Category: philosophy

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In Support of Indian Authors – One Pick A Month At Our Libraries

 

As many of you guys already know, we love buying books and each Linger location has a library – it goes very well with the idea of a relaxed, do nothing vacation along with endless cups of tea and quiet pretty places!

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More recently, we’ve been loving how a new wave of Indian authors are getting comfortable writing in a style that’s comfortable, not necessarily targeted at an audience abroad in content and style, and is also being picked off the (virtual?) shelves and read a lot. Indeed, our bookshelves themselves have quite a few of these.

So we thought we should formally support this and help more Indian authors be read by even more folks.

Here’s how. Every month, we’ll ask for recommendations on our Facebook page and Twitter feed for one Indian author, and based on what people popularly want, pick a few copies for our libraries. Our little bit through this will hopefully help at least 12 authors being read by a large set of people who visit our places every year!

So head over and suggest something 🙂

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2 Years of Linger : Thank You!

Linger has completed 2 years, and we’ve both learned a lot, and grown, because of the wonderful, open-minded folks who’ve come over. Thanks to you, we’ve developed, and nurtured in our staff, a healthy respect for the true character each place has – its people, stories, food, weather, pace of life, its history and culture, and the unique beauty each has.

Many of our guests have been true travellers – embracing each experience, celebrating each difference and building connections with the place and people that have left us with many wonderful memories.

We’re a small outfit, and would like to continue growing around these learnings that we’ve picked up in the journey along with you. We want to reach out to more like minded folks, and ensure that vacations and tourism only add to, and not take away anything from, the places we operate in, and the people we work with. It’ll make us extremely happy if these places grow, prosper with a sense of genuine pride in their heritage and culture, and many many people experience, acknowledge and appreciate the same.

For the above reason, we will continue to work with a relatively small footprint at each location, with personalized service, local staffing, serve the local cuisine, build minimum – and that using local knowledge. Each location will obviously be different from any other.

If you genuinely like what we’re trying to do and believe we can make a difference – please help us reach out to as many as possible.

 

*** We always continue to look to funnel back more value for our staff as well – and for each share of this link, or the Facebook note of the same or comment left here – will add Rs.10/- to add to the funds for supporting the staff during medical emergencies ***

(We will proactively track shares from your shares as well, of course.)

See you soon at Linger.

Questions, feedback, suggestions and of course, reservations : stay@linger.in or +91-95900-50001

https://linger.in

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The Do Nothing Tee

We have a Tee!!

Our friends over at the very creative Hung Shoe have made us a Tee Shirt that we want to share with you.

Its got a small Linger logo at the back, and costs 399/- to buy. For details – click on the pic for a very well made tee that reminds you to take some time out for doing nothing….

The Do Nothing Tee
The Do Nothing Tee

Click on the above pic to go the the Hung Shoe page and buy it, gift it, or just plain admire it. Its available in both “Girls” and “Boys” in a bunch of sizes (there’s a useful size chart for help too!).

There’s loads of other nice, funny, interesting stuff there you can see there too.

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World Tourism Day

Its World Tourism Day today.

We’ve been on a very interesting journey so far – and are ourselves more like travellers than someone helping folks take breaks.  We’ve evolved – and sometimes consciously and sometimes inadvertently – developed a set of values that guide us now.

Eco-travel is an oxymoron. Sustainability is what we can strive for.

Once you take a car out and drive a few hundred or thousand kilometers, or take a flight across continents, or ask for backup power, hot water, and other such usual conveniences in a place where they are anything but ‘usual’ – this tag is not something one could realistically associate with the trip.

On the other hand, the carrying capacity of the land, the local architecture, food, materials, the sense of pride folks have in who they are, what they do and their heritage – these are not only worth sustaining but critical components of why the charming places we go to started out being charming in the first place. Sustainability will come from learning from them (vs. turning up and telling folks whats best) and accepting, acknowledging and appreciating whats on offer.

Traveller, not Tourist

It takes a traveller to do this. We’re all very used to deriding the busload of tourists and their clicked-at-a-monument evidence of a trip – yet end up doing exactly the same in possibly a more evolved way – we look for, and find the exotic, the “unexplored” and never-before. Our monument-shots are those we construct around our traveller egos. Just like the tourists, we go to see what we start out looking for. Tigers to be spotted in the wild for some, “genuine tribal experiences” for  others.

Whatever happened to the  unexpected? Doesn’t have to be common, or never-seen-before. It could be a taste of something you never imagined you’d like, or a cloud formation you wouldn’t notice in traffic, or shades of green that aren’t visible in landscaped gardens. It could be a book which seems funnier when read in a timeless place. Or a walk that – for once – is not slave to a watch.

Possibility. Not exclusivity, or the exotic, or breathtaking

You could be at the same place and have a completely different vacation. The same place can transform around you. In different moods and seasons, once for its food, yet again for its outdoors, and perhaps for its history or its festivals.

Cause travel is often a lot in your head. And pre-filling it with expectations of this and that, and the bargain-hunting and comparisons we’ve been getting used to courtesy too much information – it just kills possibility.

Travel is about possibility. On this World Tourism Day, to help sustainable travel both for the places you go to – and the mind that visits these –  keep possibility alive.

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Keeping Quiet (Pablo Neruda)

This lovely poem resonates with whatever we’re trying to do.

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,
let’s not speak any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn’t be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I’ll go.