A Solitary Coconut Tree

Nazi Moja had a special ring to it, although the meaning was simple: one coconut. For most people, they imagined a lonely coconut tree bending in the gentle Dar es Salaam breeze and they’d be partly right.

Hikkaduwa

When I visited this west coast location decades ago, there were no buildings along the waterfront except for the one resort on the point. A row of buildings stretched along the coast behind Galle Road and beyond that lay forest and coconut palms.

Puducherry

I bussed south from Chennai and passed walled plots of coconut plantations, pine trees, an occasional rice paddy field and gained a taste of the old India. But resorts were encroaching on this farmland to the point where some farmers had signs plastered on boundary walls, “This property isn’t for sale.”

Ben Tre

I bused from Ho Chi Minh City to Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta. We past rice paddy fields, coconut and banana trees and even sugar cane farms. This part of Vietnam was even flatter than the Canadian prairies. A patchwork of different shades of green was a dream after being in a big city. 

Away from the maddening Indian crowds

Photo courtesy: Dominik Hundhammer — Wikimedia Commons

No matter where I was in India, it was hard to get away from the crowds, the hawkers, the scents and sounds of India. But while in the south, I found a beach that stretched several kilometres off with not a building or soul in sight.