In Kanyakumari at India's southern tip on the morning of the 7th, I walked to the boat jetty before 8 in hope of taking a boat to the offshore islands with the Vivekanada Memorial Hall and the giant statue of Thiruvalluvar. However, there was a huge line, with at least a thousand people, probably a couple of thousand. So I gave that up and walked around a bit. There were lots of tourists around, more than on the previous two weekend days.
I had breakfast and left on a 9:15 bus heading north, or rather northwest, parallel to the coast, to Trivandrum, 55 miles away. Leaving town, we passed some small roadside machines with short conveyor belts, grinding coconut husks into a sort of pulp. The fibers of coconut husks, or coir, have long been made into ropes, so I guess this is the modern machine method. First time I had ever seen that. We passed a few salt pans, too. The slow bus trip back into Kerala from Tamil Nadu took three hours, passing again through Nagercoil and with development along the road all the way. I could see the Western Ghats to the east at times. The sky was overcast, with some sun, and the air humid. Towards the end of the trip we had some rain.
Trivandrum's official name is now Thiruvananthapuram, but for obvious reasons the city is usually referred to by its old name, Trivandrum. It is Kerala's capital, with about 900,000 people. I checked into a hotel and then went to lunch in the air conditioned restaurant of a fancy hotel. It was raining when I finished, so I sat in the hotel lobby reading the newspaper until the rain stopped. The rain brought the temperature down. I walked to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, dating from the mid 18th century. Unusually for a temple in Kerala, it has a Tamil-style gopura gateway of seven tiers, about 100 feet high. Non-Hindus aren't allowed inside, and Hindu men must wear a dhoti and no shirt. The deity in the inner sanctum, Vishnu lying upon the coils of a seven hooded naga (serpent), with a lotus sprouting from Vishnu's navel ("padma" means "lotus" and "nabha" means "navel"), upon which sits Brahma preparing to create the universe, is said by one of my guidebooks to be "spectacularly large," made of over 12,000 stones brought by elephant from the bed of the Kali Gandaki River in Nepal.
The street leading to the temple's main eastern entry, with the gopura, has a tank of water to the north and a palace of the Maharajas of Travancore to the south. The 19th century wooden palace was closed. Along the street, facing the temple were five 20 foot or so high figures in red robes. They looked like they might be made of wood or papier mache. They represent the five Pandava brothers, the heroes of the Mahabharata. Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers, is guided by Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, serving as his charioteer.
The temperature in my hotel room when I went to bed that night was only 84 degrees, which felt cool compared to the past few days.
The next morning at about 8:30 I walked to the temple and the palace under a bright sun. Lots of people, the men all bare chested and wearing dhotis, were heading into and out of the temple. The palace, now a museum, was open. You are conducted through it in a guided tour, but the guide moved so quickly that I lagged behind. The old wooden palace was beautiful and very interesting. A minder kept urging me to rejoin the group, but I ignored him. There was lots to see in the two story palace, with carved wooden ceilings, doors and walls. The floors were polished and black, as at the older palace in Padmanabhapuram to the south. There were two thrones, one of glass and one of ivory.
Finally, a guide came and showed me around without the rest of the group and without hurrying too much. He told me the palace was built in the 1840's, taking a thousand workmen working every day for four years to complete it. Then it was used for less than a year, as the Maharaja died early, at age 33 of a heart problem, and the palace was considered bad luck. We went through several rooms, and the guide told me there are 60 more, including the sleeping quarters, the kitchens, and the servants quarters. Long balconies on the second story have slat windows to let air in, and along the inside balcony are three are three protruding rooms, one for singing and dancing, one for meetings, and one, with a view of the temple gopura, where the raja would pray and write poetry.
After the tour inside the palace, I walked around the grassy grounds outside. Lining the slatted walls of the second story on the outside were carved wooden horses rearing up. There had to be well over a hundred of them all along the walls. It was hot in the sun as I walked past some later built palace buildings, eventually being directed by a guard to a beautiful old building with a new museum (two years old, I was told) on the Travancore royal family, with scores of very interesting old photographs. That museum was very interesting. Succession in the kingdom was matrilineal, with the Maharaja's oldest sister's oldest son succeeding him. The Maharaja himself never married, at least not officially, and there are no photos of him with a wife, just of him with his sister or mother.
I walked back to the old palace and sat for a while under the veranda. The museum director came up and talked with me for a while. A specialist on the Vijayanagar Empire, he was very interesting. By then it was past noon and very hot and humid. I walked to the air conditioned restaurant in the fancy hotel for lunch.
About 2 I took an auto rickshaw north a mile or two to a park just north of downtown, where there is a zoo and several museums. The museum I went to see is the formerly named Napier Museum in a building dating from the 1870's. The collection was mildly interesting, with a temple chariot and Chola bronzes, among other things, but the building itself was more interesting, made of multi-colored bricks outside. Inside, the wooden carved ceilings are 20 or 30 feet high. There are also wooden walkways along stained glass windows.
The sky has clouded up, with some black clouds but no rain. Coming out of the museum, I sat in the gardens for a while, enjoying the cooler air under the clouds, and then began the walk back to my hotel along Trivandrum's main street, lined with many attractive old colonial buildings. Colorfully decorated campaign vehicles passed up and down the street with loudspeakers blasting. I entered the Victoria Jubilee Library, with an excellent collection of books in English, though they were all in less than optimal condition because of the humidity. I visited whitewashed Christ Church, built about 1860. I spoke with the friendly priest and then looked over the plaques on the walls and the gravestones outside. I walked onto the grounds of the University College and then made my way to the Victoria Jubilee Town Hall, now a sort of crafts market. Finally, I reached the old Secretariat, white with domes and columns and lawns in front. It is now the headquarters of the state government. A few raindrops began to fall. I got back to my hotel after 6.
The next morning was sunny and hot. I took care of several errands, including buying air tickets for flights from Trivandrum to Male in the Maldives and from there to Colombo in Sri Lanka. Soon after noon I took an air conditioned, very modern bus south to Kovalam on the coast, only about ten miles and thirty minutes away. We passed lots of green trees interspersed with trees with yellow or violet blossoms. Kovalam is a beach resort first discovered in the 1970's, but now clogged with hotels, restaurants, and the like. Arriving at midday, though there was a nice breeze from the sea, I took a short walk along the beach and found a restaurant where I ate lunch while gazing at the sea. Kovalam didn't seem very busy. A lot of menu boards and other signs were in Russian.
I ate lunch and then sat in the restaurant reading and watching the sea until 4:30. Then I walked to a lighthouse on a headland to the south, with views up and down the coast. From there I walked back the way I had come and beyond, passing another, more prominent headland to another beach to the north. This beach had little appeal, so I retraced my steps to the headland where I could look out from the cliffs to the sea. I spent a half hour or so there enjoying the views and the breeze as the sun set. At least 50 small fishing boats passed beneath me, heading north. The sun set at almost exactly 6:30 and soon after I caught a bus back to Trivandrum.
The next day the streets were quiet. It was election day in Kerala and a holiday. I took a 9:50 express train north to Varkala on the coast, 25 miles away. The train's first stop was Varkala, just over a half hour from Trivandrum. (Varkala is only about 15 miles south of Kollam, where I had been a week earlier before heading over the Western Ghats to Tamil Nadu and then south to Kanyakumari at India's southern tip.) From the train station I took an auto rickshaw to a hotel and checked in, getting a very nice room for 500 rupees, a little over $8. Varkala is another beach resort, situated on cliffs above the sea. It is very popular, but this is now the low season. After checking in I walked to the cliffs, less than five minutes walk from my hotel, and looked down at the beach and the sea. The cliffs are reddish, made of laterite, and rise about 60 to 80 feet from the beach. It is a very pretty area. The cliffs are lined with guest houses, restaurants, shops, and other places catering to the tourist trade.
I walked north along the cliffs, away from the beach, passing all sorts of shops and restaurants and the like, until the path descended to lower ground along the sea. I reached a grove of coconut palms, with views further north along the coast, but turned around and headed to a restaurant on the cliff top for lunch. I stayed there until about 4:30, reading and watching the sea after lunch. A good breeze came off the sea, with whitecaps out on the sea. A woman said she has seen dolphins earlier, but I didn't see any.
I walked back to my hotel and about 5 it began to rain hard. The rain clouds must have come from the interior. It rained for about an hour, cooling the air considerably but leaving lots of puddles in the now muddy narrow lanes. One of the nice things about Varkala is that the cliff path and many other paths are too narrow for cars. After the rain stopped I walked south along the cliff top until the path descended to the beach at a gap between the row of cliffs to north, where I was staying, and the row of cliffs to the south. I walked back along the beach, with more people, mostly Indians, on it than I would have expected after such a rainstorm. I climbed up some steps to get back to the top of the cliffs. The skies were still very cloudy, with a few raindrops. At night hundreds of lights, from small fishing boats, speckled the sea.
The next morning I got out about 6:30, just at sunrise, and walked along the almost deserted cliff top along the path to the beach. On the beach about six to ten priests were conducting pujas for worshippers. Some of the priests had built, or had built for them, little platforms made of sand, perhaps six feet long, two feet wide, and a few inches high, on which they sat on red cloth. There is a temple inland about ten minutes' walk away and I've read people come here to immerse the ashes of loved ones in the sea, but I didn't see that, or if I did I didn't know it. What I did see were devotees kneeling in front of the priests as the priests conducted pujas, placing rice, sticks of incense, and more colorful stuff on banana leaves on the sand between the devotee and the priest. The devotees, bare chested men in white dhotis and women in saris or salwar kameezes, then carried the banana leaves with their contents on top of their heads to the sea, where they turned around with their backs to the sea and dropped the banana leaves and their contents into the water.
I walked inland to the temple and its tank of water, but not much seemed to be happening. Non-Hindua aren't allowed into the walled temple compound. I walked back to the beach and watched the pujas until about 8:30. By then the sun had lit up the beach and the priests or their helpers had erected multi-colored umbrellas to shield them from the sun.
I walked back along the beach, maybe a fifteen or twenty minute walk from end to end, and then ascended the cliffs via steps near the northern end. I ate breakfast at a restaurant with great views out to the sea, and a good breeze from the sea. The middle, hot part of the day I spent in an internet cafe and then ate a late lunch of muesi, fruit, curd, and honey, by far the best muesli I have had in India. Again, I enjoyed the sea views from the cliff top while eating. I can see why people come here and stay for weeks, though the sales people can be a pain.
About 4:30 I walked north, along the cliff top and then down to the coconut grove along the sea, where I sat for a while. I saw a hawk or eagle or kite or some bird of that nature grab a fish from the sea with its talons and then fly back with it into the trees. The fish looked about four or five inches long. I walked further north, past a mosque and some upscale guesthouses, but the coastline was lined with imported boulders to prevent erosion and so was not as scenic as it would be otherwise.
I retraced my steps and eventually took the steps down the cliff to the north end of Varkala's main beach, called Papanasam Beach, where the pujas take place near the southern end. Lots of people, both Indian and foreign, were still on the beach just before sunset. The western sky was cloudy, providing only a few brief glimpses of the orange ball of the sun as it descended. I noticed several small fishing boats heading out to sea at dusk.
At dinner time, many restaurants on the cliff top display fish, crabs, prawns, and even octopi in front to attract passersby. I went to the place where I had eaten before, where a mahimahi, a red snapper, a barracuda, and a tuna maybe four feet long, were on display along with prawns and octopi. I chose the mahimahi. They cut a piece out, grilled it in butter with lemon and garlic, and served it with french fries and salad. A delicious dinner, all for 350 rupees, an expensive dinner for India, but less than $6. The sea was again filled with tiny boat lights.
The next morning I was out and about before 7. I walked down the steps from the cliff top to the beach, where a couple of cricket matches were in progress on the sand. I walked towards the puja area, but stopped before I got there to watch the fishermen on the beach. Some were still coming in through the waves in their small raft-like boats. These boats are similar to the ones I saw in Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu, but made of fiberglass instead of pieces of timber lashed together by rope. The size and shape were the same, though. There were one or two made the old fashioned way. Coming ashore, the fishermen (usually two to a boat) plopped down their piled up nets on the sand and proceeded to unwind them slowly, picking off fish and crabs and even the occasional lobster from the nets and piling them on pieces of plastic or cloth on the sand. Dogs and crows stood nearby to fight over the discarded small fishes. One net was full of spidery looking small crabs, too small for eating. All were discarded and even the dogs and crows weren't interested. I watched for quite a while, as did a crowd of Indian tourists. The fishermen seemed friendly.
I walked on to the puja area and noticed some of the priests I had seen the morning before (a particularly fat one and a bearded one) weren't there. I guess they took the day off. I watched a while and then walked up the road onto the southern cliff, which is quieter and more residential than the northern cliff, but with no path along the cliff top for views out to the sea. While walking around up there I kept hearing amplified singing from the direction of the temple, and later amplified drumming and pipe blowing. I walked to the temple, which non-Hindus cannot enter. I could look in through one of the gates and as I walked around the square temple enclosure I found out that it was quite easy to see over the low southern wall. A big crowd had gathered inside, and I spotted a couple of bare chested, white dhoti clad drummers. I walked a little further and spotted the temple elephant, with very small tusks, being washed with water from a hose by a bare chested, dhoti clad guy. The elephant seemed to be enjoying it. When the guy finished he left the hose running with the end propped up so the elephant could use its trunk to load up with water that he would then blow over his back.
I walked back to the low temple wall to see what might be happening inside the temple and when I came back to where the elephant had been, it had vanished. Figuring it might have been taken for a walk, I walked around the temple compound looking for it, but didn't see it. Finally, from the low south wall I spotted it in a dark area of the temple, surrounded by people. I walked back to the beach, stopping on the way to take photographs of four old men sitting under the eaves of an old, red tile roofed building. All four wore dhotis and were friendly. They seemed very pleased to see their photographs.
By the time I had returned along the beach and ascended the steps at its northern end to the top of the cliff it was 10:30 and I was hungry and thirsty. I drank more than a liter of water and then had another very good breakfast in a restaurant overlooking the sea. The welcome breeze off the sea was strong, with whitecaps out on the sea. After finishing eating, I sat there watching the sea for a while and then spent some time in an internet cafe before returning to the restaurant about 4 for a bowl of muelsi, fruit, curd, and honey. I sat there until about 5:30 and then walked up and down the path at the top of the cliffs, first to the south, with views of the still crowded beach, and then to the north, with views north along the palm covered coastline. The sky was mostly clear, but the sun disappeared into haze before it reached the horizon. Just after sunset at the north end of the path, where the path descends from the cliff to the palm lined coast, I watched maybe 50 hawks or kites or some similar bird gliding through the air above the palm trees.
For dinner I ate delicious red snapper, cooked in butter, garlic, and lemon, with french fries and salad. Great food in Varkala. There were no boat lights on the sea that evening. I asked one guy and he told me that perhaps the fishermen were expecting a storm. But there was no storm that night. Another guy told me the fishermen are Christians, and take Sunday (and Saturday night) off. He said there are much fewer fish in the markets on Sundays.
The next morning was humid, with little breeze. I again walked down to the beach about 7 and watched the fishermen unloading their fish. These ones are Muslim, I was told, but most fishermen are Christian. I watched the pujas for a while. The area was much more crowded than the previous two mornings. Fifteen or twenty priests were set up under colorful umbrellas, and among them was one woman in a white and red sari. I saw two men, bare chested and wearing white dhotis, kneeling in front of her while she conducted a puja that seemed similar to what the brahmin priests were doing. First time I've ever seen a woman doing something like that.
The morning was hot, but I enjoyed watching the pujas. Lots of worshipers were there, much more than on previous mornings. One guy had a little clay pot placed on the banana leaf before the priest. He took it on his head to the sea and tossed it in. I wonder if human ashes were inside. Another priest conducted a puja for a father and his maybe eight year old son, both bare chested and clad only in white dhotis.
I came back for breakfast on the cliff top about 9:30 and read the newspaper afterwards in the restaurant. There wasn't much of a breeze, especially compared to previous days. No whitecaps were on the sea. I walked up and down the path along the cliff top a little ways as the wind picked up a bit before noon. I had one more muesli, fruit, curd, and honey and then took an auto rickshaw to the train station about 1. If I didn't have a flight the next morning to the Maldives, I think I would have stayed a few more days in Varkala, despite the heat. It is a pretty place, with its red cliffs (though marred with liter, as always in India), palm trees, and views out to sea. Plus the fishermen and pujas on the beach are very interesting. Despite the tourist season being over, there were still lots of tourists, both foreign and Indian. Varkala must really be packed in the tourist season. I saw some postcards of the cliffs and you couldn't help but notice how much more development there is on the top of the cliffs now than pictured on the postcards.
My train to Trivandrum left at 2:20, only 40 minutes late, which isn't so bad considering it was coming all the way from Delhi. It arrived in Trivandrum about 3 and I checked into the hotel where I had stayed before. The sky darkened and it rained hard about 6, but for only about 15 minutes, with drizzle for a while thereafter. I did hear some loud thunder and saw some impressive lightning. On my last night in India for a while I had a chicken biryani dinner. The night air felt cool after the rain.
I had breakfast and left on a 9:15 bus heading north, or rather northwest, parallel to the coast, to Trivandrum, 55 miles away. Leaving town, we passed some small roadside machines with short conveyor belts, grinding coconut husks into a sort of pulp. The fibers of coconut husks, or coir, have long been made into ropes, so I guess this is the modern machine method. First time I had ever seen that. We passed a few salt pans, too. The slow bus trip back into Kerala from Tamil Nadu took three hours, passing again through Nagercoil and with development along the road all the way. I could see the Western Ghats to the east at times. The sky was overcast, with some sun, and the air humid. Towards the end of the trip we had some rain.
Trivandrum's official name is now Thiruvananthapuram, but for obvious reasons the city is usually referred to by its old name, Trivandrum. It is Kerala's capital, with about 900,000 people. I checked into a hotel and then went to lunch in the air conditioned restaurant of a fancy hotel. It was raining when I finished, so I sat in the hotel lobby reading the newspaper until the rain stopped. The rain brought the temperature down. I walked to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, dating from the mid 18th century. Unusually for a temple in Kerala, it has a Tamil-style gopura gateway of seven tiers, about 100 feet high. Non-Hindus aren't allowed inside, and Hindu men must wear a dhoti and no shirt. The deity in the inner sanctum, Vishnu lying upon the coils of a seven hooded naga (serpent), with a lotus sprouting from Vishnu's navel ("padma" means "lotus" and "nabha" means "navel"), upon which sits Brahma preparing to create the universe, is said by one of my guidebooks to be "spectacularly large," made of over 12,000 stones brought by elephant from the bed of the Kali Gandaki River in Nepal.
The street leading to the temple's main eastern entry, with the gopura, has a tank of water to the north and a palace of the Maharajas of Travancore to the south. The 19th century wooden palace was closed. Along the street, facing the temple were five 20 foot or so high figures in red robes. They looked like they might be made of wood or papier mache. They represent the five Pandava brothers, the heroes of the Mahabharata. Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers, is guided by Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, serving as his charioteer.
The temperature in my hotel room when I went to bed that night was only 84 degrees, which felt cool compared to the past few days.
The next morning at about 8:30 I walked to the temple and the palace under a bright sun. Lots of people, the men all bare chested and wearing dhotis, were heading into and out of the temple. The palace, now a museum, was open. You are conducted through it in a guided tour, but the guide moved so quickly that I lagged behind. The old wooden palace was beautiful and very interesting. A minder kept urging me to rejoin the group, but I ignored him. There was lots to see in the two story palace, with carved wooden ceilings, doors and walls. The floors were polished and black, as at the older palace in Padmanabhapuram to the south. There were two thrones, one of glass and one of ivory.
Finally, a guide came and showed me around without the rest of the group and without hurrying too much. He told me the palace was built in the 1840's, taking a thousand workmen working every day for four years to complete it. Then it was used for less than a year, as the Maharaja died early, at age 33 of a heart problem, and the palace was considered bad luck. We went through several rooms, and the guide told me there are 60 more, including the sleeping quarters, the kitchens, and the servants quarters. Long balconies on the second story have slat windows to let air in, and along the inside balcony are three are three protruding rooms, one for singing and dancing, one for meetings, and one, with a view of the temple gopura, where the raja would pray and write poetry.
After the tour inside the palace, I walked around the grassy grounds outside. Lining the slatted walls of the second story on the outside were carved wooden horses rearing up. There had to be well over a hundred of them all along the walls. It was hot in the sun as I walked past some later built palace buildings, eventually being directed by a guard to a beautiful old building with a new museum (two years old, I was told) on the Travancore royal family, with scores of very interesting old photographs. That museum was very interesting. Succession in the kingdom was matrilineal, with the Maharaja's oldest sister's oldest son succeeding him. The Maharaja himself never married, at least not officially, and there are no photos of him with a wife, just of him with his sister or mother.
I walked back to the old palace and sat for a while under the veranda. The museum director came up and talked with me for a while. A specialist on the Vijayanagar Empire, he was very interesting. By then it was past noon and very hot and humid. I walked to the air conditioned restaurant in the fancy hotel for lunch.
About 2 I took an auto rickshaw north a mile or two to a park just north of downtown, where there is a zoo and several museums. The museum I went to see is the formerly named Napier Museum in a building dating from the 1870's. The collection was mildly interesting, with a temple chariot and Chola bronzes, among other things, but the building itself was more interesting, made of multi-colored bricks outside. Inside, the wooden carved ceilings are 20 or 30 feet high. There are also wooden walkways along stained glass windows.
The sky has clouded up, with some black clouds but no rain. Coming out of the museum, I sat in the gardens for a while, enjoying the cooler air under the clouds, and then began the walk back to my hotel along Trivandrum's main street, lined with many attractive old colonial buildings. Colorfully decorated campaign vehicles passed up and down the street with loudspeakers blasting. I entered the Victoria Jubilee Library, with an excellent collection of books in English, though they were all in less than optimal condition because of the humidity. I visited whitewashed Christ Church, built about 1860. I spoke with the friendly priest and then looked over the plaques on the walls and the gravestones outside. I walked onto the grounds of the University College and then made my way to the Victoria Jubilee Town Hall, now a sort of crafts market. Finally, I reached the old Secretariat, white with domes and columns and lawns in front. It is now the headquarters of the state government. A few raindrops began to fall. I got back to my hotel after 6.
The next morning was sunny and hot. I took care of several errands, including buying air tickets for flights from Trivandrum to Male in the Maldives and from there to Colombo in Sri Lanka. Soon after noon I took an air conditioned, very modern bus south to Kovalam on the coast, only about ten miles and thirty minutes away. We passed lots of green trees interspersed with trees with yellow or violet blossoms. Kovalam is a beach resort first discovered in the 1970's, but now clogged with hotels, restaurants, and the like. Arriving at midday, though there was a nice breeze from the sea, I took a short walk along the beach and found a restaurant where I ate lunch while gazing at the sea. Kovalam didn't seem very busy. A lot of menu boards and other signs were in Russian.
I ate lunch and then sat in the restaurant reading and watching the sea until 4:30. Then I walked to a lighthouse on a headland to the south, with views up and down the coast. From there I walked back the way I had come and beyond, passing another, more prominent headland to another beach to the north. This beach had little appeal, so I retraced my steps to the headland where I could look out from the cliffs to the sea. I spent a half hour or so there enjoying the views and the breeze as the sun set. At least 50 small fishing boats passed beneath me, heading north. The sun set at almost exactly 6:30 and soon after I caught a bus back to Trivandrum.
The next day the streets were quiet. It was election day in Kerala and a holiday. I took a 9:50 express train north to Varkala on the coast, 25 miles away. The train's first stop was Varkala, just over a half hour from Trivandrum. (Varkala is only about 15 miles south of Kollam, where I had been a week earlier before heading over the Western Ghats to Tamil Nadu and then south to Kanyakumari at India's southern tip.) From the train station I took an auto rickshaw to a hotel and checked in, getting a very nice room for 500 rupees, a little over $8. Varkala is another beach resort, situated on cliffs above the sea. It is very popular, but this is now the low season. After checking in I walked to the cliffs, less than five minutes walk from my hotel, and looked down at the beach and the sea. The cliffs are reddish, made of laterite, and rise about 60 to 80 feet from the beach. It is a very pretty area. The cliffs are lined with guest houses, restaurants, shops, and other places catering to the tourist trade.
I walked north along the cliffs, away from the beach, passing all sorts of shops and restaurants and the like, until the path descended to lower ground along the sea. I reached a grove of coconut palms, with views further north along the coast, but turned around and headed to a restaurant on the cliff top for lunch. I stayed there until about 4:30, reading and watching the sea after lunch. A good breeze came off the sea, with whitecaps out on the sea. A woman said she has seen dolphins earlier, but I didn't see any.
I walked back to my hotel and about 5 it began to rain hard. The rain clouds must have come from the interior. It rained for about an hour, cooling the air considerably but leaving lots of puddles in the now muddy narrow lanes. One of the nice things about Varkala is that the cliff path and many other paths are too narrow for cars. After the rain stopped I walked south along the cliff top until the path descended to the beach at a gap between the row of cliffs to north, where I was staying, and the row of cliffs to the south. I walked back along the beach, with more people, mostly Indians, on it than I would have expected after such a rainstorm. I climbed up some steps to get back to the top of the cliffs. The skies were still very cloudy, with a few raindrops. At night hundreds of lights, from small fishing boats, speckled the sea.
The next morning I got out about 6:30, just at sunrise, and walked along the almost deserted cliff top along the path to the beach. On the beach about six to ten priests were conducting pujas for worshippers. Some of the priests had built, or had built for them, little platforms made of sand, perhaps six feet long, two feet wide, and a few inches high, on which they sat on red cloth. There is a temple inland about ten minutes' walk away and I've read people come here to immerse the ashes of loved ones in the sea, but I didn't see that, or if I did I didn't know it. What I did see were devotees kneeling in front of the priests as the priests conducted pujas, placing rice, sticks of incense, and more colorful stuff on banana leaves on the sand between the devotee and the priest. The devotees, bare chested men in white dhotis and women in saris or salwar kameezes, then carried the banana leaves with their contents on top of their heads to the sea, where they turned around with their backs to the sea and dropped the banana leaves and their contents into the water.
I walked inland to the temple and its tank of water, but not much seemed to be happening. Non-Hindua aren't allowed into the walled temple compound. I walked back to the beach and watched the pujas until about 8:30. By then the sun had lit up the beach and the priests or their helpers had erected multi-colored umbrellas to shield them from the sun.
I walked back along the beach, maybe a fifteen or twenty minute walk from end to end, and then ascended the cliffs via steps near the northern end. I ate breakfast at a restaurant with great views out to the sea, and a good breeze from the sea. The middle, hot part of the day I spent in an internet cafe and then ate a late lunch of muesi, fruit, curd, and honey, by far the best muesli I have had in India. Again, I enjoyed the sea views from the cliff top while eating. I can see why people come here and stay for weeks, though the sales people can be a pain.
About 4:30 I walked north, along the cliff top and then down to the coconut grove along the sea, where I sat for a while. I saw a hawk or eagle or kite or some bird of that nature grab a fish from the sea with its talons and then fly back with it into the trees. The fish looked about four or five inches long. I walked further north, past a mosque and some upscale guesthouses, but the coastline was lined with imported boulders to prevent erosion and so was not as scenic as it would be otherwise.
I retraced my steps and eventually took the steps down the cliff to the north end of Varkala's main beach, called Papanasam Beach, where the pujas take place near the southern end. Lots of people, both Indian and foreign, were still on the beach just before sunset. The western sky was cloudy, providing only a few brief glimpses of the orange ball of the sun as it descended. I noticed several small fishing boats heading out to sea at dusk.
At dinner time, many restaurants on the cliff top display fish, crabs, prawns, and even octopi in front to attract passersby. I went to the place where I had eaten before, where a mahimahi, a red snapper, a barracuda, and a tuna maybe four feet long, were on display along with prawns and octopi. I chose the mahimahi. They cut a piece out, grilled it in butter with lemon and garlic, and served it with french fries and salad. A delicious dinner, all for 350 rupees, an expensive dinner for India, but less than $6. The sea was again filled with tiny boat lights.
The next morning I was out and about before 7. I walked down the steps from the cliff top to the beach, where a couple of cricket matches were in progress on the sand. I walked towards the puja area, but stopped before I got there to watch the fishermen on the beach. Some were still coming in through the waves in their small raft-like boats. These boats are similar to the ones I saw in Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu, but made of fiberglass instead of pieces of timber lashed together by rope. The size and shape were the same, though. There were one or two made the old fashioned way. Coming ashore, the fishermen (usually two to a boat) plopped down their piled up nets on the sand and proceeded to unwind them slowly, picking off fish and crabs and even the occasional lobster from the nets and piling them on pieces of plastic or cloth on the sand. Dogs and crows stood nearby to fight over the discarded small fishes. One net was full of spidery looking small crabs, too small for eating. All were discarded and even the dogs and crows weren't interested. I watched for quite a while, as did a crowd of Indian tourists. The fishermen seemed friendly.
I walked on to the puja area and noticed some of the priests I had seen the morning before (a particularly fat one and a bearded one) weren't there. I guess they took the day off. I watched a while and then walked up the road onto the southern cliff, which is quieter and more residential than the northern cliff, but with no path along the cliff top for views out to the sea. While walking around up there I kept hearing amplified singing from the direction of the temple, and later amplified drumming and pipe blowing. I walked to the temple, which non-Hindus cannot enter. I could look in through one of the gates and as I walked around the square temple enclosure I found out that it was quite easy to see over the low southern wall. A big crowd had gathered inside, and I spotted a couple of bare chested, white dhoti clad drummers. I walked a little further and spotted the temple elephant, with very small tusks, being washed with water from a hose by a bare chested, dhoti clad guy. The elephant seemed to be enjoying it. When the guy finished he left the hose running with the end propped up so the elephant could use its trunk to load up with water that he would then blow over his back.
I walked back to the low temple wall to see what might be happening inside the temple and when I came back to where the elephant had been, it had vanished. Figuring it might have been taken for a walk, I walked around the temple compound looking for it, but didn't see it. Finally, from the low south wall I spotted it in a dark area of the temple, surrounded by people. I walked back to the beach, stopping on the way to take photographs of four old men sitting under the eaves of an old, red tile roofed building. All four wore dhotis and were friendly. They seemed very pleased to see their photographs.
By the time I had returned along the beach and ascended the steps at its northern end to the top of the cliff it was 10:30 and I was hungry and thirsty. I drank more than a liter of water and then had another very good breakfast in a restaurant overlooking the sea. The welcome breeze off the sea was strong, with whitecaps out on the sea. After finishing eating, I sat there watching the sea for a while and then spent some time in an internet cafe before returning to the restaurant about 4 for a bowl of muelsi, fruit, curd, and honey. I sat there until about 5:30 and then walked up and down the path at the top of the cliffs, first to the south, with views of the still crowded beach, and then to the north, with views north along the palm covered coastline. The sky was mostly clear, but the sun disappeared into haze before it reached the horizon. Just after sunset at the north end of the path, where the path descends from the cliff to the palm lined coast, I watched maybe 50 hawks or kites or some similar bird gliding through the air above the palm trees.
For dinner I ate delicious red snapper, cooked in butter, garlic, and lemon, with french fries and salad. Great food in Varkala. There were no boat lights on the sea that evening. I asked one guy and he told me that perhaps the fishermen were expecting a storm. But there was no storm that night. Another guy told me the fishermen are Christians, and take Sunday (and Saturday night) off. He said there are much fewer fish in the markets on Sundays.
The next morning was humid, with little breeze. I again walked down to the beach about 7 and watched the fishermen unloading their fish. These ones are Muslim, I was told, but most fishermen are Christian. I watched the pujas for a while. The area was much more crowded than the previous two mornings. Fifteen or twenty priests were set up under colorful umbrellas, and among them was one woman in a white and red sari. I saw two men, bare chested and wearing white dhotis, kneeling in front of her while she conducted a puja that seemed similar to what the brahmin priests were doing. First time I've ever seen a woman doing something like that.
The morning was hot, but I enjoyed watching the pujas. Lots of worshipers were there, much more than on previous mornings. One guy had a little clay pot placed on the banana leaf before the priest. He took it on his head to the sea and tossed it in. I wonder if human ashes were inside. Another priest conducted a puja for a father and his maybe eight year old son, both bare chested and clad only in white dhotis.
I came back for breakfast on the cliff top about 9:30 and read the newspaper afterwards in the restaurant. There wasn't much of a breeze, especially compared to previous days. No whitecaps were on the sea. I walked up and down the path along the cliff top a little ways as the wind picked up a bit before noon. I had one more muesli, fruit, curd, and honey and then took an auto rickshaw to the train station about 1. If I didn't have a flight the next morning to the Maldives, I think I would have stayed a few more days in Varkala, despite the heat. It is a pretty place, with its red cliffs (though marred with liter, as always in India), palm trees, and views out to sea. Plus the fishermen and pujas on the beach are very interesting. Despite the tourist season being over, there were still lots of tourists, both foreign and Indian. Varkala must really be packed in the tourist season. I saw some postcards of the cliffs and you couldn't help but notice how much more development there is on the top of the cliffs now than pictured on the postcards.
My train to Trivandrum left at 2:20, only 40 minutes late, which isn't so bad considering it was coming all the way from Delhi. It arrived in Trivandrum about 3 and I checked into the hotel where I had stayed before. The sky darkened and it rained hard about 6, but for only about 15 minutes, with drizzle for a while thereafter. I did hear some loud thunder and saw some impressive lightning. On my last night in India for a while I had a chicken biryani dinner. The night air felt cool after the rain.
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