Scotland

When you think of Scotland there are certain things that come to mind and the most prominent ones are bag piper, scotch whisky, scenic mountains and also the Scottish traditional dress-kilt.

Being in Scotland, I recently got a chance to try out the Scottish kilt outfit. It was the occasion of annual party at work where we were all encouraged to wear Scottish traditional dress. Although I didn't sign up for the party in the beginning, I decided to go for it in the last moment looking at the huge number of colleagues already signed up . Also it was an occasion for me to try out kilt. Another good thing was the we could bring our partners to the party which means me and Chandra could go together.

Once I decided to go the party it was time to pick up the kilt dress. My colleagues then started asking me what clan or tartan I'm going to wear. Until then I didn't know there are thousands of variety of kilts which are based on the family names for example tennis player Andy Murray would wear Murray clan kilt and Sir Alex Ferguson would wear Ferguson clan and so on. Again each of the family clan are divided into traditional and modern clans. These clans were used in the olden days to recognise people belonging to different families. But after looking at the different clans on the Internet I really wondered how could any one easily recognise a family name by looking at the clan as they differ from one another by minute difference. There are also different jackets like argyl and prince charles.

There are lot of places in the city who hire out kilt outfit. We were offered some discounts through work and I decided to go to one of those places. I went to this shop (mcgregor and macduff) and they showed me couple of tartans, I quickly selected a green and black striped tartan and argyle jacket. Later I found out that tartan type was "Modern Douglas". I got the whole outfit including shoes, stockings, sgian dubb(knife), sporran, flashes and kilt pin. Chandra decided to wear saree as we couldn't find any other suitable party dress.

Then it was time for the party and we enjoyed every bit of it including the haggis - a Scottish special dish. Since we are vegetarians, they served us the veggie version of the dish. The party also hosted Scottish traditional ceilind (pronounced as keli) dance by a band. There are different sequences of dance, some involve only couples and some involve groups. The band used to first teach us how to dance and then we used to dance. We enjoyed a few rounds of ceilind group dance. Then it was time for some disco to end the party.

Me in Modern Douglas kilt!