Varkala ... Dodging the wannabe beach mystics - Jan 12, 2007

We were pointed to the waiting, mostly full cars at the front of the train by a railway attendant. As expected, we were travelling without a reserved seat. We pressed our way onto the train, hoisted our bags into an overhead rack, and wedged ourselves into a spot in the aisle as more and more people entered to fill the carriage. Seats, luggage racks, and aisles were full of people. They stared at us for a while -- being the only tourists on the train car -- but seemed to get bored of us eventually. I stood in the midst of everything I'd imagined about train travel here -- the press of people, the clacking of the train as it moved along the rails, the slightly sour smell of sweat and spices -- and enjoyed every minute of it. Call me crazy.

In Varkala, we had two immediate goals: get a place to stay and find a bank machine (for some reason, the bank machines in Trivandrum didn't work for us). We told the rickshaw driver "go to bank, then guesthouse". This was interpreted as "go to guesthouse, backtrack to bank, then charge me for extra trips please". We finally got him to take us to the bank (still no luck at finding an ATM that works) then to the guesthouse (each one we picked was full or ridiculously overpriced). Eventually, we allowed our rickshaw driver to take us to his friends guesthouse which, it turned out, was in our price range. It was also dirty (brown sludge in the bathroom, stained mattress, and mustly smells) with only a single sarong provided as a sheet!! For one night, we took it ... it seemed little other options were presenting themselves. Again, we were happy to have brought two sheets with us: Laura covered the bed with our two yoga mats and both sheets, creating what we figured was a reasonably good boundary for whatevermight dwell in that mattress. With our mosquito net duly mounted, the bed looked quite sleepable though we would have no sheets to cover us.

It was about at that point that we realized that we'd stupidly given the hotel owner the exchange rate for CDN funds, not US ... so we lost 200 rupees.

Next we headed to the beach, all the while I struggled to suppress the anger at having lost in the exchange out of my own stupidity. The beach itself was beautiful: tall cliffs (where the tourist restaurants and hotels were) overlooking white sand and turquoise water. I felt a little better after bartering the umbrella rental down to half his offering price. You win some and lose some, I suppose.

We cooked beneath the umbrella, the heat here being intense even in the shade. We took turns floating about in the ocean and enjoying the big waves crashing to shore (unfortunately one of us is always ashore on bag-guarding duty).

We found a good table at a cliff-side restaurant for watching the sunset and sipped our sodas (no covert beer drinking this time) while a ruby red sun slowly dipped beneath the horizon. Meanwhile, we watched the tourists. Draped or wrapped in clothes sold in the tourist shops that resembles -- a little -- Indian clothing, so many seem immersed in a new age crystals and mysticism view that doesn't seem to have much in common with the world outside the resort towns. I am left wondering: are these tourists creating their own idealized version of India or am I missing something? Time will tell, I suppose.

We left Varkala on the 7AM train the next morning. The town had not endeared itself to us: our room was smelly, dirty, and overpriced; and the beach, while beautiful, was touristy and filled with wannabe yoga mystics. It was time to move on.