I spent a back-to-youth weekend in the calm and relaxing environs of Loch Lomond. This Loch is a 2 -hour sheep-and-greenery infested drive from E'dinburgh. It is the largest loch in mainland Britain and is, as per the LP, within an hours drive from 70% of Scotland's population. People go there for soaking in the peaceful and serene environment with a lake in the foreground and the gently rolling highlands in the back ground.
This peace and serenity was severely shattered by... ...
spent a back-to-youth weekend in the calm and relaxing environs of Loch Lomond. This Loch is a 2 -hour sheep-and-greenery infested drive from E'dinburgh. It is the largest loch in mainland Britain and is, as per the LP, within an hours drive from 70% of Scotland's population. People go there for soaking in the peaceful and serene environment with a lake in the foreground and the gently rolling highlands in the back ground.
This peace and serenity was severely shattered by students from Edinburgh and Glasgow over this weekend who were all booked in a youth hostel. Before you conjure up cooped-up 50-to-a-room rooms, hang on. It was a 19th century castle converted into a beautiful hostel. (Photos will do the talking for me). The interiors retained the grandeur of the past - large high ceiling rooms, with chestnut coloured furniture, fireplaces and old paintings transported us back in time. I could imagine a retired Colonel sitting, with a large dog, a single malt in one hand and a book in another reminiscing about his campaign in hot and dusty India where he tried, without success, to reform the natives!
Our stay was devoted to Highland games, Scottish Food and Ceilidh. Like everything else Scottish, it was all about the fun (without much regard to the purpose). We were randomly grouped into teams of 6 for the Highland games. My team 'fork' had 5 rowdy Glaswegians with the poor little overwhelmed Edinburgher me. The organisers had threatened us that the games would proceed irrespective of sunshine or rain - so I was well prepared for messy and muddy games in the swamps of the Loch. Fortunately, rain Gods played truant and my raincoat and umbrella never left my backpack. The games themselves were more 'highschool' than 'highland' - egg and spoon, tug-O-war, 8-legged race, wheelbarrow and sack race. The only game which seemed distinctly scottish was a caber-toss. A caber toss involves tossing (duh?) a caber. Ok that was a bad one. Actually a caber is like a log and typically weighs between 60-100 kg and the winner is adjudged by the one who manages to toss it the farthest - the only condition being that it has to rotate once during its trajectory. Fortunately, the cabers we were required to toss were miniature ones. I will not expound on how far I was able to toss (if at all!) the caber. There was also a "Wellie Toss" which involved throwing a Wellington boot (google it yourself!). I was unfairly pitted against a lady from the opposite team - remember, women have prior practice in chucking assorted footwear at us poor males. Anyways, I dug up my knowledge of the laws of trajectory and with a flourishing 45 degrees throw managed to out-distance my challenger despite her apparent expertise in throwing high-heel shoes at her boyfriend. Unfortunately, my team didn't win the cumulative 'championship'. But then as Baron de Coubertin said "It is all about partcipating...blah..blah". There was one contestant who, with his shorts, T-shirt and Headband would have looked more in place in the front line of contestants of a marathon. Marathon Mans team also didn't win!
After the games, we went on a leisurely stroll next to the lake and after many a photo-op, we wandered back to the castle (sorry youth-hostel) for a traditional Scottish dinner. The dinner was a sit-down affair (not an easy task, considering it involved an increasingly drunk 150 students from 2 different universities, and probably fifty different countries). We were served Haggis, Tatties and Neep. For those with weak stomachs, please ignore the rest of this paragraph and move to the next one. Neep is …well... Turnip (imagine saying the second syllable of "Turnip" after a couple of shots of single malt) and Tatties are mashed Potatoes (again the second half of the word which Dan Quayle made famous!). Haggis consists of the finely chopped lungs, heart and liver of a sheep, mixed with oatmeal and onion and stuffed into a (yuck) sheep's stomach bag. 'Ugh' is the first word that came to mind and continued to be as I struggled with my Haggis. My misery was compounded by the fact that those around me were relishing it and were raising their hands for second helpings. My anguish continued till my Haggis was doused with a shot of 'Famous Grouse' (the 'local way'). What I sadly realized later on was that the vegetarian version of Haggis was far tastier than the Non-vegetarian one (Probably because I didn't dare to try and found out what its ingredients were!).
Haggis was followed by Apple–crumble (for some weird Scottish-Italian reason, we mis-heard it is 'apple-crap-le') which had butter and, consequently, more calories than I had collectively consumed in the previous week.
Dinner was (thankfully) followed by a vigorous round of Ceilidh (to burn the 50,000 calories we had consumed). It is a testimony to our dancing skills that we managed to fit in so many people in an inadequately small room (maybe, it is the shots of whisky we had before starting!). The "Flying Scotsman" was probably the most enjoyable dance of the evening with 150 inebriates imitating the sound of a train simultaneously ("ooo ooo"). Seeing the kilted-ones made me wonder how the "....wears the pants in the house...." idiom works in Scotland. After all, the men wear the skirts and the women don the pants! Anyways, I can put it on record that I was not wearing a kilt and was able to charm many a lassie with my superior dancing skills (I can see my Salsa-classmates rolling on the ground with laughter! Dance and Anurag? Ya right!).
The Ceilidh predictably finished with the ever-chaotic "Auld Lang Syne" and then some brave souls decided to have a dip in the lake to give their bodies a touch of the (obviously) freezing water. The others just tagged along to watch the fun and to see what a drowning drunk looked like (no one obliged, btw). Ofcourse, it was so dark, we couldn't see a thing and we almost got run over on the extremely busy highway that we had to cross to get to the lake. Whoever entered the lake would shout "SHIT! This IS
Groggy-eyed and sleep-deprived we stumbled back into our buses the next morning and safely reached E'burgh for another week of work and no play.
Oh yes, there was a a weird knocking sound that I heard throughout the night. As if someone was screaming. I don't know if it was a ghost or my stomach protesting the Haggis!
(Oct, 2006)
