just mentioning making a photobook to my Camino sister and she said she had thought of the same thing! So I have work to do once I getting back home.

And one of my personal favorite breakfast dishes, something I will recreate once I get home- grated tomatoes and olive oil on toast. The simplicity of the dish is misleading. The flavor is a explosion in your mouth, the moist tomato cutting the crispness of the toast and the olive oil adding a depth to the whole thing. A pinch of salt and you are in heaven. I'm thinking grating raw garlic on crisp toast will add another dimension to the toast.

The Eucalyptus trees were still around and we still managed to crush and inhale the fragrance.  But the one annoying thing that assailed our senses was the smell of dung. Cow dung I am assuming. It was..different. Not pleasant. Lingering and making you want to plug your nose. And it never faded to the back ground. Persistent and malodorous. But hey, all things good or bad come to an end right? And it was fertile farmland we were traversing. So the odor was to be expected.

The languages we heard spoken around us was interesting.  Spanish seemed the most spoken, but French and German were also heard often. A lot of American English too. Funnily our looks weren't exactly of English speakers and we spoke to each other in Thamizh, so I guess too many people assumed we weren't proficient in any other language. Well, whatever. We did have people talk to us, but not that many that we were inundated with conversation. 

And our legs were sending us urgent messages! My sandals was heaven sent but it couldn't support my upper feet. So it ached..a lot. But then resting it in the night gave me some relief and obviously the pain started up within a few kilometers of walking.  We joked that a bath tub with hot water and epsom salts to soak our feet in would be a dream come true..but that is what it remained - a dream. Spanish bathrooms have no tubs, just walk-in showers. So our sore legs had to wait. We never saw a tub until the end.

 It was a pilgrimage in its own way, but it also showed us our limitations and our powers. People much older than us were walking, seemingly with ease. Maybe they had more practice at it. But we had always been open about our aches and pains and our prescription medications, but here were, day 5 of our 6 day walk, none the worse for wear. At no moment in these few days had we reconsidered our trip or suffered so much as to even think about backing out. I'm sure we each had our own struggles..but we persisted. Resilience.  That I think is the key and we had all, we later learnt, worried about what we would do if one of us was, for any reason, not able to continue. Each of us, independently had decided we would convince the other two to go without them. But by God's grace, that need never materialized. 

 And we plodded on. Any small church, we peeped in. Some looked so old and desolate..but still had altars and of course the coveted stamp.We got the stamp anywhere there was one. There were small stalls along the way,  where, for a payment one could get a fancy stamp. We tried it once with our star sign as a stamp and then gave up.  We almost filled our passport and I jokingly said my husband doing the entire Camino Frances, introvert that he is, probably didn't get as many. He probably went with the requisite two, not more, not less. Checked with him and I was right! Gotta go home and see it for myself. 

Our penultimate destination was O'Pedruozo. 

About three kilometers before O'Pedruozo, there was a stamping place where a local man asked us where we were from. When we said India, his first question was if we spoke Thamizh! And that, was karma. The fact that we spoke to each other in thamizh seemed to throw fellow pilgrims off, but here was a native who, of his own volition, asked us if we spoke thamizh! We were floored! He explained that they had two priests who were from our neck of the woods back in India, who served that parish. Unfortunately both were out of town. We would have loved to meet them!

We finally walked into O'Pedruozo, only to find that the hotel opened only at 1.00 p.m and we were almost 40 minutes early. We found a restaurant close enough but were told that they opened for lunch at 1.00 p.m too. Dang!! Being punished for being early! We sat at the table with fresh squeezed orange juice in hand and suddenly the waiter announced that they were open for lunch. And the only thing they had was the the Menu de dia- the set lunch of the day. Which had no vegetarian options. Smarter people would have walked out, but as we were too tired, we stayed.  Our vegetarian friend graciously sat on and watched the two of us eat an excellent lunch- excellent soup and fish and barbecued ribs for a main course. Ice cream and cheesecake for dessert. And we made it to the hotel where the receptionist was very sweet and saw us to our room. And there was a surprise- our bathroom, was outside the room,.like entirely outside, in a corridor shared by two other rooms. The bathroom was just ours. But we had to open our room and walk to the corridor and open the bathroom to use it. Weird!!

 By now, we were really excited! Just one more day to go. We wandered out in the evening and ate our favorite churros with chocolate, with the waiter gently advising us not to get three of the combination because that would mean 30 churros and 3 cups of chocolate!

I left the ladies at the churro place and went off to mass at local church and then walked back to the hotel. The ladies, meanwhile had done some clothes shopping and settled in for the night. The big day was tomorrow and we were thrilled. The cathedral danced before our eyes. The only hitch was that the weather forecast for the day showed rain with some wind mixed in for good measure. We had somehow skirted the rain and our ponchos were safe and sound in their original packaging. Hopefully we wouldn't need to use it?

That's for tomorrow..because, like they say, tomorrow is another day.

Day 4

 Woke up quite refreshed and enthusiastic because this was also a 14 kilometer day. While there was a buffet breakfast at the hotel we stayed in, it didn't open until 7.30 a.m and we didn't want to dawdle. Since Melide wasn't exactly a brisk place to begin with, and it was Sunday to boot, we decided to just begin our walk right away. My trusted camino app really helped because today we were quite off the Camino and needed the directions to get back on it. 

Once we resumed the walk on the Camino, it was one foot in front of the other. But we were feeling more rested because of the shorter distance we had walked the previous day.  We had run into some familiar faces along the way but we also knew that we wouldn't see quite a few of them this day because they probably walked the entire 28 miles in one day without catching a break like we did. 

Our breakfast break was in a place called Boente where along with our breakfast we had the pleasure of watching a small kitten playing around the dining area. It seems to be missing a mum, but seemed pretty carefree and jolly. We did see a lot of dogs along the way. Extremely well behaved. Almost none were leashed, but none were jumpy or ' friendly' like dog owners claim in the States. There were pilgrims who fed them titbits. But they weren't leaping around the pilgrims and generally being a nuisance.

The kilometers sped by pretty quickly and before we knew it, we were in Arzua,where we were staying the night. And this time, almost to make up for staying way out of where the Camino was, the hotel was on the Camino. Literally, on the Camino. We walked into the town and climbed up some stairs to the apartment we had booked. It was an apartment, a whole dang apartment. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and dining and living area. A fridge stocked with milk and juice and water and a kitchen with coffee and sugar and fruits and bread.  

We literally parked ourselves each to a room, put our feet up and relaxed for a while. Then we went off to find lunch.  Interesting fact: In Spain, people sit and eat outside restaurants all the time. There are cars driving by a few feet away and people walking by literally an elbow length away, but everyone just go about their eating business without flinching. We found some wonderful vegetarian options and obviously seafood too and made a good meal. By now we noticed that we were eating twice while walking, nothing  heavy, a coffee for sure,  maybe a croissant, once we had cheese and membrillo,and sometimes bread with tomatoes, another favorite of ours, but it was never heavy or a full meal. I'm sure were burnt off anything we ate within the next hour of non stop walking. And we invariably had lunch after 2.00 p.m. That was our heavy meal. We ate without restraint because we were terribly hungry and also because that was our only big meal of the day. Nights we mostly weren't hungry after the late lunch and coffee with something else sufficed. Our waitress was a sweet young girl who was very helpful. Interesting observation: most waiters spoke very little English, but were very patient with us and our broken Spanish. We managed swimmingly well and we never ordered or recieved the wrong thing. Some Duolingo is useful, one has to agree. And another observation: you really don't need cash.  Cards, or tarjetas as they are called in Spain gets you anything you want even on the remote Camino. Though, calling the Camino remote seems sacrilegious.

So we rested. Our legs were doing much better. We were still tired and sore, but not to the degree where we rethought our whole walk. And the fact that we were sending our luggage ahead of us was really a boon. Every hotel we walked up to, our luggage was already there. That was a very reassuring sight for us. I know this was a pilgrimage, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do right? Anyway, we settled in for the night. 

I attended the pilgrim mass in Arzua too. The only place I skipped was Melide because we were so far from the pilgrim crowd and I didn't even know  where the church was. The mass was a fulfilling experience. Like filling up with gas before a long drive. One might not be too religious, but still, that something, that guiding light is needed in your life for sure.

Anyway the next day was just a 19 kilometer walk and it seemed eminently doable. And we were two thirds of our journey in. That in itself thrilled us. The tough part was over.  We had to drew a deep breath in and do it. Twice over and we would be done. Eyes on the prize!

Triumverate

Sunrise is late in Spain and Vincent had to explain to me ( I know) that technically they had to follow GMT, but they don't.  So sunrise is around 8 ish and sunset too, thankfully is around 8ish. But for early walkers like us, an early sunrise would have been godsend. 

Anyway, we woke up bright as usual, but with the confidence that we had to walk less..that itself was a spur to us. We started a bit late, closer to 7 o'clock. We had barely walked out of town,when we spied a bakery with its lovely aromas wafting out. That was it, we decided that we would take our breakfast break then and there. So we bought our usual coffees- a descafianado for me, and cafe con leche for the ladies, and the ubiquitous croissants for all. The croissants are not the buttery kind, but they  would suffice. We always took breaks along the way, so this was just fuel for now.

And the walking began. The Camino was crowded as usual and since our leg of the walking was only 14 kilometers we were walking leisurely.  Most pilgrims were walking to this town called Arzua which was 28 kilometers away. Technically the longest walk. But we had broken it up and thank God we did. We couldn't imagine walking more in a day than the two previous days when we had averaged 25 kilometers, thanks to our detour on day one.

Buen Camino! Buen Camino! There were no good mornings and good days here. It was just the silent plodding with these greetings to everyone along the way. There were more smiles and acknowledgements for us along the way and even otherwise, we were yapping away and even our silences during the long climbs were comfortable. 

The best surprise if the day, nay, the camino was running into a huge tapestry of the Lord Ganesha on our way! A Spanish girl selling jewellry and such had the tapestry hanging outside her cart and to the three of us, it was a welcome sight- reminding us that God was everywhere-however we choose to call him.

Steadily stamping our way through the Camino,  we walked through beautiful chestnut valleys and acorn forests.  The one thing that caught our fancy was Eucalyptus trees..we started noticing them on day 2 but weren't sure because the bottoms of the trees had leaves that looked different from the ones on top, which had the typical look we'd seen back home. Curiosity took the better of us and we managed to pluck a couple of leaves to crush between our fingers..the smell, oh, the smell! Took us back to our childhood back in India when Eucalyptus trees were quite common and the smell was universally the cue to take in a deep breath. 

Legs were sore and I was still experimenting with my foot wear. My Merrels were not very comfortable and were hurting my toes. I used my Columbia sandals and they were a huge relief, but did not offer as much support as the shoes. But I liked it better than the shoes. My friends were experimenting too. One of us had blisters show up, but thanks to the kit we had brought from home, we managed to keep it from worsening. And a few kilometers before our destination was a bridge over a tiny creek. People were already sitting with their feet in the water.  We too joined them. The feel of cold water on your sore feet was heaven. The icy water jolted the pain to a stop and the longer we sat, the colder our feet became, and the pain receded. Obviously a short term sop, but a lovely relief nonetheless.

We all settled into a pattern by now. Packing our suitcases.  Getting our backpacks ready with water, hats, ponchos, something to snack on, minor first aid stuff, both our passports, a change in clothes and some other minor things we thought we needed. We all started walking with our jackets on and as the day wore on, the heat became unbearable enough that we took them off. The hats too came on and off as needed. The rain was nowhere to be seen and that was the highlight for us. We couldn't imagine walking in the rain. The unpaved roads would be terrible to walk on.

We finally walked into Melide around 12.30 p.m. But our hotel was another kilometer in town, away from the Camino.  Didn't notice it while booking and so we tacked on one more kilometer to our walk. 

But it was worth it. The hotel was large and comfortable looking, kinda swanky.  The room was humongous considering the small compact rooms we had stayed in the other three days. The bathroom was huge and our knees wouldn't hit the wall or the door when we sat on the toilet. And wonder of wonders, the lavenderia was right next door. We could wash clothes!! The lady at the reception patiently explained the process and off we went! One big load of all our clothes went in and 30 minutes later, off to the dryer. Twenty minutes and they came out hot and dry. 

After bathing and getting ready we ventured into town, which we noticed was quite far away. But a Google search mentioned a restaurant about a kilometer away that served good paella.  We were curious to taste the dish everyone talked about all the time. So we went and found the place. This was a reasonably big town, the first one we were running across and we noticed that things were so calm and silent and empty in the afternoon. Siesta time, apparently. This would be lovely back home, but no way! People need to make money, no?

Apparently paella takes a while to make, a lesson we learnt in Melide. We ordered one seafood, one mixed and one vegetarian paella.  And our favorite: freshly squeezed orange juice. That had become part of our routine by now. We started buying 3 glasses of the juice, filling one water bottle to the brim and drinking the leftover right there, and the juice in the bottle as we walked along. I don't think Minute Maid and Tropicana or Floridas Natural will ever  darken our doorsteps again!

We waited for the food. And waited. A good 25 minutes. When it finally appeared, and man, was it a feast for the eyes and the palate! Individual paella pans placed on wooden trays because they were piping hot. The seafood one teeming with squid and mussels and shrimp and fish..but smelling like fish from the ocean and not a freezer. The mixed one had a compliment of chicken and a couple of cubes of pork. But the vegetarian one took the cake- chock full of veggies-beans and peas and peppers and carrot and artichokes and mushrooms and onions and tomatoes. Flavor burst in our mouths. It had very little spice to speak of, but felt so balanced and complete.

Meal over, we walked into a churreria and shared churros and the thickest hot chocolate one could ever imagine. We needed a spoon to literally scoop it all up. This was another indulgence we learnt on the Camino. 

Back to the hotel for the longest siesta ever. There was no restaurants or bakeries close enough, so we ate whatever we had in our backpacks for dinner and went to bed early. Sleep wasn't exactly forthcoming, but our walk next day was another 14 kilometers. Short and sweet. So we were not burdened by any worries.

Seconds

Well, day 2 was the longest walk of our six day pilgrimage and we woke up with a spring in our step. All three of us felt relatively pain free and seemed to have rested reasonably. 

And we set off. It was still dark and the headlamp helped. We climbed down the steep steps and started walking. I used the Camino app diligently but also noticed that there were pilgrims ahead of us and behind us all the time. No way we were getting lost in that crush. We literally has to get out of people's way sometimes.  We walked at our own pace. So we mostly had people overtaking us. We didn't mind. We were on our journey and they were on theirs.

And for the first time we had some acknowledgement from fellow walkers. Three young kids, all from Madrid were walking along and stopped to talk to us. They asked us where we were from and we gave them the long version. So they shared stories of their experience visiting the States and how much they loved it.

We kept walking, with breaks for using the restroom, and our newest discovery, freshly squeezed orange juice. We usually had coffee, but filled one of our bottles with OJ and drank it along the way. One of us had also brought rehydration powder that made so much of a difference. We shared a bottle all the time. Ofcourse drinking Indian style!

The kilometers kept coming and we walked , walked past small villages, and bowers of chestnut and oak trees, beautiful houses with lush gardens,tiny chapels that looked abandoned but still had a stamp available. Oh, the stamp thing- we recieve a passport that we need to get stamped at a minimum of two places along the way each day to prove we had  actually walked the way. To get our Camino certificate that was an absolute requirement. We went overboard. Most stores, hotels, hostels, restaurants  had the stamp available and you could do it yourself. Every place we saw a stamp, we stopped and had our passport stamped.  There was a thrill in looking at our passport at the end of the day and reliving the experience. 

We had hit our destination around 3.45 p.m the first day and so we assumed we would get to the second place, Palas De Rei, a little later, because we had 2 more kilometers to walk. But we made it at almost the same time and it hit us that our detour on day 1 had actually tacked on atleast 2 more kilometers to our original 22 kilometers.

We limped  into Palas de Rei and checked into our hotel. By now we were truly tired. Our feet were killing us and we could barely stand. We managed to slow walk to a nearby hotel and have a good lunch/dinner. That food, what do I say? Good everywhere.  Mildly spiced and a preponderance of seafood but fresh and sweet. The shrimp and squid and tuna ...our vegetarian friend found surprisingly interesting things to eat too. 

We sat outside the church for a few minutes and then I attended the pilgrim mass. It was in Spanish, but I followed along as best as I could and it thrilled me that that I could participate in something that was the same the world over irrespective of the language.  God is one, no?

We hit the hay as soon as we could. Some painkillers creams helped assuage the pain, and we went off to bed. Knowing that we only had 14 kilometers to walk the next day felt comforting and we decided that we wouldn't hurry much. 

God waits, he waits for us patiently.

A single step

I left off with us on the train and I am writing this almost ten days later. I meant to write an update every day, but, never having done it before, I underestimated the exhaustion that a 22 kilometer walk can cause you to experience. 

Where do I begin? The taxi was waiting for us in Ourense and we made it to Sarria around 8.00 p.m. The lady at the reception was super sweet and helped us very quickly, gave us tips on where to eat dinner and also set up the baggage transport we had asked for. Our baggage would be moved to each hotel we were staying in, ahead of us. We ate empanadas and then churros with hot chocolate( our first taste of heaven, but not the best of the lot), something Vincent had asked us to do and went back to the hotel.

We had no clue about what we had to do the next day. From what Vincent had told us, I assumed that we pack light and stock up on water and any other absolutely essential stuff and walk. We went off to bed, sore and tired but sort of worked up and so basically didn't sleep too much. Thoughts ricocheting in our minds about how things would go,  mingled with an impatience to start the journey. We had decided to start walking at 6.30 a.m and we had already bathed and laid out our clothes. The weather forecast said lowest 90s and we decided to take hats just in case.

So we woke up after barely having slept at all and got ready,  dragged our suitcases downstairs left them in the allocated space for pick up and walked out into the darkness.  And dark it was! Pitch dark . My headlamp was of great help and we gradually started seeing people with backpacks and walking sticks and knew we were on the right track. Phone in hand( Google maps), we walked. Not too fast, not too slow. Chatting away and noticing our hearts starting to thump a bit. The backpack felt heavy..and the shoes seem to pinch. The silence surrounding us was eerie and comforting in some way. The sky started to pinken in an hour and the road became more visible. More pilgrims visible now and our curiosity was piqued. Were they walking the 114 miles like us or even farther?

The first cafe came  up in slightly over an hour and we stopped only to stamp our passport. And we were the first to walk out. No one ahead of us and no one within eyesight behind us. Google was guiding us and we resumed our walk. We were walking through oaken forests and the sky waa taking on a beautiful glow when, about a half hour into our walk, we noticed that there were absolutely no pilgrims to be seen..we stopped in our tracks and looked around us. No pilgrims, and it began to dawn on us that we were lost and not on the Camino any more Looking it up on Google, it dawned on us that we had followed it a little too sincerely and it had led us astray. Google was about the absolute shortest route, not the holy one. Luckily I had a Camino app that let me see where we were. My friend graciously escorted us back to the Camino. We were able to walk a couple of smaller roads and rejoin the Camino. Phew!!

From then on, we made sure we were following another pilgrim, or had one in our sight either behind us or before us.

Our first breakfast break was around 10.00 a.m in a cafe jam packed with pilgrims and we had our first taste of 'othering'

 I guess there weren't too many Indian ladies on the Camino. And it never crossed people's minds that we could be from anywhere else. I was asked how I was going to pay for the food- rupees? I had to, in my broken Spanish, explain that I was from the US and that I would be paying in dollars.  Ah, the horror!! 

And we soldiered on. Kilometer after kilometer. Our calves started to hurt, our feet started to hurt and we still had a few kilometers to go. Thirst was a constant and we drank so much water and still  the thirst wasn't slaked. The realization hit me ( not sure about my two fellow pilgrims) that we had to do this over and over again for 5 more days. No breaks, no long rests except our sleep at night. No excuses. No dilly dallying. And some of the upslopes almost killed us. We panted our way up the slope and felt faint with exhaustion. 

And finally, we spied Portomarin, our first halt on the Camino. Vincent had mentioned a steep set of stairs to enter the town, but neglected to mention that the last kilometer involved a downslope of rock hewn uneven steps that felt like you would tip over any minute and break more than a couple of teeth into the bargain.

Luckily a young girl explained to us that we might as well sit on each step and shimmy down. And it worked!

We finally made it to Portomarin and dragged ourselves into the hotel we had booked. The luggage had gotten there ahead of us.The town was charming, and the church was literally steps away from where we stayed. After the first meal of our walk, where we sat down and ate croquettes and padron peppers and squid and chicken ..I attended the pilgrim mass and we went off to lay in bed and recuperate, knowing full well that we would have to get up and do it all over again. And the next day was our longest day with 24 kilometers to be walked.

Three ladies, one bathroom- need I say more? We decided that we would all bathe at night, pack our bags for the next day and only do the what needed to be done in the morning, so we could just start walking. 

And off to bed we went. Happy that we had taken our first steps.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Ours did too. In fact our first day , we clocked more than 30,000 steps. And we knew we had many more to take.

The way of the Lord

I am sitting in a Renfe high speed train that's going 300 kms/hr. My two friends are sitting across the aisle and nodding off. We have about 2 more hours to go on this train and we are already tired to the core. A meticulously planned trip took a wild turn, all because an airline decided to do maintenance on a plane bound to Madrid. 

This trip has been more than a year in the making. We did a trial run last year and felt we could tolerate, why even enjoy, spending days on end together, not just shooting the breeze, but slogging it out. 

And so we planned things, we booked tickets, plotted our walking days and halts. We booked hotel rooms and train tickets and made up our itinerary and finalized it all up, way before the actual day arrived. 

Every leg had time cushions attached so we wouldn't miss a connection or lose a trip.

But, as usual, the world had other plans.

My flight to Dallas to meet up with my friends was delayed by about 30 minutes, but no issues there because the flight to Madrid was almost 4 hours later and we knew I would be fine.

We met up at the gate allocated to us and we were happily catching up when we noticed that all our phones pinged with a notice that the flight was delayed by an hour. No big deal because we had built in cushions. But that cushion evaporated in a matter of minutes.

The new time was almost 4 hours later than the original. That was it! Poof!!

That began a frantic search for alternatives to get to the town we were starting our walk in. Oh, did I mention we were walking the last 114 kms of the Camino? So we had to get to Sarria to begin our walk and our direct train from Madrid to Sarria would leave way before we even got to the train station from the airport. Vincent, who it seems, is more invested in my pilgrimage than I am, instantly volunteered to look for alternatives and since we were sitting and twiddling our thumbs while cursing American Airlines with every swear word possible, we put our heads together and starting looking at other options. Unfortunately the train we would miss was the last direct line to Sarria and every other train after that required a change. That's when it hit me that Ourense seemed to be the connecting point for trains to Sarria, but the layover was too long. A taxi service though, took slightly over a hour to get to Sarria from Ourense.

So we asked Vincent to rebook us on the train to Ourense at a later time and requested the hotel that we were staying in to book a taxi for us. And our flight to Madrid took off.

To add insult to injury, there was no wifi on the international flight and so we had no idea if Vincent had even rebooked tickets for us.

After a tiring 9 hour flight into Madrid, we turned the airplane mode off on our phones to find a message from Vincent about our new tickets for a later time. Love the guy to bits!!

Got off the plane, finished immigration and customs picked up our luggage and walked to an information booth to ask about taxi versus train service to the Madrid main station to board our high speed train. The sweet and helpful lady there suggested the train to get to the station instead of a taxi. Done!!

The ticket machines was tricky..but one of our friends managed to break the code and we bought tickets to the main station and got to the right platform and boarded the train. 15 minutes later, we were at the main station which was buzzing with people. We figured out where we needed to be to board our train to Ourense and finally made it to the train.

And that is how we find ourselves seated in a high speed train, fighting off sleep and waiting for the last leg of our trip..our taxi ride to Sarria.

Tomorrow we will begin our pilgrimage and we will surely forget what a rush it was,with all its twists and turns to get to our starting point.  For where we start doesn't matter does it? Where we end is what counts and we surely will, by the grace of God, end where he wants us to.