The last of the South!


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November 22nd 2010
Published: November 22nd 2010
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Varkala

Varkala is the only place in southern Kerala where cliffs are facing the Arabian Sea. It's a nice little place with a lot of tourism. All over the cliff are little shops, where people will say everytime you walk by "look my shop, look my shop". Even if it's the 10th time you walk by on the same day and said politely "No thank you" again and again!

Of course we arrived in the dark to make it so much easier for us to find a place to stay! The first two nights we ended up in a crapy place. But we heard of an awesome little guesthouse "Skylark" run by this American lady named Faith and her Indian hubby Saji!
Finally we found a place where we could relax. After talking to a few fellow travelers we found out about an awesome dentist. Josh didn't think twice and went the next day to check it out!
This is why we ended up a week and a half in Varkala..Our days excited out of breakfast, beach, lunch, Yatzhee, dinner and sleeping! But Josh's teeth are spik and span and only for $500!!!
Our friend Stefan left a bit earlier to do more of the south, but we made plans to meet up with him again in Mamallapuram.
The question in the end was "How to get to Mammallapuram?" trying every possibility we ended up with a day train from Kollam (Quillon) to Chennai. This train started at 6.20am and arrived in Chennai at 23.45pm. This is because "the Express train" only stopped 22 times or more!

Chennai

Just one word will do CRAP!!!!!
Arriving after to many hours in the train in the middle of the night we went to our "prebooked" hotel it was really disgusting! Piss stain on the sheets, dirty, windows you really couldn't open we decided to find another hotel!
The next one wasn't really worth the money.. But too tired to keep going we took it! We only needed a place where we could sleep for a few hours!

Mamallapuram

Early in the morning we wanted to get the hell out of Chennai and went without breakfast to the bus station to take a local bus to Mammallapuram.
This was a trip I (ariska) would not forget fast! 10 Minutes after departure a guy sat behind me and started touching me sneaky! I thought he didn't do it on purpose, but after a few stares of death he was still going on! Josh was a sleep next to me and I didn't really want to make a big scene. Then my savior came in the bus... A local girl was standing next to me (think bus overly full, people crammed up to eachother) and my creepy Indian boy started touching her! It's bad but I thought at least he's not into me anymore!!
After 2 hours we finally arrived in Mamallapuram and got reunited with Stefan!
He had done all the hard work with finding an awesome little hostel on the beach!

Mamallapuram village is tiny and laid back! It's probably the one of the few traveller ghetto's in the region of Tamil Nadu. The beach you have to share with fisherman, cows, dogs, boats, nets and not to forget it's also the "public toilet" for the locals!
This was our last days travelling together with Stefan.. our roads would split up.. Us to Agra and Stefan to Andaman Islands!

Most of our days we just chilled (same, same breakie, lunch, dinner and a few beers). But one day we decided to be cultural again and see the ruins around town!
As soon as we arrived in the park with all the temples and ruins a local student (that's what he called himself) followed us around for about 10 min asking us if we needed a tour guide! After again saying politely "no thank you" x10 I (ariska) snapped!
I told him to "FUCK OFF!!!", but our little student didn't really appreciate it. The truth came out: You woman don't talk, you woman are stupid, you woman are on my land! This all escalated and in the end I told him it's all about karma. We asked politly that he would leave us alone and he didn't listen.
So our journey around the temples and ruines went on! After half an hour we ran into him again and he appoligised. But still wanting to make a point and said we should have told him: Sir we really don't want your help and don't want to talk to you. Stefan was trying to tell him we did that and while he was explaining this to our lovely student his phone rang and he just picked it up and ingnored Stefan... This made us go back to square one.. Stefan told him to "Fuck off then"!

After our experience in Chennai we decided we didn't want to go back there for another night and booked for the three of us a taxi straight to the airport!
This was a good and a bad choice, good because no Chennai anymore, bad because we thought our taxi driver didn't know how to drive:
- He had to turn on the inside lights to see what gear he was in
- He had a little paper with a picture of Buddha infront of the speedo... Probably going like 60km to fast!! (think indian traffic)
- Whenever he overtook he turned his lights on and off... Where was the honking??
- Wasn't or couldn't read the signs and launched us over some speedhumps
But we made it to the airport in one piece. We said our goodbyes to our new friend Stefan and jumped into a new adventure called the North of India!







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22nd November 2010

I loved Mammallapuram. We did a little bike ride around the town, such a cute little place. Varkala has been my fave so far though. I pretty much set up shop at Cafe Del Mar and sat there eating all day. Sucked when one of the dudes from Fiesta got arrested for selling us beer... awkward! I agree with the Chennai statement... ew. Madurai is like Delhi of the South, not my cup of tea but I love Kochi! I want to live here in this little quarter of the city we're staying in and drink all the great coffee! Xx

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