I grew up the daughter of a gypsy father from Kutch, a wanderer in his genes who was forever wandering some corner of the world when he wasn’t running his guesthouse in Goa circa 1976 or selling dreams of far away shores as a travel agent. Naren Dossa adored Europe even more than the Far East. He loved floral Holland followed by dramatic Spain most. And he always, always wrote home from his voyages. The 1980s were filled with travels across the world and being a pioneer Bombay travel agent only helped him dream farther.

I have stacks and stacks of his postcards carefully hidden away ( I will post one as soon as I find some, we just moved house). Papa wrote one postcard, sometimes more, to us every single day he was abroad.

Waiting for the postman was the most fun part of our humdrum existence in the tiny town of Lonavla. We would race home on our cycles from school to parcels of toys ( latest Star Wars action figures and fighter planes and all the Barbie fashions, accessories and furniture a little girl could dream of) and boxes of chocolate, packets of seeds and always the daily postcard. I collected all the stamps and only recently gifted my collection to a little girl who fell in love with the art of philately. It was always a challenge to find new stamps and get them via snail mail.

Pity the poor Postman who had to slog back up the hill on his bicycle after zooming down its treacherous slope we all had accidents on at some point in our lives!

Imagine how full circle it was for us to have my only child select beautiful Amsterdam for University. And imagine how I felt when my dream to see the tulips with her before graduation came true this year!

I actually made it to The Netherlands in April of 2022, at the very first blush of spring and spent two sunshine- filled months surrounded by green trees and all the darling buds of may.

What a country, to have gardening and nature and flowers ingrained in its collective psyche, bursting forth from every sidewalk, park and doorway. I was suffused with beauty and prettiness unlike any city I have been to: real Nature at her best in an urban garden. Each day brought new flowers, buds and boughs with tender green shoots, bursting forth, filling my broken heart with so much hope and beauty. I realised Nature teaches us to wait. To keep growing and dying and growing again. To burst into bloom and fade away and bud again. To garden is to be patient perhaps that’s why this year I never ventured into my garden: the process of regrowth was more than I could bear. Yet here I was, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of colourful blooms. How could I not feel Life itself growing inside me, even of I did have panic attacks through the day?

When I arrived one freezing April morning in Amsterdam, the trees across the canal from our window were still nude from the winter. Sipping a mug of coffee, I would gaze out at the elegant homes each evening, shamelessly Rear Window-ing them. I people-watched families at dinner behind Dutch lace curtains, imagining what they ate. By the time I returned to India, the trees were fully dressed in the Spring finery, their canopies lush and verdant, obscuring my shameless peeping.

The highlight of my trip was the tulip fields of Sassenheim. A close-knit group of my friend Rachel’s classmates, my daughter and I chose the tulip fields as the ticket to the famous and very overcrowded Keukenhof Gardens was more than everyone wanted to spend.

I have been avidly following the Dutch tulip master @passion for tulips on insta for years and was determined to visit his show garden. With no clue of where he was located, I reached out and was delighted to find they welcomed visitors for free! The others agreed to the plan and we ended up wandering many tulip fields and spending an entire day in the show gardens, picnicking in the shade of a greenhouse.

It was peak season. Tulips stretched in swathes of brilliant colour, a la Silsila, for miles, as far as the eye could see. It was dazzling and beautiful beyond words. All we could do was helplessly click photos. Every bloom was ethereal, reminding us the the Divine is always right here for us to celebrate and feast our weary eyes upon.

Even more amazing was discovering how many, many, many varieties of tulips there actually are: Variegated, double petalled, Darwin Hybrid Tulips · Triumph Tulips · Double Tulips · Fringed Tulips · Fosteriana Tulips · Greigii Tulips · Kaufmanniana Tulips · Lily-Flowered Tulips. Parrot tulips. My favourite are the Parrot tulips but really, they are all spectacular, so wildly colourful and riotous, spilling from the soil towards the sun, dancing in the icy wind, nodding in the spring sunshine.

We spent all day cooing over the brilliant blossoms, posing and then posing some more for endless photos. The highlight for me was convincing Rachel and her friends to do a DDLJ style run towards each other among the rows of brilliant flowers!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Raadhika Dossa (@thewanderingindiangourmet)

For me this day was an homage to my late Papa and a coming home of sorts, to all those postcards of tulips he ever sent me. The wind was bitterly cold, but the sun shone bright all day. The tulips danced elegantly but I was overcome with so much joy and so much sadness, both. This year has been very, very hard for me personally, and I was teary surrounded by all this splendor, aching with sorrow within. Most of all I was overcome with gratitude at what Divine plan had allowed me to be here and live this day with tulips and remember Papa with love for it was who gave me the gift of travel, a passion for nature, animals and food. And the confidence that I could be anything I ever wanted.

Posting a huge bunch of the gorgeous photos and some links.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tulips – Bulbs – Showgarden (@passionfortulips)

https://www.tulipstore.eu/en/?fbclid=PAAaZKWsX-uGDKM-wmUJ0G8baTj_b3Rv5rjJUdCOItw2QflTIqWfimtwMc5Bk

Travel: Sassenheim is basic. Acres of tulip show gardens and a few local stores off a busy highway. We took a train from AMS and a bus at Sassenheim station to the gardens.

There are loads of show gardens and everyone vies for your attention, their main goal is for you to buy tulip bulbs which we sadly couldn’t because of course they don’t grow where I live. It’s all very organised, you can buy bulbs and have them shipped.

Don’t be disappointed if you can’t buy bulbs because you can buy an armful of the day’s harvest at throwaway prices and take them home!

You will be dazzled by the array of tulips on display. My favourite place was the wooden table with artfully displayed blooms in glass vases. I wanted to move to the Netherlands just to be able to have jars of flowers around my home.