Day 9

I woke up with the feeling that the sleep didn't really heal the pain, but actually amplified it. It was so brief moment, meeting these people and now it's gone. Will I see her again?

Abhinand invited me for the breakfast and I obliged without hesitation. I met his wife at the wedding and she introduced me to her mother-in-law yesterday, which was very adorable woman, although didn't speak much of English. They give me so much food that I felt I won't need to eat a lot more for whole day. It was very nice meal and once again I felt that people here are tremendously hospitable.

He taken me on a motorbike to give me just a little lift, but we met Saurav and he actually gave me lift to beach itself. Maybe at this point I should get used to traveling on motorbike as passenger, but it was my longest trip and Varkala is way more curvy than other coastal cities I seen here. There's a lot of slopes and we often went down or up, accelerating suddenly and I couldn't help, but feel a little bit anxious.

He went with me for a little walk around the cliff and I couldn't stop being in awe of how beautiful that place is. Soon enough I thanked Saurav and say goodbye and went on my way. Along the cliff there were set up many, many shops and my general vibe was very different from what beach area was in Kochi, not even speaking about Kollam. It seems more touristic place, way more than even Kochi. Sometimes I felt that here is set up hippie version of India just for white tourist, rather than authentic Kerala culture. Speaking of which, there were more white tourists than in Kochi and maybe that was the reason why reaction on me here in Varkala were toned down. There were still stares, smiles and chatting (maybe I should set up abbreviation for that at this point, as Indians seem to have abbreviation for every concept - SSC maybe?), but it was definitely not that intensive as in different places. Still there were more local people and other Indians, like internal tourists, than white ones so the place still was blend of taste and needs of locals and tourists.

I went my way down to the beach and decided to take a bath, despite warning signs of not taking bath here. Again in contrast to different places here people were actually swimming in the ocean instead of just wetting their legs. Although it's probably generous to call it swimming, people were submerging themselves completely, waiting for the strong waves. Life guards were whistling when someone was doing something stupid, went too far or waves were getting too strong. Or at least it's my interpretation of situations.

I went further along the beach and I discovered that it's stretching long and in some long stretches of the beach there's barely any people except spare white people. I didn't exactly like that, but I went further out of curiosity how far it goes and when cliffs end. At some point cliffs finished and there locals appeared again and it signalled some other main beach and entry point from the city.

My general vibe from white tourists, in contrast to the ones from Kochi, was that these people probably don't engage much with the locals and their culture. Maybe I shouldn't be judgemental, because not everyone needs to be as interested as me and definitely there were some people interested, and besides everyone has right to spent their time how they wish. But I couldn't help myself and be little judgemental towards everyone who came here just for the beach in December (and these people hiked prices for the end of December in Varkala, so maybe there is some self-interest in this criticism).

I was swimming few times for long time and it was very nice feeling. Waves were quite strong so it was fun when they were hitting me with force and sometimes even submerging. I went along the beach and then tried to climb up back to cliffs and I went by some roundabout way on the sloped roads.

I went back and forth along the beach and along the cliffs few times like that and before I knew it, it was already starting to darken. I had few nice chatting today with few people, including some Tamil guys about Tamil movies and what I could see in Tamil Nadu. I tried to do shots of sunset, but I couldn't make it look good.

I decided that I need to find ATM to withdraw some cash and I went a little bit away from the beach area. First ATM didn't work for me for some reason, but I knew that I need more cash already and I was determined. There were some other ATMs further away, but it forced me to go in dark streets further into the city. Next ATM worked and I decided to go different route back to the beach. More dark streets and alleys, but it was somehow refreshing.

When I returned to the beach I was in the less attended one and back stretch separated me from the main ones. I went along it for a while, but thought that I will climb up to the cliff. When I found some stairs lights along it suddenly turned off so I almost resigned, but it got back up quickly. It came out that these stairs were leading to private hotels areas, but I quickly tried to leave it.

Cliffs become very nicely illuminated at night and maybe it shouldn't surprise me at this point, but both cliffs and beach became much more crowded now. Sometimes it was really difficult to move at the alley along the cliff. It seems that proper local life is going here at the evening and night.

I enjoyed late hours atmosphere here and I even went into direction I didn't explore earlier, but after a while I was a little tired and headed to hostel. It was 40-50 minutes walk along serpentine sloped roads.

In the hostel room I discovered why I felt such an itching in my feet, legs and other places. I just got the tan, or rather I would say burn. I was slightly red all over. Somehow I felt that spending time at Kochi beach I already went past this first stage of exposure to the sun. But there were more shadows and beach was rather small in comparison so it made sense. Here beaches are wide and completely without shadow. I was also actually going fully into the water here, which I actually I didn't do in Kerala except that one time in Vypin island where group of little boys encouraged me. I need to buy sunscreen, because obviously I didn't think about that before.

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