Varkala

I have always noticed that every time I wanted to backpack and travel to some off-beaten part of the country, I have always been stuck with lack of information about the place, even after maximum optimisation of internet help! Hence to do my bit to all those backpackers of the world, here is my first bit of information to one of the most beautiful places that I visited recently in Kerala. Destination: Varkala (had heard so much about this place and hence decided to visit there before leaving Ooty for good). One good thing, about the whole trip was my roomie decided to accompany me, and she is a mallu (well not the best of them, but she could make few sentences which at times saved us from a lot of trouble)

Mode of transport: well here's the adventure part of it, considering we were in Ooty, it took us multiple changes before we got to Varkala. To cut a long story short:

Trip 1: Ooty to Coimbatore (left at 16:00 hrs), it was unfortunately a 5 hour journey to the Ukkadam busstand in Coimbatore. Bus fare: Rs 36/-
Trip 2: Coimbatore to Palakkad. It was one and a half hour journey, ideally for single woman travelers, I would suggest you hit Palakkad before 20:00hrs, not that the place was very unsafe or anything, it just well... looked spooky to me. We took a bus from Palakkad to Trivandrum. It is roughly an 8hr journey and there are buses plying between Trivandrum and Palghat every hour. Another option is to take a bus from Thrissur, it cuts your journey time by 2 hours. However, we took a bus from Palghat, bus fare was quite steep for the comfort we received during our journey. Bus fare: Rs 450/- per person
Trip 3: After ignoring the persistent conductor who tried to convince me that he would show the way to Varkala and accompany us for the entie trip, I figured out that our bus passed via varkala before reaching Trivandrum, it's just that it was too early in the morning (around 4.30?), and I didn't want to end up looking lost in that place at that hour. We reached Trivandrum at 6:00 in the morning. So I took a bus which went to a place called Kallambalam, from where Varkala was a ten minute drive. Beautiful drive, with lush landscape on either side. The bus was very clean and the people were friendly and helpful. Bus Fare: Rs 10/-. Journey time: 1 hour
Trip 4: Oblivious to the stares we were getting at the tea shop, had my hot cuppa chai and after having inquired with several people there, we took another bus From Kallambalam to Varkala. A very bumpy drive at that, we finally reached our destination in fifteen mintues
Trip 5: We had to take an auto from Varkala to get to the actual beach side. Now here's the thing, there are two parts of Varkala beach with staying options. One is the cliff side and the other is the beach side. Going by our intuitions, we chose to stay at the cliff side with a beautiful sea view and amazing sun-sets. Auto charge - Rs 50, after much bargaining.
The only place, I had read about in Varkala was Funky Art Cafe, thats the only place, mentioned across all sites on the web. So decided to hit that place. They have a lovely make-do coffee shop and highly functional huts, with a bed and private bathroom. They charged us Rs 150/- per night and we weren't sure how long we were going to stay there, so took up the cheapest option around. We slept for a while and then hit the beautiful beach, its clean, unpredictable yet safe with lifeguards around to warn us on and off. Three days just went by swiftly, in a perpetual state of trance. The guys who work in Funky art cafe were overtly helpful with everything that we wanted. Apparently none of these guy have the license to serve liquor, but you know how it works in India, in some places beer was referred to as "mutka chai" whilst in others beer was "below the table" commodity. Food is quite expensive here, and in case your looking at a three day meal, its going to cost you anywhere between Rs 300 - Rs 600 per day.

Apparently we were there during the off-season, so not too many tourists were around, which suited us perfectly fine and hence accommodations were really cheap. All hotels and cottages are in the same line as Funky art cafe and they all serve to different array of tourists based on their budgets. There were a couple of very cozy wooden cottages, couple of them with spa, jacuzzi, swimming pool and the works, but all these guys came to funky art cafe in the evening, as these guys keep coming up with impromptu jamming sessions every other day.

Night life is not as exciting as in Goa, there are no swanky pubs or clubs that you can go to. But I think that's exactly what makes this place unique, you soak into their way of living so comfortably. You just have all the time in the world to do what you want. Its perhaps one of those unique places were you decide how fast you want time to move. I although would strongly suggest, you carry ample amount of mosquito repellent cream and cash in abundance as mmost of these places do not believe in plastic.

If you visit during the season time (sept - february) small trek down the cliff of Varkala leads you to what the locals call as "black beach", a small walk into the sea would lead you to a small island of black rocks, were you can sit around and watch the sun-sets, it sure would have been beautiful to see that!

A friend of ours from college, "Ro" joined us at Varkala and we decided to head to Alleppey for a night and head back to our respective destinations post that trip. I was headed to Gurvayoor, "Pi" and "Ro" were headed back to Ooty. We took a train from Varkala, I have no idea where this train was headed to or how much we paid, yes that's how baked we were!!! All I know till now is, we left Varkala around 15:00 hrs and reached Kollam at 20:00 hrs. We then took an auto to reach our guest house, in Alleppey. If I'm right I think the places's name is Evergreen resort and they charged us Rs 600/- for a night! Yeah it was expensive! but a very clean place.

I just wish we had stayed a little longer in Alleppey, sweet of "Ro" to have chased down the last bar open in Alleppey at 22:00 hrs and got all of us beer, we were happily sitting on one of those over bridges above the backwaters you find all over Alleppey and sipping our beer talking till midnight. We had booked for an early morning boat ride around the Alleppey backwaters so hit the bed early that night!

The backwater trip was completely disappointing, none of us were impressed, had heard so much about it and was truly miffed. Maybe it was not the best of organisers or the best part of Alleppey. So yeah downed our sorrows with a couple of bottles of toddy (& Rs 50 each) and headed back home.

I love the way this trip unwinded itself, and have been doing more such trips recently and thoroughly enjoy the time I get for myself!!! Do mail me if you need more info on Varkala.

And as for how beautiful these places were, I'll let my pictures do the talking as usual :-)



One of the guys working at Funky Art Cafe - that's the fish my friends devoured for dinner





The maid, who cleaned our rooms and fancied herself with a beer bottle for the poseys :-)





This was part of a competition I entered my image for. Burning Embers was the competition's name.
And my message was "Stepping back from rising water levels is not going to help you. ACT NOW"





ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ



Lazy afternoons of Varkala while inebriated!





As I said earlier, glorious sunsets of Varkala



There was some construction work happening here...and the entire place had this "magical lighting"




Row of shops in the line of funky art cafe, overlooking the sea


PS: Thanks Sachin for sharing the link for increasing the image size, this is a lot better, am still fiddling around and learning in the process!

~s~