Lazy- Pazy Weekend at Varkala.. Continues…

Welcome back to the Lazy-Pazy Weekend at Varkala. As I was going through the previous post, I realized how much Hubby and I covered in one day. With most of the main attractions covered in the first day, it was time to kick the laziness into high gear!

(Psst.. if you need no convincing about the place and need to go NOW, you can check out the Varkala Cheat Sheet to help you plan you trip.)

There is no better feeling than walking up to the sounds of the sea and gorgeous sunshine to go with it. (Except when you’re hung over :P, fortunately due to lack of availability of alcohol in the town, I woke up feeling as fresh as ever). I woke up fairly early (for weekend standards), not wanting to waste the morning in bed. Umm.. confession time… I woke up early the next morning so that we don’t miss out on the breakfast. Arrgh… there you go. I said it! When you have free breakfast included in your package, it is criminal to miss it out. Also, it is the most important meal of the day, right?

Off I went in the quest for the morning meal, when I was greeted by the friendly and ever helpful staff. We had quite an elaborate breakfast menu to choose from. With the choices made, for Hubby and me, I sat back in my chair at the dining area, with my toes in the sand bed that they had created, and started enjoying the morning. Before I knew it, the breakfast was ready. It was simple eggs and bread, but I felt like royalty sitting there in the lap of luxury enjoying myself.

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With the breakfast devoured, we started talking to the staff of Maadathil cottages. The resort is run by a family where the father oversees the property and the three brothers have their responsibility assigned to them. One takes care of the booking and reservations, one the kitchen while the third is in charge of the housekeeping. Since Maadthil Cottages is slightly far away from the main Varkala Cliff, the maximum number of visitors are foreigners who enjoy bumming around the beach and catching some tan.

We soon gave our order for lunch, Kerala Style Shrimp Curry with rice (places like this it is always better to give early orders so that lunch is ready when you want it), and also asked them to arrange a couple of bottles of beer for us. After our chat, Hubby and I started wandering around the property. We found a great place which was slightly higher than the rest of the property. Sitting there gave a wonderful vantage point of the sea and the shore line. This spot became one of our favourite spots on the property.

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Did u say hello to our friend here?? He knows how to life THE life…

After a bit of loitering around, Hubby decided to get back into bed, and I head back to my favourite cane chair for a bit of reading. I kept wishing that I had my laptop on me that weekend as I’m sure I would have been able to translate my thoughts into words so well right there and then, and perhaps this post would be a little different. But then again, a little filter to my random thought is good too 🙂 

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The view from my cane chair.. not too bad eh?

With the reading and relaxing, all I needed then was a mug of beer, unfortunately as I had mentioned earlier, alcohol isn’t allowed to be stored in restaurants and resorts and has to be ordered specially. Hubby and I had asked the manager to organize a few bottles for us earlier and as luck would have it, the bootlegger came just in time as if he was reading my mind. I put the bottles in the fridge that we had in the room and opened the coldest one of the lot. Aaaahh!!! Now life is perfect! I think Hubby heard/smelled/ sensed that somewhere there was a bottle of beer that had been opened, and it was time to wake up. He emerged from the door, in his sunglasses, ready for the afternoon drink.

Soon our lunch was ready and we head out to the dining area.

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I really surprised myself in Varkala by enjoying sea food. The squid curry, although it did smell a little bit at first, tasted really good. The smell did not bother me for long. Perhaps that’s the advantage of eating alfresco, the smell that might cause you some amount of discomfort, gets carried away.

An afternoon of beer and good food, has to be followed by a nap, and this time it was my turn. I snuggled into bed and fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. In what seemed like ten minutes after I fell asleep, I was woken up by Hubby. Turns out that I had slept for almost an hour. All refreshed,  it was time to hit the beach, and not just our beach, it was time for some beach hopping!

The beach that belonged to the neighbouring resort looked interesting with a lot more people enjoying the waves, and was the first on our list. The beach was a little bigger than the one we had, but the sand was not as fine or as black as ours. Although I got into the water for sometime, but it just did not feel right. Whom are we kidding? Our beach is the best-est!!! We’re just that spoilt! Without wasting any more precious time, we got back to where our hearts truly belonged, thus ending the ‘beach hopping’ that we had planned to do. We settled down on ‘our’ beach, Hubby got a bottle of beer and we watched the waves get bigger, the sky display its brilliance by turn into various hues of orange and pink as the sun went down.

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Our beach

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That night we were back at the North Cliff for dinner post our customary 40 min walk to the North Cliff for dinner. It was a Sunday night and surprisingly very quiet on the North cliff. So quiet that it made us wonder if the places were even open that day. I guess it was just the ‘Sunday Night’ thing. People would’ve gone home after the weekend, getting ready to get back to their desks or their books. Fortunately we had one more day before we joined that club.

We had dinner at Trattorias Restaurant that night (another recommendation by Karishma). The place was one of the few places that was buzzing with activity and that is a sure sign of how good the place is. We sat back, ordered our beer and Thai Curry and Pad Thai for dinner thereafter. The Thai Curry that Hubby had was .. umm.. sort of so-so, but I really enjoyed the Pad Thai. Not one of the best I’ve had, but definitely quite good.

The one big mistake I made was that I ate too much that night and that got the better of me. I got tired and sleepy and forced poor Hubby to call it a night. We took an auto back and it cost us 200 bucks! Tip for the future… autos are not an option in Varkala. They are ridiculously expensive.

The next morning I woke up with the sounds of birds, chirping away noisily. I got out of the room and saw a whole bunch of birds (don’t ask me which ones, I’m so bad at that! I guess they are the ones that eat fish, which is why they were all over the beach), going crazy. As soon as I got to the edge of the beach, it was a beautiful sight.. the fishermen had come in with their morning catch and were selling it to the locals. Picture perfect, don’t you think?

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I did enjoy sometime alone in the morning, walking aimlessly around the property, lounging around on the hammocks and catching up on some reading with a hot steaming cup of coffee. I was living the dream! For a few hours at least, we had a 5 p.m. flight. Arrrgh! Fortunately that gave us the morning to enjoy the solitude of Varkala.

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Hubby woke up when I was halfway through my coffee and it was time for another super feast of breakfast – brunch.

Time sure flies really fast when you’re having a good time. Soon it was time to pack up and leave. However, we had one pit stop before we got to the airport – the Varkala Lighthouse. Hubby and I decided to leave for the airport an hour early so that we could get to the lighthouse and have enough time to climb on top and spend some time there. We had read a bit about it and all that we had read encouraged us strongly to pay this lighthouse a visit. Our cab came right on time, and post a sad farewell, and with a heavy heart, we left the serenity of Maadathil Cottages.

The drive to the lighthouse was about half an hour. We quickly jumped out of the cab and got to the lighthouse office and were greeted with a rude shock. The office was closed! The opening time for the lighthouse is between 3pm -5pm and we had reached fifteen minutes early. We decided to kill time and visit the Anjengo Fort, which is across the road from the lighthouse.

Anjengo Fort is a 17th century fort which has seen Portuguese, Dutch and finally the British powers through its existence. You can read a bit about the fort here. The interesting part about the fort is that it is tiiiinnnnnyyyy!!! I guess that is what remains of the fort after all these years. It took us exactly ten minutes to cover the extents of the fort, leisurely! Having said that, it did give me some really good photo ops. So can’t complain much.

 

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Once we were done exploring the fort, we were still five minutes early for the opening of the lighthouse. Fortunately, with a little bit of pleading, the gentleman at the office opened the lighthouse and let us go. We took off our shoes, stepped in, and looked up… we had a loooooottt of steps to climb. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Sure, I think I’m fit, but I actually am not. Also, the heat at the humidity were not helping.. at all!!! Anyhow, we were there and we were doing this! 

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This is what we had to climb!

Looks can be deceptive sometimes. The climb actually wasn’t that bad. I was able to do it without stops and it really didn’t take very long. As we had read, the view from the top was worth every step we climbed. I will not waste your time trying to describe it, take a deep breath and have a look at the pictures below. I’m sure it’s going to take your breath away!

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The sea and the backwaters
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The Fort from the top

Pictures really do speak a thousand words, don’t they? We were so mesmerized by the view that we almost forgot about the cab driver waiting for us and the flight that we had to catch. I guess it was a good thing that we left Varkala with this being the last thing we saw. Talk about saying good-bye with a bang!

Nothing can ever prepare you for the beauty of the hidden gems in your own country. In a country as big as India, with its ever-changing landscapes, cultures and traditions, there is always one gem right next to you waiting to be discovered. You cannot thank your stars enough that you’re born in a country that has so much to see, so much to offer and so much that you can be a part of. All you need to do is pack your bags and get ready for the next mystery to unfold before of you.

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This post is a part of the 3Girls and a #BlogAlong hosted by Upasna from Life on My Plate, Shruti or Msz Knowitall and me. This month’s theme is Travel! Let’s hear about your favourite places, or the place you just visited, how about the place you hated! Let’s kick the wanderlust into high gear! Come join in on all the fun!

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Also linking this post to Lyn’s #The Weekly Postcard

A Hole In My Shoe

2 Replies to “Lazy- Pazy Weekend at Varkala.. Continues…”

  1. Well that looks rather pleasant there 🙂 How is it in Varkala? Are there many hawkers along the beach? #blogalong

    1. Varkala is one of the well kept secrets along the coast of the Arabian Sea in India. however, as far as I can see, it won’t be long before it will get a lot more commercial. I feel lucky that I got to see it before it becomes another Goa. Since it isn’t very crowded and the beaches are fairly small, there aren’t many, rather any hawkers there. It sure is quite annoying to be disturbed by them when you’re trying to get some lazying done 🙂

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