15 Years of Soul & Surf – Rach’s Story

Kerala

I was already 31 when I started at Soul & Surf. I already thought I knew everything.

I had left home at 17, lived in London for around 10 years, worked in music and events, done a couple of years in Australia, and ended up changing everything to live in Cornwall, commit to surfing and chill out a bit. So I kinda felt already like I’d had a wild career, burnt out, run away to Cornwall and changed my life.

But none of that really prepared me for what was to come.

That first winter in Cornwall, Adam and I realised that most of the (sensible) people we knew hightailed it out for winter to migrate south, earn some cash and surf somewhere that wasn’t freezing, 8ft, and 45mph onshore. So we started idly looking at jobs in surf camps, he as a surf coach, and me as a whatever.

We saw a thing come up on Facebook, advertising for surf coaches in India. India? You can’t surf there.

We applied! And had a very awkward Skype with Ed & Sof - the video didn’t work, the connection was terrible - so we did the whole thing with Skype chat, us trying to type witty responses at conversation speed while trying to appear worldly and wise.

Somehow we got offered jobs, he as a coach, me as a baker (I had baked approx three cakes in my life at this point).

And six weeks later, we landed in Thiruvananthapuram airport (I just typed that without even Googling how it is spelt), met by Unni and his white ambassador, armed with a frayed rope to secure our boards to the roof.

Actually, rope is generous. It was frayed string.

From that moment on the whole season was a lesson in trust and letting go. I thought I was so worldly, but nothing had prepared me for how things work in India. I could write a book on that first year alone, so I’ll try and keep it brief, but to say it changed me was an understatement.

In that year I:

• met my best friends, who I still see now and want to see forever
• tried so many different dishes, snacks and spices that I realised Indian food is far more creative and varied than any other cuisine I’ve come across
• was humbled over and over and over again by people and cultures and the land and the smells and the colours
• learned that huntsman spiders are friends not foes
• learned how to eat (badly) with my hands
• learned to talk slower
• learned how to turn left properly
• learned not to try and do a million things in the middle of the day in south India

I could also write a chapter or more each on the local community, the staff we worked with, the people that cooked me food and made me tea and sold me egg puffs. The boys we taught to surf, to swim, who have now grown up, become men, have their own girlfriends and wives and successful businesses.

I wish there had been girls to teach. One day, I think now or soon.

The chechis that cooked us lunch every day. Mohan who watered the plants.

Awkward, life-changing chats with Richard.

Cafe shifts talking about music with Rahsaan.

Staff meals and parties, on North Cliff, on rooftops, in driveways. Kingfisher hangovers.

Papanassum surf school, Marine Palace, thick coffee, shorebreak surfs.

Scooter rides with Adam. 

Saro, Saro, Saro.

I turned from someone terrified of spiders and bugs into someone who let things go, learned to love the spiders and give them names. Who walked barefoot everywhere and kept losing her flip-flops. Who (almost) stopped noticing how close people got in the queue for the bottle shop, and took deep breaths on busy trains and in slow-moving shop queues. 

I met people around that breakfast table who became friends - business partners even.

And I met people that aren’t with us anymore, and who will pop into my head at unexpected times, in vivid and glorious ways. The way that Mohan looked like he was peeing when he watered the plants with a hose, or how Saro would sweep me out of a room with her brush, one hand behind her perfectly arranged sari, chittering at me in a language I will never know but she somehow made me understand. Brian the dog, who was a girl dog and crossed her legs in the neatest little way.

That season I learned that it’s ok to have plans and change them. It’s ok to take risks and wing it a bit or a lot. I learned that actually you can get by with much less money if you aren’t buying loads of stuff and going out to get shitfaced every weekend.

What Ed and Sofie created wasn’t just a beautiful idea, location, holiday, retreat. It is all those things, but above that it is a community, a place to explore, have time, and slow down.

And that community - for us, for the team - meant everything, and still does.