Clifftop Caper

We met some other Brits on the train, and proceeded to all sail past our stop on the same convivial yet confused and uniformley meddlesome misinformation from nonetheless friendly Indians. Finding ourselves 30km off course in Trivandrum we quickly learned that the return train, which definitely stopped in Varkala, was sitting helpfully, ready to depart, on the opposite platform. In pursuit of other temerarious travelling locals we clambered down and across the tracks boarding the train from it's open side, a perfunctory action in India that would conversely cause outrage and probably long delays and closures in England.

Arriving in Varkala we followed Luke and Ben to Bamboo Place on reports it was a haven. We were welcomed warmly into the homestay by an extremely lovely ex pat turned leisurely travelling rikshaw driver Liz from London and her 8 week old rescue puppy Leelo, before being showed to the glorious honeymoon suit. In a bright and blooming garden of little yellow bamboo huts, all decorated with porches and individually hand painted and vibesy interiors, our lodgings for the next three days were certainly beautiful.

If you walked to the end of the little track which joined our homestay to the coast, you were stood atop 100ft cliffs skirting the crystal clear skies and seas of the Indian Ocean. A quaint and tottering stone path ran beside the edge along about a kilometer of seaside settlements, including my favourite german bakery establishment which peculiarly lurks up in all tourist areas, but does really incredible chocolate balls. An perhaps ominous pudding, but delicious. We made our way down a precarious higgledy-piggledy stairway to set foot on the thriving indented beach. The sand was sporadically strewn with yoga classes, hula hoopers, frisbee games, football matches and international clusters enjoying the beautiful views. We dunked ourselves in the darkening sea before playing LED frisbee into the night. Dinner consisted of a decadent array of tandoori barracuda having first walked past every establishment poking and prodding all the enormous, exotic freshly caught fish proudly on display along the promenade.

I practiced yoga with a slightly militant old yogi who jabbed and adjusted people into positions in such a vehement fashion that I heard the occasional muffled exclamation of pain. Slightly disgruntled, but certainly more limber, we then ate sumptuous fruity breakfasts and headed off in to search for the famous local Kerelan fishing methods which consist of groups of men who hoist enormously long nets far out into the ocean to trap whatever swims by. After many confused kilometers, and more mostly incomprehensible guttral conversations with some slightly mental toothless old men, we gave up and headed home.

Rising before dawn the next day we headed North along the coast and used the age old method of sight to try and scope out the region's fishermen. We came across a small beach thronged with 25 or so elderly looking souls reeling in hundreds of metres of salty fishing lines. Falling into rank we got seriously sweaty helping them haul in what can only be described as a surprisingly meagere menage of small fish and some bits of disguarded plastic. After a heavily labour intensive forty minutes, we watched an inferno of altercations erupt over the division and sale of the stock, and quietly retreated up the beach to escape. Further up the coast other batches of fishermen seemed to be having more luck, and were mercilessly badgered by kites and buzzards for their bountiful catches. Interestingly, even these more affluent groups were still afflicted by the same communal scorn of one and other, unfortunately turning one of the most beautiful occupational landscapes in the world into a more stressful place than bustling city offices.

We ventured back to meet Sebastian who had survived the same death defying bus journey from Munnar to celebrate his continuity and spend his final evening suitably supping cocktails on the coast. The formideable and actually quite frightening waves at sunset were a hilarious but exhausting afternoon activity and so before long we retreated battered and fatigued to the safety of the shore and came utterly unexpectedly across fellow yogi Yaela from South Africa. Thus ensued lots of stories swapped speedily of the weeks since our course in Agonda and some icy cocktails on our veranda before we collected ourselves and migrated to a secret full moon rave on the beach. Not quite reminiscent of Thailand's infamous efforts where flourescent adolescents swarm sweatily on the dance floor. Instead, replace the international soup of cool, tanned, psychedelic individuals with a small rabble of drunken Indian men who seemed to have been unleashed onto the party scene like miscreant youths during a first encounter with a stolen mix of the parental liquor cabinet, which provided disastrous aesthetic results consisting of some criminal yet relentless dance moves. We stayed for two inexplicably cheap and consequently unpalatable cocktails and staggered home bidding farewell to the mental dancers, Sebastian, Yaela and Varkala. Onto Trivandrum, to begin our journey North.