We've spent most of the past week and a half lying on beaches, first Palolem Beach in Goa, which was calm and idyllic, and then Varkala Beach in southern Kerala, which had big dramatic waves and the tourist strip perched precariously on a cliff above it. We overheard someone saying Varkala was like "Europe in the sky," referring to the number of tourists, but I'm not convinced that any European eats that many banana pancakes or listens to Hotel California that incessantly when they're actually in Europe!
We didn't really mean to do both beaches consecutively but it ended up that way due to another quirk of the Indian transportation system: We tried to buy a ticket from Goa to Kochi, planning to work our way down the Kerala coast to Varkala gradually, but were only able to buy a ticket that took us all the way to the south of Kerala, so we figured we'd just work our way back up the coast slowly instead! That meant a fourteen hour train ride from Mangalore which arrived at Varkala at 4 in the morning, so we ended up sitting around on the platform for three hours until the sun came up and we were able to head to the beach to find a place to stay.
Posts
