varkala

On the hottest day you could ever imagine, we walked from our hotel down the beach up a huge hill to catch a local bus. Happily we sat down in the back with our bags, happy we were alive. The bus took us to town and we found the train station and bough some tickets for the next train out, only a 45 minute journey up north. We decided to spend 6 days in Varkala which was our longest stay thus far. From everything I read it sounded perfect, and it really was. Varkala has 2 main parts, the biggest (and best) is a road that no cars or rickshaws can go down that is right on top of the huge cliff. We thought Kovalam was mellow, but this, by far, was paradise. We found this amazing vibed and cheap (6 bones) hotel with its own hammock and complete with mosquito bed net. We found the BEST tuna sandwich we have ever ever had (and ate it quite a bit! Whoops for too much tuna!). We also found the best museli here and ate fresh fish caught that day pretty much every single night. When you walk up to the restaurants (the cliff is full of gems) they all have ice where they have the fish and you pick which one you want. So many kinds, red snapper, snapper, butterfish, etc. We also ate so much fresh fruit. How could we resist? After over a month of traveling nonstop and not being allowed all this glorious food, we divulged ourselves. And happy for me, we did leave all the pervs behind! It was a very heavy tourist place but still the amount of people was pretty slim. Seriously, paradise. The beaches were chilled, even though the currents were super rough and gieves and I both got our share of being viciously thrown by the ocean. On our second day, we met this irish couple named zoey and joseph on the beach. That night we met up with them for dinner on the cliff and had a few drinks. At the restaurant we went to, they built this small little tree house so the 4 of us sat up there for a few hours chilling out. It was great. After a while we decided to go see if people were on the beach or at this other place they had hungout the previous night. We walked up to a restaurant called ‘the chill out lounge’ and were surprised to see a good 30 people sitting around all these tables put together, partying, with 2 acoustic guitars going around. We had a blast and had so much fun, met really cool people. The next night was a night off, then the following we did the same thing again but this time our group was off from the middle table and about 10 of us hungout all night. It was nice being in that environment. No where else in India had anyone experienced a gathering like that and it made everyone that much more happy. I was truly sad to leave Varkala. We had our own little places, the place we stayed at felt like home and I wasn’t sure what was ahead of us, but knew that it would be pretty damn hard to beat these beachy cliffs.