Varkarla - the next seven days - Kerela, India

Thursday 7th February - Thursday 14th February.

... Marcus and I have become beach bums. We have embraced the concept with open arms and spirit. Gone are the fleeces, jumpers, thermals, socks, hiking boots, and pashmina scarves. They have been banished to the bottom of our rucksacks along with our long sleeved tops. The shorts are out. I have been shopping and I am now sporting a sleeveless red singlet with the Om Shanti symbol in the middle of it. It is the tackiest thing I’ve bought in ages and I love it. Marcus has decided to grow a beard and is also sporting a bandana. He is beginning to look like an extra from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Life is good.

Life, in fact, is better than good. Life is fantastic.

Varkarla is paradise. A series of cliff top huts, shacks, cafes, bars, restaurants, and shops, nestled in between coconut trees, beautifully coloured flowers, and shady jungle plants with the sounds of the Arabian sea crashing on the beach below. The town itself goes far back from the beach. A couple of kilometres is the proper Varkarla. But as a visitor to this place the cliff front is all you really ever see. It’s all you need.

We are strolling along the winding path that follows the cliffs. We are trying to decide where to eat lunch. There is no shortage of choice. Every other building is a bar-café-restaurant. The food is superb, especially the fish, which is caught fresh every day. The main occupation of people living locally to Varkarla is fishing. Fishing villages run up and down the coast. Varkarla used to be just a small collection of huts twenty years ago. Until the back-packing route descended upon it and it began to thrive under the eager pitter patter of western travellers, looking for a piece of paradise. Now as you stroll along the cliff top you find yourself amidst a hotchpotch of used book-stores, two-storey bamboo restaurants, serving every cuisine you can imagine – from Mexican to Italian (and serving it well), clothes stores, material shops, tailors, Yoga centres, barbers, massage clinics, and internet cafes – amidst this menagerie is where you find us.

We decide to head up to one of the many cafes just down from where we are staying. We walk along in the baking sunshine, following the stream of human consciousness: most of it immersed in a warm glow of THC - Italians, Danish, Russians, Canadians, French, Spanish, Israelis - people from every walk of life amble and mill around us. They are at various stages of civil deconstruction. Some, you can tell have just arrived: Lobster coloured, wearing tourist clothes and looking pretty confused by the bombardment of music, and pseudo-culture that Varkarla projects. Then you have the seasoned travellers. Tattooed, deeply sun-tanned, with easy smiles, loose cotton clothing, adorned with beads, bracelets, dredds, and beards. Along this spectrum we fall somewhat closer to the lobster look. Then of course you have the people that came here 20 years ago and never left. They are amazing to behold. It’s like Dicky Attenborough has just created them from DNA strains he has found wedged in between the teeth of a retired Mancunian Football fan, that bit the ear of a hippy at Woodstock in the sixties. They are the real deal [When I was in Turkey in Istanbul I met a fantastic guy from Oz called Troy. He had just come back from an amazing trip through Kazikstan, down into Pakistan, and over the border in Iran, before heading through Georgia and Armenia into Turkey. I was most impressed. Of one of the many stories he had to tell was of meeting a guy, sitting under a tree in the mountains, who had following the hippy circuit in the 60s – Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and never left. The guy, who was European, spent his life since just wandering the mountains and living off food and water he could scrounge off of people. I imagine he’d also got through a fair bit of hash]. We step out of the hubble-bubble into the shade of a café. Beer and fish masala curry. And roti. Coming right up! Well at Indian speed that is. We settle in for a long wait…

A week has gone past in Varkarla. It seems like the blink of an eye. Time is most definitely relative. It still passes at the same speed. Your brain just records it differently. We have been busy doing things. Things fall into several categories: 1) Getting up. This is completely dependent on 2) getting hammered. This happens pretty much every day, all day and all night at the 3) going to the chill out bar. The chill out bar is about 25 metres from our room. It is frequented by a number of stoned, and drunk, very happy people. The owners included. Most nights don’t finish until 5am (see 1 and 2). Most nights we have no idea of what we have spent on drinks. That’s ok though because neither do the owners. We usually work out some happy medium. 4) Eating. This takes place at various times every day. Breakfast is usually around 1pm. Followed by a beer. Then lunch takes place around 4pm with a beer. Then we have a couple of beers before going out for dinner. Fresh fish is the order of the day: Marlin, grouper, red snapper, tuna, and lobster. All cooked in steamed coconut leaves, or in a gorgeous tikka masala sauce. The restaurants purvey there goods in chilled refrigerators out front. The eyes of the fish are clear and they smell fresh. We usually have a meal with a 5) Beer. See everything. 6) Exercise. Amazingly enough we manage to fit in regular runs on the beach and swimming everyday, usually before breakfast at lunchtime. 7) Reading books. There are so many fantastic bookshops here and most places run an exchange service 8) shopping. 9) Sleeping. This occurs every day at random intervals. Rather like Garlfield trying to cross a sunbeam in Jim Davis’ comic strip. Snoozing can occur anytime, especially in hammocks. Zzzzzzzzzz.