Varkala, Kerala

It was a fairly late 10:30 p.m. arrival at the train station in Varkala. The tuk-tuk that took us to our hostel had to keep reversing out of roads he had intended to take, as they were now padlocked for the night. We had just booked three nights in Varkala, but by the end of breakfast on our first morning we decided to extend our stay. Unfortunately, the hostel we were staying at didn’t have any space to extend, but we found another one just 300m down the road (which was also a little cheaper as well). In total we spent 6 nights here.

Our time in Varkala was very much about eating really tasty food during the day, then exploring the beaches and playing frisbee in the late afternoon once the temperature lowered, and then finishing the evening with a beautiful sunset and delicious food. Of course, there were a few morning runs along the coastal path.

One late afternoon we were sat on the beach with the frisbee on display. Some of the local children were out selling some items and they spotted the frisbee. They were so excited and asked to play. I’m awful at frisbee so I volunteered James to play. They played for a good 25 minutes and then got back to selling. The boys who were out selling just looked so down and miserable when working so it was lovely seeing them have a fun time.

The main beach here was stunning, situated just below a huge cliff – which meant that all the “beach” shacks were positioned at the top of the cliff. I was hoping that Varkala would be another place we could do some surfing, but the surfboards for rent on the beach were very poor quality and covered in a lot of gaffer tape. I enquired at some of the actual surf shops, but they required you to have a lesson before letting you rent. We ummed and ahhed a bit about whether to do a joint lesson, and by the last few days, we thought we would actually enquire – but the surfing times were so early it put me off! It also meant choosing between a morning run or going for a surf – we obviously weren’t that committed!

Varkala is a huge tourist area, but it was also fairly nice to be somewhere with plenty of food and drink options that weren’t all curry.

We also bumped into Naresh and the gang again…. James and I finally settled on a specific restaurant for dinner one evening(we took ages to decide), and then Naresh came in and told us to pull up a seat and join them. Naresh is such a people person, and you can see how much he enjoys bringing people together – he’s very good at it too! This was meant to be our last time seeing Naresh and the Italian couple, so we hugged and said our goodbyes – until we bumped into them again at lunch the following day, and so we repeated our goodbyes one final time.

We loved our time here, but I think we would still prefer Agonda over Varkala – the beaches were far more stunning, it wasn’t quite as touristy, and the beach shacks were directly on the beach.