Friday, December 9, 2011

This is not India

I always knew that I wanted to spend the last few weeks of my travels for this year relaxing by a beach. And I have to say that I have found the perfect location for that relaxation in the clifftop traveler's enclave of Varkala in Kerala, South India.

Varkala consists of a lovely crescent shaped beach at the foot of towering red cliffs. The clifftop space is one long line of cheap restaurants, hotels and shops. It really does have everything the budget traveler could need, with the notable exception of a disco to dance in. I was pointing out to one of the hotel staff that all Varkala needs is a good disco when I was informed that public dancing is actually illegal in Kerala.

Who would have thought that in the south of India I would stumble into the plot of the movie "Footloose"! I immediately had excited notions of leading an uprising against the shackles of dance repression, Kevin Bacon style. But further investigations revealed that the locals weren't really that bothered by the restrictions and I ended up deciding to go and have a mocha shake instead :-)

Varkala beach is one of those hippy traveler towns full of shops selling a mixture of "free Tibet" and Beatles merchandise as well as restaurants showing pirated movies each evening. You can go a few days here without meeting a single local Keralan as most of the people working in the shops, restaurants and hotels are from Tibet, Nepal or north India. The names of the restaurants, such as the Funky Buddha, Cafe Del Mar and the Chill Out Lounge, are consistent with the zone out mentality of many of the tourists here.

I used to really look down my nose at places like these and, by association, travelers who chose to spend time at places like these. I mean, this really is not India. The idea that someone could travel from the U.K all the way to India and only spend time drinking and eating by the beach in places like Varkala used to be a bit depressing to me.

The reality is that though Varkala is not India, it is a lot of fun. And sometimes you don't want challenging backpacking adventures, you just want to enjoy the sunset with friends and cheap delicious food. Most people I've met here have also not been visiting only Varkala, but rather using it (as I am) as a bit of rest and relaxation before they head home or off to their next backpacking adventure.

I had expected to spend a lot of time swimming, eating and reading in this lovely corner of Kerlala. What I did not expect was that Varkala would offer a veritable smorgasbord of social options. It was less than three hours after I arrived in Varkala that I bumped into the Belgian component of what would become our united nations of a social group. I had spoken briefly to Linda, Annie and Chris in the Ashram and was very pleased to see them again (and not just because they gave me an excellent tip about a cheap hotel room!).

My second day in Varkala saw me bumping into more lovely ashram veterans at the Juice Shack. It soon got to the stage where I was lucky if I managed to walk past two restaurants in a row without being called over to the table of someone I knew. It was like living in a small town with all of your friends. Though most of our group were aquainted from the ashram, we also had people who were "friends of friends" or "hotel neighbours" with someone we knew.

After a few days we fell into a kind of routine where we all did our own thing during the day, which often involved joining someone you randomly bumped into for a yoga lesson, a swim or a drink, before meeting up for dinner and maybe a movie in the evening.

One of the slogans at the Sivananda Ashram was "Unity through Diversity" and our little Varkala gang was certainly a testament to that. We had people from Australia, Scotland, Ireland, South Africa, Belgium, Germany and Italy in our group and the ages ranged from 20 to 55. The occupations of those in the group was just as diverse as our countries of origin, as we had a photography student, a tour bus driver, a dentist, a TV producer, a yoga teacher, a business manager, a real estate agent and, of course, a teacher in our midst.

I don't know if it was our diversity, our shared passion for storytelling, our eagerness to laugh or some combination of these factors that caused us to gel so well...But whatever it was, it was magic. Indeed that magical lure of Varkala was such that people found it very difficult to leave. I had always planned to stay in Varkala for nearly three weeks but everyone else had initially planned to move on after a few days. This lead to the situation where we were frequently having "farewell nights" for members of our group only to bump into them the next morning and hear that they had decided to stay for a few more days. Some in our group (you know who you are) had no fewer than three farewell dinners in their honour before they finally managed to make a clean break of it!

After the last of my new friends left on Monday, I was thinking that I would now have a week to catch up on my reading. I ended up having a day to myself before I started chatting to a lovely Swiss lady as we watched the movie "Slumdog Millionare". Rahel and I ended up catching up for breakfast and dinner 4 days in a row before she too headed off to Gokana.

So, after expecting to enjoy three weeks of solitude in Varkala, I will end up managing to get three days completely to myself. I had thought I needed to spend the last few weeks of my big trip reading and reflecting by myself. Instead I learnt from, and laughed with, some wonderful new friends.

Just goes to show you that the universe always delivers what you actually need, rather than what you think you need :-)

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