Varkala: 21st May
Today there’s a transport strike, auto-rickshaws, the buses and trains are affected. I’ll be stranded here for today. Wonderful. In Varkala town I saw the temple and sat watching people washing their clothes, slapping them violently on the ghats by the large tank. I bumped in to a fellow beach-footballer called Nasser. He had met a Swedish backpacker 2 years ago and recently got married to her, and was waiting for his residency permit before his new life in Stockholm.
Showing posts with label varkala. Show all posts
Showing posts with label varkala. Show all posts
Thursday, 17 May 2007
I.N.D.I.A. - (I'll Never Do It Again_)
Varkala: 19th May
I’m staying at the Hill Palace Hotel for 300 rupees a night; my balcony looks over the cappuccino-coloured sands of the beach and the copper-red cliffs shrouded by misty sea-spray. The soothing sound of crashing waves is all I can hear. To my left, a parade of restaurants stretches across the cliff-top, even one that sells French gateaux. It was a special time at the resort, a short window at the end of the tourist season but before the monsoon, which left just a handful of foreigners milling around. They are a motley collection of foreigners, here for various reasons, like Rick’s café in Casablanca:
- Walter is a Dutch student on an exchange programme with the University of Cochin. We play beach football with 15 locals practically every evening at sunset.
- There’s a Canadian called Sarah who is taking advantage of a two month break from the corporate world of management consultancy to learn Ayurvedic Medicine and Yoga.
- Alan is from Seattle and spends his time in India to top up his tan on the beaches of Goa, Varkala and Kovallam. He doesn’t sound too impressed with his experiences, India to him is an acronym that stands for :
I’ll Never Do It Again.
.
- A couple of Irish ladies are here to end their travels around Asia, having been in Thailand, and Nepal before coming to Varkala. In Thailand one of them had slipped and had fractured her ankle, and ended up in a knee-high plaster cast for 6 weeks. This didn’t stop her from enjoying herself, her burly six-feet-high friend carried both their rucksacks as she limped around on crutches. Life backpacking with a plaster cast brought her several problems which she surmounted. In the humidity of Thailand, it itched manically and she had to stick twigs down there. Showering became practically impossible as the cast had to be kept dry, so she innovated and showered with the metal-hose bidet found in some hotel bathrooms. The toughest thing to do, according to her, was to use the Indian style toilets; once she fell in one and couldn’t get out so the staff at the hotel had to break down the door to get her out. The joys of one-legged backpacking! And as soon as the cast was cut off in Nepal she trekked the Anapurna Himalayas for 12 days.
It’s very difficult to swim in the sea here, a vicious under-current drags you along, so swimming is more like drifting along like a jellyfish. At least it is cooling so we just float around in the warm sea water like foetuses. Three lifeguards sit all day under a large umbrella watching out for people who swim too far out; they frequently blow their whistles when they do. At sunset they leave the beach, and there are usually a couple of fatalities of night-swimmers who get carried away in the current every season. Varkala is beautiful, devoid of the worst excesses of beaches no litter, no gawkers or hawkers, except for the “pineapple lady” who slices a whole pineapple for 20 rupees. I wonder of it will stay this way in 10 years time.
I’m staying at the Hill Palace Hotel for 300 rupees a night; my balcony looks over the cappuccino-coloured sands of the beach and the copper-red cliffs shrouded by misty sea-spray. The soothing sound of crashing waves is all I can hear. To my left, a parade of restaurants stretches across the cliff-top, even one that sells French gateaux. It was a special time at the resort, a short window at the end of the tourist season but before the monsoon, which left just a handful of foreigners milling around. They are a motley collection of foreigners, here for various reasons, like Rick’s café in Casablanca:
- Walter is a Dutch student on an exchange programme with the University of Cochin. We play beach football with 15 locals practically every evening at sunset.
- There’s a Canadian called Sarah who is taking advantage of a two month break from the corporate world of management consultancy to learn Ayurvedic Medicine and Yoga.
- Alan is from Seattle and spends his time in India to top up his tan on the beaches of Goa, Varkala and Kovallam. He doesn’t sound too impressed with his experiences, India to him is an acronym that stands for :
I’ll Never Do It Again.
.
- A couple of Irish ladies are here to end their travels around Asia, having been in Thailand, and Nepal before coming to Varkala. In Thailand one of them had slipped and had fractured her ankle, and ended up in a knee-high plaster cast for 6 weeks. This didn’t stop her from enjoying herself, her burly six-feet-high friend carried both their rucksacks as she limped around on crutches. Life backpacking with a plaster cast brought her several problems which she surmounted. In the humidity of Thailand, it itched manically and she had to stick twigs down there. Showering became practically impossible as the cast had to be kept dry, so she innovated and showered with the metal-hose bidet found in some hotel bathrooms. The toughest thing to do, according to her, was to use the Indian style toilets; once she fell in one and couldn’t get out so the staff at the hotel had to break down the door to get her out. The joys of one-legged backpacking! And as soon as the cast was cut off in Nepal she trekked the Anapurna Himalayas for 12 days.
It’s very difficult to swim in the sea here, a vicious under-current drags you along, so swimming is more like drifting along like a jellyfish. At least it is cooling so we just float around in the warm sea water like foetuses. Three lifeguards sit all day under a large umbrella watching out for people who swim too far out; they frequently blow their whistles when they do. At sunset they leave the beach, and there are usually a couple of fatalities of night-swimmers who get carried away in the current every season. Varkala is beautiful, devoid of the worst excesses of beaches no litter, no gawkers or hawkers, except for the “pineapple lady” who slices a whole pineapple for 20 rupees. I wonder of it will stay this way in 10 years time.
The Monsoon is on her way
Karumady Village to Kollam to Varkala: 18th May
Jji and his family, my wonderful hosts waved goodbye to me from the bankside as the 11.30 Alappuzha- Kollam ferry pulled away for the 8 hour ride south down the national waterway. On board was Stephan, Peter, an Englishman, a honey-mooning couple from Bombay and two families from New Delhi.
We passed lines of Chinese fishing nets sticking up from the water like dangly spiders’ legs, and the idyllic rusticity of thatched houses and soaring fish eagles suspended on air currents like paper kites. Gradually a flash of pink appeared on the right bank and we got closer a 25 storey apartment block appeared – painted in bright trifle pink. It was the ashram of Ama-chi, a holy lady also known as the Hugging Mama; a hug from her is said to be very auspicious. Stephan stepped off the ferry to spend a night there and were uncertain whether we would ever see him again. He turned up in Varkala a few days later where he said he went to a darshan where Amachi hugged 14,000 people in 12 hours - a phenomenal feat indeed, equating to 3 hugs a minute.
My homestay was in Karumady, a remote village in the backwaters, where I stayed with the Mapilasery family.
The ferry made good progress down the waterway, and we sat on the benches on its roof. I found a copy of an English-language newspaper lying around, which said:
“Monsoon due to arrive in 4 days time”.
So there was really only one way to make best use of the remaining days of rain-free weather – in the words of the Californian surfers, “Where’s the beach dude?”. The ferry ride ended at Kollam, a typical Keralan market town on the edge of Ashtamudi Lake where Pete found the answer. A two hour bus ride away was Varkala a developing beach resort 41 km north of Thiruvanthapuram.
Jji and his family, my wonderful hosts waved goodbye to me from the bankside as the 11.30 Alappuzha- Kollam ferry pulled away for the 8 hour ride south down the national waterway. On board was Stephan, Peter, an Englishman, a honey-mooning couple from Bombay and two families from New Delhi.
We passed lines of Chinese fishing nets sticking up from the water like dangly spiders’ legs, and the idyllic rusticity of thatched houses and soaring fish eagles suspended on air currents like paper kites. Gradually a flash of pink appeared on the right bank and we got closer a 25 storey apartment block appeared – painted in bright trifle pink. It was the ashram of Ama-chi, a holy lady also known as the Hugging Mama; a hug from her is said to be very auspicious. Stephan stepped off the ferry to spend a night there and were uncertain whether we would ever see him again. He turned up in Varkala a few days later where he said he went to a darshan where Amachi hugged 14,000 people in 12 hours - a phenomenal feat indeed, equating to 3 hugs a minute.
My homestay was in Karumady, a remote village in the backwaters, where I stayed with the Mapilasery family.
The ferry made good progress down the waterway, and we sat on the benches on its roof. I found a copy of an English-language newspaper lying around, which said:
“Monsoon due to arrive in 4 days time”.
So there was really only one way to make best use of the remaining days of rain-free weather – in the words of the Californian surfers, “Where’s the beach dude?”. The ferry ride ended at Kollam, a typical Keralan market town on the edge of Ashtamudi Lake where Pete found the answer. A two hour bus ride away was Varkala a developing beach resort 41 km north of Thiruvanthapuram.
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