Kovalam Kapers

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December 2nd 2007

Published: December 5th 2007

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Lazza

Lighthouse Beach

10-12m strip of beach along much of the beach. A lot of frontage being lost to the sea last monsoon.

Arrived in Thiruvananthapuram (aka. Trivandrum) in SW India on Sat 24/Nov. The trip here involved a night's stopover in Delhi in between the two flights bringing us from Kathmandu. The Delhi stop was in the late arvo & the heavy smog, smothering the place, had it lit in sepia tones until sunset. We stayed at the Ashu Palace overnight, a Wotif hotel, costing us US$41 for our 2 rooms (& airport collection).

We arrived here with very vague plans, but believing Kerala to be a relaxed state, with beaches & backwaters, where we could chill. Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, was hot & muggy & even issued us with an evening thunderstorm as a welcome. We got lodgings organised for the night at the YWCA (400R=$12/room/night) from a tourist counter (fee 100R=$3/room) at the airport & caught our pre-paid taxi (206R=$7) directly there. It was pretty Spartan, looking more like a prison block. Cold-water shower, ceiling fan, shutter windows with bars (no glass). During an afternoon walk around town, we were to find this was not atypical accom & that any better standard of rooms were already booked. We did find Greenland Lodging for the next night, offering much the

Planet Bamboo Accom

This bamboo shack was Sue's first accom down here at Kovallam beach.

same, but at half the price (264R=$8/room).

Trivandrum seemed a nice enough place, lots of gardens, men in skirts, narrow back streets, lots of churches, a little hilly & the usual ugly bus station. That 'skirt' thing was probably a bit unfair. Lots of men here wear a lunghi instead of shorts or trousers. A lunghi is a long, often colourful, wrap around cloth, that can be worn to ankle length or doubled up to be at knee height & allow a cooler nether region.

On Sun 25/Nov we undertook some reconnaissance & hopped the local bus (8R=20c each) to travel the 20min, 16km to Kovalam. The bus dropped us near the Kovalam Beach Resort & the tourist facilitation centre. We asked about local accom & were put on to Planet Bamboo who were willing to discount tariff from 1500 to 600R (pre 15%!t(MISSING)ax). We booked in here for 2 nights at 695R=$20/night from the next night (Mon 26/Nov). This place was situated 60m back from the Lighthouse Beach front - the major tourist beach strip. They were small but nice bamboo shacks, supposedly eco-friendly, with cold water shower (but hot water access to room), ceiling fan,

Strolling Salesperson

Many of these folk cart their wares atop their heads.

fly-wired windows, TV & a shared grassed space for sitting, reading or eating.

So, on Mon 26/Nov we had an Ambassador take us from Trivandrum to Kovalam (300R=$9). We decided pretty early on that this was, indeed, a good place to take it easy for a while. We looked around at other available accom & decided to move upmarket, to the beachfront at The Beach Hotel for 1250R=$37/night and ended up staying here for a full week. We had found Planet Bamboo to be too small & the proprietor a bit too full-on; rarely leaving you alone. Sounds like he is trying to rescue this new hotel venture of his son's, but, & he acknowledged this himself, is ill-suited to the role & its onerous responsibilities.

The Beach Hotel is just a year old & right in the middle of the Lighthouse beach strip. The 8 rooms are at ground-level (~15m from the water) & the Waves Restaurant (& German Bakery) upstairs. The rooms here are large, airy; have clothes hanging space, bathroom shelves & a hot-water geyser plumbed into the shower. First night here, when all other noises ceased, the surf sounded so loud - I was

Marg - hard at this tourist thing

sure a tsunami was building & would soon burst through our open window! Even felt a bit guilty by the level of luxury I seemed to have taken to - absolutely decadent. (Not a standard I could ever consider at an Aussie beach.) Got over this though.

Your typical day would go something like this:
Wake early, maybe a bit of a walk, perhaps read or write. Shower. Maybe the Swiss Cafe for breakfast today, beach front view would be good. Can watch the fishermen hauling in & stowing their nets, ropes & boats as they chant their way through these tasks. Next decision- What to have for brekky? Muesli, fruit & yoghurt is always good, but haven't had egged for a couple of days; Yes, a masala omelet & banana lassi!
Now, back to the accom, ablutions, don the swimwear & blockout, grab your book, sunnies & sarong. A few paces down the 2.5m wide paved footpath, running the length of the beach, you meet Sanju. He points out your lounge chair & umbrella & then fine tunes the positioning of both, perhaps pulling your cushion up a little higher. Throughout the day, Sanju will race down &

Local Menswear

The 'lunghi' is the preferred wrap around garment for men - can be worn long or short.

re-position things should you seem to be enduring some sort of discomfort. He has boogie-boards standing by should you decide to take to those endlessly arriving waves. Your reading may be interrupted by the odd "Hello, banana, pineapple, coconut" from a roving saleslady offering fruit salad at your chair. Other vendors of lunghi, sunglasses, nuts, may just disturb your tranquillity unless you deploy the "I'm asleep" posture. If you do feel a little too hot or just need a break from the book or the chair, a quick dip in the water, body surfing the odd wave is a great refresher.
Soon, lunch time rolls around. Back to the room for a tepid shower, without fear of losing your prime position on the beach as Sanju remains on duty protecting your space & any gear you've left behind. Lunch might be taken at Fusion, a delightful restaurant with a 3-page menu - one for eastern-style food, one for western & the third for a hybrid of the two. A clever idea setting it apart from the many other eateries offering much the same sort of fare.
Lunch over. You may consider checking email, a little shopping, or maybe straight back

The Beach Hotel

Our second & preferred accom right on the water's edge. Ground floor rooms with restaurant upstairs.

to the hard slog of the beach. Up against the same sort of options that existed this morning, you may just sit back and watch the waves roll in, suck back, superimpose on one another sending lateral pulses along the shoreline. Maybe observe the foot traffic along the footpath, marvelling at those ladies walking along with a basket containing an entire marlin balanced on their head - delivery for a local restaurant. Check out the neighbouring tourists delighting in those young taut bodies or gagging at sight of the overstretched lycra being worn by the Europeans a couple of lounges down.
Before you know it, the sun is setting and its time to pack it in. Collect the beach kit, shake hands with Sanju, & jump into that shower again. Next item on the agenda is the pre-dinner drink & nibblies. A short stroll down to, say, Santana, for an ice-cold Kingfisher, a G & T and maybe some masala peanuts. You will understand that the long-neck will come out in a newspaper wrapping & be drunk from a large plain mug (no liquor licence here, so just play it cool!).
A stroll to the next beach, has you passing

My banana lounge view

restaurant after restaurant, all displaying the freshly caught sea food out the front, with staff urging you to dine at their premises (or at least having you promise to eat here tomorrow night). You wonder why the seafood prices are so (comparatively) high here, metres from where they're being caught. And how come the jumbo prawns are just about the same size as the crayfish? Soon you make it down to Island View, situated on the sand, & having only one full wall, so you can wriggle your toes & enjoy the evening breeze. A Manchurian chicken, complete with those deliciously hot local spices, might just fill the spot tonight.
You will probably walk a circuit, up to the beach access road, along the top there, and down the other beach entry point, all the time being lured into the clothing, jewellery or trinket shops you pass. A cornetto ice-cream & you're just about back at The Beach Hotel. Read or write a little longer, then allow the surf to send you off to sleep, whilst the overhead fan throws cooling air down onto your near naked body. Hopefully, none of those dreadful nightmares, where you see yourself having to

A little coy about alcohol.

A Kingfisher in a cunning disguise!

adjust your own beach umbrella, will haunt you again tonight!

Despite the fact that we find the beach here offers all the things you would want from a beach holiday, it does seem it has lost a little of its gloss from last season. Apparently, the monsoons tore up a lot of these Kovalam beaches. A grassed strip of 2 or 3m along the footpath edge was lost to the sea & something like 26 seaside palm trees bit the sand. The beach is a narrower strip now, about 12m wide out front of our place, then it was last year. Some of the places are using sandbags to provide their shop floor or access to the beach from the footpath.

On Thu 29/Nov we took a 'day tour' down to Kanniyakumari, the south-most tip of India - where The Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean & the Arabian Sea all meet. This entailed hiring an Ambassador (1700R=$50) to travel the return journey of 172km, out of Kerala & into Tamil Nadu. Considering the relatively short distance it was a very long drive, particularly the busier return leg. It was this drive that persuaded us to stay put

Lighthouse Beach

A postcard shot?

in Kovalam, which we were enjoying so much, and avoid much more road travel. Kerala population is around 32 million & this number was quite believable after the density of people we saw in the many villages we passed through; 100s waiting at bus stops, very busy little places. 'Lands End', as they call it, suffered badly with the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, the area being swamped & 1000 lives lost.

Visited the local lighthouse at our beach during one of its daily afternoon openings (25R=75c entry). This was quite a treat, the 136 steps (Marg's count) being well worth the effort. Great views back (north) along our beach, but also inland where it was a massive green sea of palm trees, & south revealing more rugged coastline & a mosque sitting out on a promontory. Decided, then & there, to walk there pre-brekky the following morning as a bit of an exploratory adventure. The walk was a pleasant one & showed us a larger fishing village tucked further around the coast & protected by quite a substantial break-water. The only downer was the amount of rubbish littering the walk - heaps! This little area would not be