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Living life at a lower speed - Meet Chef Rosie

One of the main topics of Slow Food & Yoga Festival is sustainability. It’s our wish to spread the word about a greener planet, and how we can recycle more, and eventually become a plastic free island. Our journey is towards a Zero Waste Gili Air, and we are very thankful, that we are not on this journey alone. One of the Eco Warriors, who’s living on Gili Air, and who’s also a partner of Slow Food & Yoga Festival, is Chef Rosie. Rosie is the founder of Nad Brahma Gili Air, a lovely Indian - vegan and vegetarian - restaurant located on the main street.

”I came to Gili Air, because I wanted to open a healthy restaurant. Being a vegan myself, it was natural that I wanted to make a vegan restaurant. I decided to leave Europe and go to Asia, to look for a place where I wanted to live. I did this because I missed the Asian culture, and I wanted to live in an area where generally life is at a lower speed than Europe. I embody a holistic approach to business, and that is what I’m trying to build up. We wish to take care of the environment and recycle our trash as far as possible.“

We truly love the perspective that Rosie has on the environment, and we are proud to see small businesses like Nad Brahma taking huge steps in the right direction. At Nad Brahma, there is no use of plastic, and Chef Rosie makes sure to recycle whatever she can:

”At Nad Brahma, we don’t use any plastic at all, and we try to reuse whatever we can and recycle as much as possible! We feed our scraps to the local cows and thereby we support the local community. We are also a refill station for water – we sell refill bottles, and we have recycling and upcycling workshops to those who are interested.”

Mobirise
Nad Brahma - Gili Air

To be able to control your mind, you need to slow down

Rosie came to Indonesia, because we missed the Asian culture, and because she wanted to escape from the busy life in Europe. She has incorporated the lifestyle of Ayurveda in her way of living, which is also present in her menu at Nad Brahma. We asked Rosie to tell us a bit more about her journey through life:
 
”I came to Indonesia, because I wanted to live a slow lifestyle, where things are not as perfect and as fast as it is in Europe. I believe by slowing down and by meditation, we can achieve to live on a higher plane. To be able to control your mind, you need to slow down. I try to incorporate Ayurveda, meditation and meditative music in my lifestyle. Hopefully soon I get time and energy to restart my yoga practice. I used to practice Ashtanga Yoga, and I’m actually a musician of Indian meditative music and I used to practice that everyday for many hours.”
 
”I came to Asia first to check out the place where I could open a healthy and vegan restaurant. After looking at a few options, I decided to open my own business in Bali. There, I met a lot of beautiful people – and I met some musicians from Gili Trawangan, and we became very good friends. They all called me to come and open a business in the Gilis. At the end of 2017, I came to the Gilis with a purpose of finding a place to live. The best place I was able to find is where I am today in Gili Air.”

“I am very happy to live in Gili Air. I think it’s the most beautiful of the three islands, because it has a bit of both. It’s quiet – but if you want to go out and do some things – then there are options all the time. But it’s not a big party island like Gili Trawangan.”

Mobirise

Chef Rosie - Owner & Founder of Nad Brahma


An Ayurveda Lifestyle

Rosie is originally from Switzerland, but she didn’t make her way straight to Indonesia from there. First, Rosie had a long and spiritual life in India, where she studied for many years. Here, Rosie became familiar with her Guru and the practice of classical music on a Sarangi instrument. Rosie also changed her lifestyle by focusing on Ayurveda, which is a lifestyle and eating habits, that she will share her knowledge about at Slow Food & Yoga Festival.
 
”I went to India upon a call from the Gods, I would say. When I was living in Switzerland, in my early 20’s, I came across the most fascinating instrument I can imagine. The person playing that instrument made me go to India to meet our Guru. I studied for the next many years. I did classical music on a bow instrument – it’s called sarangi. It’s something between a violin and a cello, but it has a lot of echo sound. It sounds like it’s coming from outer space.”
 
”You can imagine living and studying – and practicing classical music for many hours every day – it completely changed my lifestyle. Soon after I moved, my eating habits turned into an Ayurveda lifestyle and into living an Indian life and the way the Indian people live. Most Indian people have the daily routine of practices they perform – done in the name of God.”

Other than doing a talk about Ayurveda, Chef Rosie will also share her knowledge about Upcycling. Upcycling is a way of creating new things out of discarded materials. Rosie will be hosting an Upcycling Workshop and a Glass Upcycling Workshop to show visitors of Slow Food & Yoga Festival how to reuse materials and make it useful.

“This workshop is about recycling or upcycling from discarded materials like tins, plastic bottles, paper bags, and scraps you can find on the beach. Then we use these scraps and other materials to creatively combine - making something new and useful such as purses, clamps, candle holders, and lights. Your only limitation is your imagination. This is the art of upcycling.”

Mobirise
Photo by David Metcalf

Gili Air Fest 2019 all rights reserved