Active Stocks
Thu Mar 28 2024 15:59:33
  1. Tata Steel share price
  2. 155.90 2.00%
  1. ICICI Bank share price
  2. 1,095.75 1.08%
  1. HDFC Bank share price
  2. 1,448.20 0.52%
  1. ITC share price
  2. 428.55 0.13%
  1. Power Grid Corporation Of India share price
  2. 277.05 2.21%
Business News/ Mint-lounge / Soup boy, you go man!
BackBack

Soup boy, you go man!

Soup boy, you go man!

Premium


Hand La glass-U

Bad medicine: Drown your sorrows, in faraway Scotland, Finland or Russia.

The good: We’re going to stay conventional here, and recommend a whisky tour of Scotland. A quick tour will cover the coast and the island of Islay, but if you’re mending a broken heart, you might as well take a few extra days and head into the Scottish highlands, where you can intersperse your single-malt sessions with treks around the lochs.

For details on whisky tours: www.rabbies.com

The bad: If you want to get straight to the drinking and not mess about with distractions, we can suggest nothing more suited to your purposes than Russia.

Fly to Moscow (Aeroflot fares are cheap too!) and head to a liquor store. Avoid the premium brands like Stolichnaya: You need something so horrible that the hangover will make your heartache seem insignificant. Illegally distilled vodka, or samogon, is available at shady street corners, but it can kill you. Just head to the local liquor kiosk, and buy the cheapest bottle available—then you’ll only wish you were dead.

WTF (Weirder than fiction): In a world full of weird drinking experiences, the first prize has to go to Finland, which has come up with a gin and gooseberry juice premix cocktail called Lonkero. That gets the prize on three counts: the taste, a name that translates to “tentacle", and it glows in the dark. Finland is weird enough without the drink too: The country has invented wife-carrying tournaments, the Molotov cocktail, and Angry Birds. For more details: www.visitfinland.com

Holy cow-U

Join the order: Become a monk to mend a broken heart.(Daniel Tibi/Wikimedia Commons)

The good: You can’t go wrong with a stint at a Japanese Zen monastery. When Pico Iyer did it, he came up with one of the greatest travel books ever, and also found a wife. Even if you don’t go as far as he did, you’ll definitely learn how to move on from your bad romance.

For options: www.templelodging.com

The bad: As bad religions go, the Church of Scientology is quite possibly the worst. Some detractors claim that it’s just a business that has declared itself a religion to get tax-free status in the US. These detractors ignore the other detractors who point out that Scientology’s beliefs are seriously cuckoo and that its practices are cult-like and involve brainwashing.

Head to the Church of Scientology headquarters in Gold Base, California. One way or another, you’ll find that your broken heart is quite a small problem, in perspective.

For more details: www.scientology.org

WTF: Not up to Zen or Scientology? Try the Trappists. Contrary to urban legend, Trappist monks don’t undergo a vow of silence—but they are strongly discouraged to speak about anything other than the spiritual life. Also, the Cistercian order believes in financing itself through selling the handicrafts of its adherents—which has made Trappist beer and cheese delicious and famous.

If you’re a soup boy, enrol in the Orval Abbey in Belgium, which makes one of the best beers in the world. If you’re a soup girl, head to the Mississippi Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa, US, which supports itself through the manufacture of Caramel candy.

For more details: www.orval.be, www.mississippiabbey.org

Reverse gear-U

Heart-broken?: Join the French Foreign Legion, and get sent on commission to France’s remaining colonies, most of them island paradises.(Franck Prevel/Getty Images)

Is this also a sort of escape—from routine and civilization—or is it a determination to take the world head-on? We’ll let you decide after you’ve done it—right now, here are the choices.

The good: Since we’re going to tell you how to shoot bears later on in this article, we’re going to expiate ourselves right now by telling you to go and become a wildlife conservation volunteer. Volunteering opportunities range from two-week-long eco-tourism junkets, to stern and earnest vocations where you first arm yourself with a degree in zoology and then head into the field to study animals in the wild your whole life. There are lots of options, but we suggest you start with one of the shorter ones before you commit yourself. And since we’re partial to our cousins, the great apes, we pick the Sarawak Orangutan Volunteer Programme, where you can spend up to a month helping out with maintenance at an orang-utan sanctuary in Malaysian Borneo. For more details: Orangutanproject.com.

The bad: P.G. Wodehouse’s heroes would often contemplate dealing with rejection by going to the Rocky Mountains to shoot grizzly bears. If you’re determined to take your frustration out on a bear that has done you no harm, there are guided hunting tours to help you do it. Find them at www.rocky mountainadventures.ca

WTF: For more than a century, people have joined the French Foreign Legion to forget. You can too! The French army has a unit called the Foreign Legion (made famous by Beau Peep and the new Tintin movie) that is open to foreigners. Join and you get sent all over the world: either to France’s few remaining colonies (most are island paradises) or on peacekeeping missions. Visit www.legion-recrute.com/en/

God, I am dying now-U

Got a death wish: The sights in Australia may effect a change of heart, or you could be eaten by sharks, or poisoned by stonefish, scorpionfish or jellyfish.(Thinkstock)

The good:San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge has always been popular for suicide tourism. No other bridge—and possibly no other man-made structure—has hosted as many suicides as the Golden Gate Bridge. Before you add to the tally, spend a week bumming around San Francisco and its legendary hippie scene. If San Francisco hasn’t managed to restore your appreciation of life, head to the Golden Gate Bridge—where there are no suicide barriers but every pillar has a suicide helpline number pasted on in case you have last-minute doubts.

For more details on the Golden Gate Bridge: www.goldengatebridge.org

The bad: For the worst way to go, we suggest sticking to domestic travel. If you succeed, your relatives won’t have to travel too far to recover your remains—and if you fail, you’ll have to recover in a horrible medical system and quite possibly face legal charges, considering that suicide is a criminal activity in India. But since this is about travel, don’t just pick your neighbourhood water tank. Instead, travel to a place that will make you even more miserable. We pick Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. It bills itself as the city of a thousand temples, despite which it’s utterly godforsaken. Filthy and noisy as soon as you move out of the temples, Kanchi will sap any vestiges of your will to live.

WTF: No contest here. If you have to travel to die, just head to Australia. It has eight of the world’s 10 most poisonous snakes, and the spiders are even more lethal. You also have the option of being disembowelled by a crocodile.

The seas are no safer: You can be eaten by sharks, or poisoned by stonefish, scorpionfish or jellyfish (which are not actually fish, but can kill you in 3 minutes anyway).

Yes, these are fairly low probability events, but it’s a question of playing the odds. Hang around long enough, and something’s going to get you.

For more details: www.australia.com

(Disclaimer: Please note that Lounge in no way recommends that you fling yourself off a bridge/into piranha-infested waters, etc.)

Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!

Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
More Less
Published: 10 Feb 2012, 09:03 PM IST
Next Story footLogo
Recommended For You
Switch to the Mint app for fast and personalized news - Get App