The village is great, it's on top of red cliffs falling steep down to the sea. A golden beach below the cliffs provide access to the warm and shallow Arabian Sea. The restaurants all face the sea and are built from bamboo. Well, this is not the real village of course, but the tourist village. The only downturn is again the garbage, as the Indians litter the area without qualms. I really think that they would be much better off employing a Westerner to train them in waste managememt.
Unfortunately, Varkala obviously does not attract the crowd I was expecting, but rater couples between 25 and 65 years old, girls who don't shave their armpits, and package tourists (A couple taking a photo of an Indian woman preparing chai at the beach must be on a package tour!) The only two foreign nationalities here seem to be British and German... (and one lone Austrian). But I have to admit that I like it anyway as this is only my preparatory step before getting to Goa. My skin needs to adjust for sunbaking and I need some rest from the dreadful bus rides of the last 4.5 weeks! On Sunday, I will take a 20hrs train up to Goa to a very dodgy place which is 1100km further up north from here and is feard for its clamorous mob and loud rave parties.
I had steamed fish filet spiced with coconut cream and wrapped in banana leaves for dinner. This was really a feast! Apart from a few exceptions, I found the Indian food not very inspiring so far. I was already wondering how people could rave about the food. Most of the times, it was either bland (obviously spiced for the western tourist) or so hot that my taste buds denied passing on any information about other spices than chili to my brains. But today prooved different! Maybe the chefs from the state of Kerala really know how to cook!