There’s a particular kind of morning that happens here in the Nilgiris that I don’t think I could have imagined before I lived it.
I come back from my walk — Sophie trotting purposefully ahead, Pepper giddy and still reeling around from greeting me — and I make my tea. Darjeeling, loose leaf, (yes, I drink Darjeeling while sitting in a Nilgiri tea plantation). I open the French doors to my deck, and sit down on the steps and I just… look.
Some days it’s all mist, the kind that sits so low and thick you’d think someone has tucked wisps of cotton wool across in little pockets. Other days it’s soft gold sunshine and you can see for what feels like forever — the tea bushes catching the light, the hills folding into each other in the distance. Just bathing in this early morning sun is my favourite moment.
Sophie settles at my feet, with the slightest lean into my leg. She’s a creature of great dignity and she likes to soak in the mornings just like me. Pepper is somewhere nearby, flitting in and out, almost certainly eating something she shouldn’t.
I have loved everywhere I have lived, and found them all beautiful. A gorgeous Portuguese house in Goa, flanked by forest and paddy fields. High floor apartments in Mumbai and Hong Kong with stunning city views; quaint old buildings in Singapore with little private gardens, a loft/attic flat in Bastille, Paris. Nice places. But I don’t think I ever had a morning ritual that felt like this — like the day is actually giving you something before it asks anything of you.
I built the deck last year. For the first two years I sat on the front steps, built by my helper, just leading out from the French doors, which was fine, perfectly lovely. But the deck changed things. Now there’s a firepit for winter evenings, space to host a Sunday lunch, a proper place to just be outside when I want to embroider, read, play scrabble or even work in the sunshine. It’s become the ‘room’ I spend the most time in, and it has no roof and no walls.
My tea goes cold a lot. I don’t mind.
