Ahhhh, Varkala

Stepping out of the air conditioned airplane onto the metal stairs over the tarmac of the Trivandrum airport was like stepping onto the sun. Kerala is hot in March. Hot, sunny and on the sea is my idea of perfection. 

We drove an hour along the coast watching Catholic Church after beautiful Catholic Church hold outdoor masses for crowds that would make Canadian congregations jealous. We watched the sunset over the sea. We watched as the lights and parades for Shivaratri appeared along the road. It’s rather a lovely route.

Most things about the Varkala Cliffs are lovely. We arrived on a Friday night so we did encounter the less lovely aspect. Since COVID, Indians have begun travelling more and more and Varkala has come to be very crowded on the weekends. The families and couples are fine, but the large crowds of teen boys and young men can be unpleasant. They can block the narrow path or knock into you such that you almost go over the cliff edge. When they leer at women passing by, I am tempted to smack them. They go down to the beach and scream and openly gape at women’s breasts. It’s a relief when they take off on Sunday.

Aside from the Indian tourists, the other denizens of the cliffside are the shopkeepers, the emaciated yoga teacher training ladies (usually French), returnee foreign tourists and the random filthy ill-tempered hippies.  

Our first evening here we went out to dinner and sat way too close to a hippie table. One of the free range hippie kids did something to another to make it cry and one of the hippie mamas lost her total shit on the crying kid. Brought the restaurant to a standstill. The Indian families looked on horrified as this filthy, barely dressed woman screamed for an eternity in Italian at this toddler. The toddler’s mother grabbed it and ran out of the restaurant and a number of the other hippies went off with their kids to satellite tables, which only resulted in all the kids running around from table to table. 

You will also see white guys with dreads wearing lunghis and talking about how everything is an illusion, except for their parent’s financial support. 

The pace of life here is beach bum perfect. Eat, chill, swim, yoga if you like, shop if you wish, meditate, rinse and repeat. Kerala is technically dry from alcohol but Varkala is a booze hound heaven. The different menus have euphemisms but it’s all available, although the quantity provided is usually much higher than the quality. I was given a piña colada that was undrinkable and could have stripped paint. Interestingly, this year they all have mocktail menus. Same drinks that used to be on their fresh mixed juice menus but made trendy with a new moniker.

So far, this has been the only place I have been able to get a banana lassi. Every other place we have been I’ve been told, “bananas not available.” Frequently after having walked past multiple banana selling ladies to get there. I have offered to bring my own bananas but they refuse. At the posh hotel in Bhuj, I tried for a banana lassi and was told no. They had mango lassi on the menu but the mangos were bad. I asked what fruit they did have in the kitchen and confused the hell out of him. He figured out that papaya is in season and when I told him to put that in a lassi, it was like a major revelation in his life. It was delicious, too. Kerala has all the fruit and they know what to do with it.

The cliff has changed a lot since the first time I was here in 2016 and even since last year. It’s built up much more, restaurants have new names and management, but my fave eating spots are still here. There are still loads of shawl, jewelry and touristic cheapie souvenir shops along the cliff. The begging old lady and leaf painting men still haunt the breakfast spots. I can’t find spice oil drops here anymore and postcards are scarce. We were told the man who did all the Kerala postcards has lost interest. Selfies and social media have probably rendered postcards redundant.

Last year I was enchanted by all the birdsong in Varkala, but I have noticed in all the cities we have visited this year that I mainly hear crows now. I love crows a ridiculous amount and the crows here with the grey necks and back are adorable clowns, but I miss the insane sound of the Rufous Treepies and other songbirds we used to hear everywhere in the south. It’s a delight to watch the Eagles or the Brahminy Kites catch the thermals and play on the wind when you are sitting high on the cliffside.

If you go north along the cliff you will eventually come down to black sand beaches. We spent an afternoon this end of town wading in the surf. K did her second annual prescription sunglasses sacrifice to the sea. They rolled back in the surf one time to wave goodbye before being pulled away forever. 

Couples were posing on rocky outcroppings so engagement or marriage photographers could capture them amidst the pounding surf. It mainly resulted with them getting drenched and almost carried away by the sea. The photographer encouraged one pair to go further out and the lady protested. Eventually the lady relented and she and her gentleman were tossed around and photographed looking like drowned rats. There’s something naughty in us that found this really funny to watch. Darwinism in action.

It felt less funny when we discovered that, as we were showering off from being in the extremely rough sea day before yesterday, the floating bridge we had been playing near collapsed, sending mainly women and children into the sea. It is said that Indians don’t swim, and this has seemed accurate from all my seaside visits. People like to splash in the waves and sit in the sand to let the water wash over them, but I only recall seeing 1 or 2 presumed nationals swim in all my visits here. We were told that the vast majority of lifeguards also don’t swim. I believe this. Much like Ken, all they seem to be able to do is “beach.” They whistle, they point and they wave a flag. They are basically a beach referee. I have never seen one near the water. 

Anyway, a number of people were taken to hospital, some to the bigger city hospital, and a young girl is on a ventilator. We learned this long after K pointed out the new “bridge” and mentioned that it looked completely unsafe. The beach was also supposed to be closed due to dangerous conditions, but no one pays attention to that, including us. People were back on the bridge yesterday. 

Our day of wandering in the sun and sea was a bit much for my recovering from Ellora self. I spent most of a day back in Feverland. What is this need to pace myself bullshit?

I found a weird ass “Caesar Salad” for dinner which made me more excited than I should have been. I get curious when I see actual lettuce salads on menus, since they are exceedingly rare, and then I inadvisedly order them. This one was a chopped romaine, olives and croutons wetly dressed and formed into a ball salad, covered with shredded flavourless cheese and mung bean sprouts. Didn’t taste bad but moved the salad weird-o-meter a few notches. Generally, the food here is Ah-mazing! In fact, I would like some of these chefs and the Café del Mar bread baker to move to my town. The bartenders can stay here and continue to ply their paint thinner cocktails.