How we met: We met through our job on the railway. We both worked at the same railway station at the time. I worked upstairs and Shehzad was on the platform. We had spoke a few times in the 7 months I was working there but never anything further than small talk. Shehzad was soon to be leaving the station to progress in a different role and had found out I was single so decided to pluck up the courage to ask me on a date to London Aquarium before his last shift. We went on the date and I got the train to his home station after but decided to play hard to get and not kiss him goodbye. After that we went on a few dates, I finally gave him a first kiss and he asked me to go out with him.
how they asked: We were on a Winter Sun holiday at the end of November 2014. We decided on Mauritius as it’s where Shehzad is from. He had been there many many times but hadn’t had the opportunity to do all the exciting touristy things. So he was really excited to show me around and for us to visit places together where he had never been before.
A week in to our holiday we visited one of the two only animal parks on Mauritius, La Vanille des Mascareignes in the South of the island. A gorgeous little nature reserve with lots of animals such as Nile crocodiles, giant tortoises, Mauritian fruit bats, long tailed macaque monkeys and plenty of fish in the aquarium.
It was such a hot day and my skin was suffering from the previous days sunburn, so we took a slow walking tour with a tour guide who told us much about the island, the flora and fauna and even let us feed the bats and monkeys! After our tour we went back to the giant tortoise field where we spent probably half an hour looking for the oldest one only to realise it was right under our noses, sat next to a very inviting bench. There we sat for a while, Shehzad filming and feeding the tortoises leaves and branches. Then I posed for a photo next to the oldest tortoise. It was then that he said “I can’t wait any longer…” and pulled out a little red box from his pocket. I squealed with excitement and my eyes began to well up as he got down on one knee and asked those four words I never expected to hear this side of Christmas, ‘Will you marry me?’ And of course there was no thinking about it, I said yes!
We decided to etch a little heart on the bench where it happened so that maybe some day when we return we can remember the special day.
