Varkala

On Saturday afternoon, after a nice lunchtime snooze, I went to Varkala.

I was driven by M. Shibu, who is from Varkala, and we were accompanied by Raj Kumar, Rejeev, Prashanth, and Shibu’s friend.

The journey is about 40km, the longest road journey that I had yet undertaken in India, and although I am getting used to the traffic, it still took me a little while to relax.

Before we arrived at the main town, we visited Shibu’s house, where we met his parents. We were treated to tea, cake, biscuits and bananas, his parents seemed very pleased to meet us, and I was honoured to have been invited in.

Varkala is a beach town, and one of the most popular tourist destinations in Kerala. The beach is quite wide, and the cliffs are beautiful. I think that out of the monsoon season that the beach is a lot larger, as the waters recede. Thankfully as it is not the high season, it was not too busy.

We took a stroll along the path at the foot of the cliffs and took in the fantastic views. The waters were very turbulent, I had heard that Varkala is a good surf spot, but I would suggest that during the monsoon season it is not.

The life guards weren’t letting anyone in the sea, although that did not stop one guy from trying. He looked either drunk or stoned as he passed me, he waded into the water, and very quickly got carried along the beach. He didn’t seem to notice though, even when the lifeguard blew his whistle, and shouted to him. He carried on into the sea, and tried to swim. About the same time the lifeguard ran into the water to get him. Someone obviously didn’t understand or didn’t want to be rescued, there was a small scuffle, both of them being submerged for some time by the waves, until the guy was lead out of the water. In the short time that he had been in the water he had been carried about 150m down the beach towards the rocks. Apparently several people drown here every year.

Just around the corner from the beach, although a couple of km in a car, is the helipad, which is a car park on the top of the cliff with a big H painted on it. Along the clifftop path is where most of the tourist restaurants and hotels are. We wandered along, taking in the sunset, until we arrived at the hotel Krishnatheeram. This is where we had our dinner.

The food was very nice, and pretty spicy, and the atmosphere was even better. Apart from the conversations, and the insects, the only sound was the waves on the beach below. We chatted, and ate, and debated life, death and religion for a few hours, before going for a paddle in the sea.