Day 51-58:Varkala — IndefinitelyOOO

The Sea Shore in Varkala was the first place I booked when we started planning the trip – a full six month before arrival and they only had one cottage left then – so I hoped it was so popular for a reason. But it more than lived up to our half a year of expectations. Perched on a cliff top and host to more hammocks than you can swing (in) a … hammock, our home for the week of Christmas (and our home for the longest period since we’ve been in India) was genuinely a little paradise. Not least because of the wonderful, peaceful routine we immediately adopted after so many weeks of getting up and going (happily but going all the same) somewhere else, somewhere new, somewhere that required us to rise early and do stuff basically. But not so here at the Sea Shore. We do get up of course – for pineapple smoothies and my now daily masala omelette, but then we just sit or swing for hours on end. And read and listen to the first music I’d actively sought out since we’d started travelling. And then, every now and then – when the mood took – I’d look up from my book and see the waves crashing and the dozens of eagles dancing over head. And for some utterly inexplicable reason, without even the prompting of iTunes, I found myself with The Kinks ‘If Paradise was Half as Nice’ drifting in and out my head. Funny that.

It was also in this routine that we decided on our nightly countdown to Christmas film – and because there was nothing really to see (the sea to one side) it was fine to turn in at 9pm with Bill Murray and a gin and Mirinda (set your teeth on edge fizzy orange) . And no Christmas or travellers guilt that I might be missing something!

We did however stroll onto Varkala beachfront on Christmas Eve to investigate the festivities which took the fitting form of Panto. Not quite as we know it of course. There was a bit more death and intrigue in this traditional Kathakali version – a few more limbs lost but the costumes would give any widow twankie a good run for their money.

Christmas day itself saw us hijack a slightly higher end hotel of the Taj resort variety for a sunken pool bar and a lunch of shrimp macaroni cheese and a club sandwich. Their wi-fi also came in handy to Facetime with family and try not to mention the 30 degree temperature.

Varkala for me was the start of the next India chapter, a mid point to stop and really breathe in just how much we’ve experienced and of course set our sights on the South and yet more glorious coastline. But not before the backwaters…

And so to Varkala where we aim to spend Christmas. Seizing our first opportunity to spend more than a few days in one place, we quickly make ourselves comfortable in a simple but comfortable clifftop bungalow and I start to become properly acquainted with the joys of hammock living. In our week here, we do nothing more strenuous than a daily totter down the steep path to an tiny and nearly deserted beach, returning to the top when we start to sizzle. There, we’re grateful for a breeze that rustles the palm fronds and lifts eagles up the cliff to burst over the top where we lie lazily, taking our cue from the four foot long monitor lizard that waddles around at its own pace.

View of our guesthouse from the beach, perched on the clifftop.

Only ten minutes away, Varkala beach proper is more lively and each evening we pick a different place to eat variants of the same meals; prawns or calamari, fried, grilled or battered, chilli, garlic, sometimes in dumplings or filo pastry, sometimes in pasta or as they come, fresh from the sea.

We had heard that we could struggle to drink in Kerala and, wanting to raise a glass of something at Christmas, since Chennai, I’ve been lugging around a hefty bottle of gin and a bottle of Indian sparkling wine that I have my doubts over. Whatever is was like when it went into the bottle, I suspect it hasn’t improved for travelling 1,000 miles at high temperatures in the bottom of my rucksack.

Our fears are unfounded though, and we enjoy slightly clandestine beers everywhere we go, none too subtly served in big coffee mugs, the bottles hidden out of sight under the tables.

We open the ‘sham’pagne on Christmas Day and, maybe absence is playing tricks on the tastebuds but it’s not too terrible. The gin finds a home, too. There’s no tonic so we experiment with luminous and over-sweet Indian fizzy pop until we find a winner.

We’re now into the section of our travels that better qualifies as ‘holiday’ as we meander up and down the West coast. We will get back to more adventurous ways before long but for now, we’re relaxing hard.