2 Geothermal Bread and the Thepla Rescue

 Sunday, 14 June 2026 

The morning opened to a crisp view of bright blue water and empty roads. At six, Ramesh and I set out for a jog, alternating between pacing ourselves and stopping for photographs that seemed to demand attention. Back at the room, after a quick bath and a short prayer, we descended to the breakfast buffet. The spread was vast, but our vegetarian boundaries kept us disciplined.

A minor mishap—a shattered glass tumbler—temporarily put our bathroom out of commission, but the hotel staff swiftly handed us keys to an adjacent room, saving the morning. By 8:40, our Nice Travel bus pulled up, its small cargo trolley hitched to accommodate our mountain of luggage. Seven of us climbed aboard, and the Ring Road adventure began.

At Hveragerði, we tasted rye bread baked underground by geothermal heat and watched the geyser Eilífur blast into the sky.

At Seljalandsfoss, we walked behind the roaring curtain of water, drenched in mist, before slipping into the canyon to find Gljúfrabúi hidden like a secret. Skógafoss thundered down in a sheer wall of water, Dyrhólaey’s cliffs towered with birds, and Reynisfjara’s black sand beach stretched stark and menacing under the Arctic sky.

Lunch was our own invention: Mumbai-packed theplas paired with Icelandic skyr and hot black coffee. For a group of Tamil Brahmins who live and die by their morning filter coffee, this combination was salvation.

All day, emails flew back and forth with Icelandair about the missing suitcase. Their error—a wrong domain extension—nearly derailed communication, but luck favored us, and we rerouted the traffic to the right inbox. That night, we rested at a cozy country hotel, the sound of waterfalls still echoing in our ears.

The Ring Road had only just begun to reveal its secrets, and tomorrow promised glaciers, diamonds, and stories buried in seven generations of lineage…

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