Life of a Short Indian Girl

Would you believe after years of going to the gym, I still haven't perfected the art of being a cool, suave gym gal? Honestly, after year 11 and  year 12   of embarrassing gym incidences, nothing really surprises me anymore (and I guess I haven't really changed that much ha ha). But anyway, here goes this years new and improved ways to embarrass myself.... Insanity is one of my favourite classes. If you haven't heard of it, it's a max interval training workout. Normally it's bodyweight only, so when the instructor told us to get a bar and put a minimum of 5kg on each end, I was a bit confused. But I did it anyway, and even added extra weight thinking 'I've done this class loads of times, I've got this'. Whilst I was putting the weights on, this woman came up to me and said 'Well you're brave aren't you!'. I laughed it off, thinking it'd be fine. I was wrong. The warm-up had already tired me out, and when we subsequently had t

Remember in secondary school when teachers made you say a 'fun fact' about yourself as an ice-breaker? Well, mine was always that I could quote any F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode. So when I managed to get Friends Fest tickets this year you can imagine how hyped I was!  It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I've been waiting for this day for years. We went to the Friends Fest in Kenington Park, London but there are locations all over the UK. The doors opened at 12 and we had a set tour at  pretty much as soon as we arrived. The set tour was probably my favourite part of the whole thing! It was 30 minutes long, with 10 minutes in each of Joey and Chandler's, Ross' and Rachel and Monica's apartments which felt surreal. I was amazed at how much detail they had put into the sets - they even filled up Joey's fridge with take away boxes. I loved seeing all the original props (including Phoebe's guitar and my personal favourite Pat the Dog). T

Anyone seen those iconic igloos along Tower Bridge on instagram? They are just idyllic, but super hard to get a hold of. I tried multiple times during the year to get one- thank fully, I was third time lucky! The igloos are placed along the river during the autumn/winter and paradise pods are there during the summer. I was SO hyped for this, and it definitely didn't disappoint. The igloos are for a maximum for 8 people- if you book for less than 6 people you share one. There were 6 of us so we got a whole one to ourselves. We won with the timing as well- 7-9pm, so we saw the views in daylight, sunset and at night. The view was amazing throughout, but at sunset was something else! The food and drink wasn't as expensive as I thought, considering the location and the fact that the igloo was free. The food was grill/pizza/pasta- I had a sourdough pizza which was good (not quite franco manca but still) and I got a White Sangria cocktail ( Sauvignon blanc, peach liqueu

Every time we go to India we say we'll visit another country as the flights are cheap. And every time we run out of time to do this! But this time we specifically left out time to visit Sri Lanka, as it is so close to India and is really easy to get to- just a 3 hour flight from Kolkata to Colombo! When we landed in Colombo we were met by our driver Sunny, who is potentially one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. After a couple of hours being in Sri Lanka we saw that Sri Lankan people in general are SO lovely and hospitable. We also saw that the country is full of natural beauty and is really clean (in contrast to India where we’d just come from). The only bad impression we had was the traffic, which was awful and it took us around 3.5 hours to drive to Kandy. By the time we arrived it was night so we went straight to sleep. The next day was spent exploring Kandy- but not for me. Food poisoning struck and so I was stuck in the hotel eating plain toast (cri). So I can'

Indian street food- delicious, quick and incredibly cheap. Need any more convincing? One of the things I most look forward to when we visit Kolkata (after seeing family of course) is the street food. There's nothing like it. Different parts of India have specialties, and here is your guide to street food in Kolkata, in the East of India. You've probably heard about food poisoning from street food (and true, I did get food poisoning this time), but in general if you follow take these precautions you should be safe. Don't ever drink water unless you've seen it's been filtered or is sealed bottled water. If you've seen Slumdog Millionaire you'll see that sometimes they put tap water into bottles and pass it off as mineral water! This applies to food as well- if there is ANY water in your street food, do not eat it If the food is on a plate that has just been washed, make sure to wipe any excess water off it so it doesn't contaminate the food Only

I’m definitely making the most of all this free time I’ve got at the moment and trying to get some travelling done! A few weekends ago  I went on a short trip to Madrid. This was pretty last minute, but it’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a while as the only place I've been to in Spain is Barcelona. We got to our hotel at around 2pm, and headed straight out as we only had a couple of days.  We stopped for a quick lunch at a small cafe called Valentina where we got sandwiches. We wanted something small, but turns out these sandwiches were more like baguettes. I had a spanish potato omelette one which was sooo good (I love potato with all my heart).  We then spent the afternoon in Parque El Retiro which was beautiful- full of botanical gardens, palaces and statues. My personal favourite was the palace made of glass, and the only bad bit was the weather. But even then the rain was on and off, a few drizzles with some sun in between. There were also peacocks EVERYWHERE, w

I have to admit, Lithuania was a pretty random location. But I've wanted to visit the Baltic states for a while, and with this being pretty much the last long summer of my life, why not go now? So, a fter a late take off and the longest border control line of my life, we made it to Lithuania!  First impressions?  Lithuania is s l o w. No one is in a hurry. Slow walkers, slow service ..... a completely chilled vibe. It is also really green- there are parks and forrest areas every where. It’s also super cheap. We got the bus from the airport to our hotel for €1, and stopped at a supermarket on the way for a snack and managed to get a quarter of a huge watermelon for 29cents. Not gonna lie, I was considering buying come to take back home with me. After checking in, we decided to conquer the whole of Old Town in an afternoon. There was a lot to see, but we managed to cover pretty much all of it with a mighty 23,000 steps (my legs hurt a LOT the next day). We didn’t have

This year I've decided to make the most of having friends living all over the country, and when my flatmate Naomi suggested a trip to her house in Devon, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. Apart from a relatively stressful journey to Paddington (where we almost missed the train due to traffic), the rest of the journey was smooth sailing. The train went over a sea wall at the famous Dawlish Warren (which apparently was a GCSE Geography case study),and at parts there was genuinely 1m between us and the sea which was amazing, especially at night. The train was about 2 and a half hours, which wasn't too bad. On our first day we drove to Salcombe, a little town in Devon. We bought sandwiches/ pasties and sat on the pier, taking in the sea air. We then did a cliff walk, which was about 5km but took us hours because a) we got a bit lost and b) we stopped every half an hour to take pictures of the breathtaking views. I genuinely felt like I was abroad- the beach looked me