Varkala - Kerala, India

Time for some beach time!

From Monroe Island we happened across a friendly tuktuk driver (who was also an excellent salesman) who convinced us to let him take us via the scenic route to Varkala. It turned out to be a great call as he showed us temples, churches, beaches and colourful local fishing villages along the way.

The beaches were golden and unspoilt all the way down the coast and it was great to cut out the main towns, transport interchanges and busy main roads on a direct route to our next destination.

Varkala is a small town with a string of golden-sand beaches set up against a high cliff.

Perched right along the cliff edge is a narrow road of shops and restaurants. It’s a very pretty setting, and a lovely stroll along the street to browse the shops whilst simultaneously looking out to sea - and what a view! However it is certainly an accident waiting to happen with it being so precariously balanced on the edge! 

Apparently in the recent heavy rains and floods that Kerala experienced, there were a series of landslides and so the shops are even closer to the edge now than they were earlier in the year. Some shopkeepers even lost an area of their shop used to hang clothes outside.

The beach is the main attraction in Varkala and is popular with locals and tourists alike, especially as it’s tropical weather in Kerala in winter - compared to cold weather in the north of the country (and even snow in the mountains at this time of year).

The beach is also very popular with westerners so the dress code and modesty rules for ladies are a bit more relaxed and it’s ok to wear a bikini without a constant consideration of whether I should be covering up! To be fair, I am sure I should technically be covered up, as all the Indian ladies were swimming fully clothed (as we saw in Alleppey), but it’s a lot more relaxed here and I selfishly enjoyed having the chance to work on my tan for a few days!

The sea is safe for swimming and there are lifeguards on duty - though there are constantly big waves crashing into shore from across the Arabian Sea.

I couldn’t quite figure out what the lifeguards were up to, however, as at regular intervals, they would get up and blow their whistles, seemingly pointing at Indian men and telling them to get out of the sea, or move further down the beach. They weren’t telling tourists or families to get out of the sea, just the Indian guys and especially groups of lads! I should point out also that everyone was keeping themselves to themselves and it’s not like the groups of boys were being intimidating or a nuisance, so I’m not sure what the lifeguards were up to - or whether I have just got the wrong end of the stick and imagined this!

In any case it was lovely to be able to frolic in the waves and cool off in the sea.

Our hotel was away from the cliff area on an adjacent hill and we also had a sea view from our room. Breakfast was served on our own private balconies each morning - a very pleasant was to start the day. 

Most days fell into a similar rhythm, mainly involving sunbathing and reading on the beach, swimming and when we weren’t doing that, we were enjoying the local seafood (huge swordfish, barracuda or grouper on the grill), or a drink and enjoying the view. 

Happily, the alcohol rules are slightly more relaxed here and most restaurants serve alcoholic drinks, though whether they are doing this discreetly out of sight of the authorities I am not sure! It’s nice to enjoy a refreshing sundowner after a hard day on the beach in any case.

The town was lively in the run-up to Christmas, though still fairly quiet in terms of tourist numbers, as we have seen throughout our entire trip. 

There’s a tradition here for teenagers to dress up as Santa with red robes and masks and take to the streets with loud drums, dancing and wishing people a merry Christmas along the way. We must have seen five groups of Santas in one evening.

We decided to try one last Ayurvedic massage and, fortunately for me, I had a better experience than the previous time in Cochin. We were sold a 45 minute treatment, which confusingly went on for 90 minutes - for a princely sum of £10 each! This treatment was a deeper tissue massage than we had previously and involved massaging heated oil into the back and shoulders using herbal compresses. It was pretty good, though it sounded like they were heating the oil in a frying pan - and as I was lying face down I couldn’t see what the therapist was doing - so I was a little nervous they were about to scald me with boiling oil - but it was fine!

Whilst I was there, I also got my haircut for £2, which certainly beats having to pay the extortionate London prices!

From Varkaka it was homeward bound, flying from Trivandrum to Delhi, then from Delhi back to London. 

Fun fact about Trivandrum: the zoo there is the zoo that book ‘The Life of Pi’ was based on.

It was a chilly 11 degrees Celsius when we landed in Delhi, late in the evening on Christmas Day - good preparation for our imminent return to London! It makes you realise what a huge country India is, to experience such a broad range of temperatures.

So, now we’re back home to open our Christmas presents, try and squeeze in a Christmas dinner or two, and stock up on discounted mince pies before they leave supermarket shelves!

Happy new year, everyone!

Monroe Island - Kerala, India

Time to get out of the town and back to nature! We took a bus from Alleppey down to Kollam and then picked up a tuktuk to Munroe Island; a small island connected by bridges and a boat on an in-land lake.

We stayed in a remote but lovely homestay, which was the only place for us to get meals on the island - fortunately, the home-cooking was of an excellent standard and we had the opportunity to try more delicious Keralan cooking like coconut and cardamom pancakes, Keralan butterscotch rice pudding, tiger prawn curry and more of the classic staples like sambar and avial.

There are no cafes on the island but   Our host, Unni, took us to the “lime soda man” - in the corner of a tiny grocery shop, a local has become famous for his “lime sodas” - a cocktail of fresh lime, chilli, sugar, salt, honey and gooseberry or red grapes, blended together them topped up with soda. They are so refreshing on a hot day and he’s apparently now keeping his shop open until midnight to keep up with demand from hot and thirsty locals and tourists alike! 

Unni also took us on a bicycle tour of the island. There are few proper roads and lots of mud paths and short-cuts, so it was great to go with a local or we would surely have got a bit lost!

We visited a cashew nut factory - apparently the nuts are imported from Africa to be processed, which includes everything from roasting, extracting from the shell and grading/sorting by size, colour etc. The ladies doing the sorting invited me to sit down with them and have a go - it’s not altogether unpleasant work as they were chatting as they worked, but it is rather poor pay, with ladies earning the equivalent of around three pounds per day.

There was a holy festival taking place whilst we were in town and we were lucky enough to see a decorated elephant wearing gold medallions and an ornate gold headdress. The premise is that the elephant is positioned directly outside the door of the temple, so once the prayers and ceremony have taken place, the elephant in all its finery is the first thing the gods will see when they look outside.

Elephants are typically treated well in Kerala and are even kept as “pets” by some very wealthy people. That said I am sure it must be a lonely existence for a lone elephant, no matter how well it is treated. Apparently temples pay good money to elephant owners for their use in religious ceremonies, which in turn supports their decorated and well-respected status.

One evening, Unni’s father took us on a sunset canoe/punting trip through the backwaters, ending with watching the sunset over Ashtamudi lake, then making our way back to the riverbank in the dark in time for dinner. As the sun gradually went down we must have seen fifty eagles in the sky circling above us, and many storks and kingfishers on the riverbank.

It’s a very beautiful and chilled-out part of the world. All day we overheard music and chanting from the numerous Hindu temples on the island as they sing the holy scriptures as part of their current forty-day religious festival, and in the evenings the air fills up with woodsmoke as the cicadas hum.

More than ever here, being a Western tourist has been like being a celebrity and the locals are so friendly. Some just stare, others smile and say hello, and all the children wave at us as we cycle past. No selfie requests here though!

Next we’re off to the beach, to Varkala, a popular tourist town set around a high cliff for our final stop on this trip. I’ll write again from there. In the meantime, happy Christmas!

Alleppey - Kerala, India

On to stop number two: Alleppey, a beach town at one end of Kerala’s backwaters.

We took the train down from Cochin, which was an experience in itself. It all started off well and we quickly purchased tickets for an express train for about 70 pence, but the train proceeded to pick up over an hour of delay between us buying the tickets and it arriving at the station so the journey took a little longer than expected.

However, we were able to pick up a curry and a coffee in the station food court for around a pound each then sit in an air conditioned waiting for 30p and so avoided waiting on the busy platforms in the intense midday heat.

On board the train it was relatively calm and we found some seats - the biggest shock (though perhaps not a surprise) was the locals throwing their litter out of the open window on to the tracks! Public bins are not a common sight here!

At each station along the way and during the journey, food and chai vendors work their way up and down the aisles selling biriyani, doughnuts, chai tea, coffee, cold drinks and crisps - there is never any need to go hungry in India when you have a few rupees in your pocket!

Alleppey is much smaller and noticeably quieter than Cochin - there don’t seem to be many foreign tourists around and locals believe that the November floods put a lot of people off their Kerala holiday plans. Alleppey was one of the towns worst hit by the floods, being surrounded by the backwaters (a network of canals) and we even met some locals on the beach who had lost their home and all their possessions, and their five year-old daughter had to be rescued by a family member, who swam out through the flood waters to save her.

Fortunately now the waters have receded and life is more or less back to normal. The water levels are still quite high but it’s winter here now, which is traditionally a much dryer season so hopefully there will be no further recurrences.

On arrival into Alleppey, we checked into our accommodation. Our host was a colourful character called Johnson for whom nothing was too much trouble to make our stay comfortable. We were given an upgraded room, had dinner cooked for us and sorted out our houseboat booking.

We wandered a few blocks down to the beach in the late afternoon; the locals like to congregate there at that time of day, once the heat of the midday sun has gone. 

We were more or less the only westerners on the beach and we soon began to attract quite a bit of interest - this must be what it’s like to be famous! First a group of five or so lads stopped to ask if they could have a selfie with us, then an older couple stopped to chat (and for a photo). We also spoke to a group of ladies who we decided to ask for a selfie for the blog!

Alleppey has a nice beach, albeit with a warning about swimming in the sea, but I couldn’t figure out if that’s because a lot of Indian children are not taught to swim at school or because it was dangerous. We did go for a wallow in the waves and the sea was so warm!

I had to make sure I covered up - both in and out of the water - as the Indian ladies were fully clothed on the beach - and in the sea, wading in but not swimming - and I didn’t want to cause offence or unnecessary stares by swimming in a bikini. 

The town centre is a colourful street  decorated with bunting and is busy with the usual tuktuk and motorbike traffic and honking horns. Although only a few blocks away from the beach, the hectic streets of the town feel like a different place.

After two nights in Johnson’s homestay accommodation, we booked on to his eco-houseboat and were lucky enough to have it all to ourselves, with our own private captain and chef.

It was beautiful and serene making our way through the backwaters and lakes, mooring up for meals and spotting birds on the wetlands. We saw eagles, kingfishers and storks whilst lounging on the boat, between reading and playing Yahtzee.

In the evening we moored at a jetty in an area busy with other boats. It was still very relaxing but with the hubbub of other boaters moored up for the night and passing boat traffic. Houseboat tourism is popular amongst Indian and foreign tourists alike.

We were on the water from midday to nine AM the following morning and our cabin looked directly out on to the water.

When back on dry land, we took a bus down to our next stop in Munroe Island. We’re heading inland from the other end of the backwaters at Kollam and staying in a rural village on Ashtamundi Lake for some peace and tranquility away from all the traffic, noise and beeping horns in the town. I’ll write again from there.

Cochin - Kerala, India

Because of our extensive travels last year, we’ve not travelled too far this year - it’s mainly been European city breaks and a week in Brittany - so we’re excited to be going on a ‘proper’ two-week jaunt to exotic climes!

I secretly used my air miles to upgrade Kev and I to business class for our flight to Delhi, so we could get some rest on the way and arrive fully refreshed, ready for our holiday; but in reality I think we were too excited and couldn’t sleep, despite having a flat bed on the plane. Still, it was nice to lie down instead of the usual cramped conditions.

On arrival we had a six-hour layover in Delhi before our onward flight to Cochin so we made ourself comfortable in an airport lounge for a shower and a nap, followed by coffee and some dinner before we departed. We were surprised to see Costa, WHSmith and Subway in the airport arrivals hall and didn’t feel so far from home after all!

The Air India plane to Cochin seemed to be falling apart with interiors that looked like they’d never been refitted since its inaugural flight in the 1980’s, but with a little faith in Air India’s Star Alliance membership and only a short distance to cover, we were safely delivered to Cochin International Airport, where a friendly taxi driver was waiting to take us to our first accommodation.

After twenty-four hours travelling we were ready to go straight to bed in our lovely air-conditioned room. Our Homestay was called “Kevin’s Placid Homestay” and our hosts asked if we chose it because of Kev’s name - yes and no I suppose, but it was very comfortable and a great location in the centre of town, in the area known as Fort Kochi.

On leaving London the temperature was a mild (for the UK) ten degrees, so we had to quickly readjust to the sticky 28 degrees at night and high humidity - but I think I’ll take that over the onset of the UK winter! We were very grateful for the very effective air conditioning in the room, however, despite Kev’s propensity to turn it off in the night when he inevitably gets cold!

Apparently the temperature here feels like a good ten degrees more than the actual temperature due to the humidity, so our comfortable 32 degrees in the day in fact felt more like 42, which is less comfortable!

In search of an opportunity to cool down, and making the most of Kerala’s reputation for Ayurveda, we went for an Ayurvedic massage in a nice air conditioned room. As a qualified massage therapist, I try to experience the different types of massage wherever I go in the world but I can’t say that Ayurvedic massage is for me - they basically poured what feels like a gallon of oil over me from a great height, starting with drenching my hair in it. The best part for me was definitely the shower at the end, though it took at least two showers to feel like I’d washed off all the oil! Kev had a slightly better experience, though whether that’s down to having a better therapist, or being less squeamish about being doused in oil, I’m not sure!

Continuing with our cultural immersion, we booked on to a Keralan cooking class in the following morning and soon realised that Indian cooking is something you learn over a lifetime as opposed to in a three-hour class! There are so many spices and rules about how much to use and the order in which you add them to the dish (in addition to the basics of which spices to use - and not use - for different food types).

We made four dishes: sambar, fish curry, anial and coconut chutney and after learning how to prepare them we sat down to a hearty lunch, which was delicious - all the more so for having cooked it ourselves!

In the afternoon we took a tuktuk to the Kerala folklore museum, where there are three floors of artifacts crammed into every nook and cranny of the building, with each floor displaying Muslim, colonial and Hindu influences respectively. It was interesting and very ornate but they could have done with a building five times the size to display all the exhibits and do them justice.

To round off our final day in Cochin we went to see a traditional Kathakali performance. An hour before the show starts the audience can watch the performers sat cross-legged on the stage, putting on their make-up; then follows an introduction and explanation of the art form, to help understand the meaning of the dance and in particular the facial movements, and then the show - an hour’s episode of what would traditionally be a performance of several hours that goes on all night! We were quite grateful for the abridged version, albeit a very touristy one and the show was fantastic.

On holiday and in a hot country it is customary for us to enjoy a cold beer, however Kerala is due to become a dry state, so the sale of alcohol is heavily regulated and restricted. It’s illegal to advertise alcohol and only a very few number of establishments are licensed to sell it - although they are always very busy with locals and tourists alike.

When enquiring about the nearest bar to get a beer one evening, an ex-pat Brit told us to ask for ‘special tea’ - namely beer served in a teapot and teacups to make it look like tea! We found a bar serving beer in the end and didn’t have to resort to speaking in a secret code but there’s definitely a ‘speakeasy’ vibe to alcohol vending establishments and they are few and far between.

Next we’re off down the coast to Alleppey, home to the beginning of the network of backwaters to spend some time on a houseboat. I’ll write again from there.