Kerala
Trip Start
Jun 16, 2006
1
15
22
Trip End
Aug 25, 2006
Varkala, India
Wednesday, August 9, 2006
We were not so pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a stunningly beautiful cliff-top sunset on our left, and a string of tourist restaurants, shops, travel agents and bars on our right, lining the cliff edge. Each of the 10 or so restaurants served the same mediocre mongrel western/Indian food with excrutiatingly slow service. There were cocktail lists, 'happy hour' signs and David Gray playing as background music. Streams of white people with Essex / broad Yorkshire accents roamed the streets, feeling that they were really experiencing India, buying the mass-produced skirts and shawls that the Kashmiris pushed on them from their identical line of shops. We were not happy at all!
Perhaps in the high season, when more of the little shacks would be open to serve local food, and the bamboo huts were available to stay in, Varkala would have a nicer feel to it, but for now, it felt like we had been transported over the Andaman sea to Thailand. And although we loved Thailand last year, it was such a shock to see that level of tourism here in India. (I'm not looking forward to Goa!)
Anyway, the view was beautiful and we had some pleasant drinks over-looking the sea. We spent 2 days working hard, sunbathing in the scorching sun, (along with the 10 English students who layed by our pool being raucous) and achieved extremely successful tans. We took a tuktuk into the local town and ate with the locals (MUCH better food than on the cliff, and far cheaper! 60 rupees for two very full people) and had a long walk back, through the town and all the way along the cliff back to package-tourist-land.
We stayed for the planned 2 days in Varkala. Secretly thinking that perhaps they were two wasted days. Two precious days in our last 2 weeks of india. We needed stimulation for our India-thirsty minds. And so at 6.45am we boarded the train and headed for Munnar, the hill station of the south, where tea plantations sprawl the lanscape and the air is cool (and hopefully we can leave the British masses behind!).
