Advertisement
Published: November 7th 2008
Today is the 7th November and Joy's birthday. We decided to do something special so we went for a bike ride around Varkala. Varkala itself is a beautiful place and by far the best place we have visited in India so far. The beach is protected by high cliffs with restaurants and small gift shops perched on top. Behind this facade are numerous small hotels and guest houses. There are no roads in this area only a small path which runs along the cliff top and even smaller paths leading back to the hotels. Coconut trees are everywhere. There must be a law against cutting them down as many of the restaurants are built around them e.g. the trees grow through the roofs etc. We were originally going to stay here until today then move north but in the end decided to stay another 2 days - mainly due to not wanting to travel on Joy's birthday. When we arrived in Varkala, as normal, we hadn't pre-booked any accommodation but deciding to leave it to luck and as luck would have it we got a great deal at the first place we came to. At first I thought the hotel looked
to expensive but I managed to knock the price down in line with our budget. The room is excellent, spotlessly clean and even comes with hot water - a first for us in India. Being here for a week has allowed us to catch up with some reading and thankfully nearly every shop has a good selection of second-hand books for sale. I bought Chris Bonington's 'Everest - The Hard Way' and read it in a couple of days. I first read this book about 25 years ago in Norway and could appreciate the cold conditions his team faced on the mountain. Reading it this time on the beach in 33 degrees of heat wasn't quite the same. Initially I though I had got over my dizzy spells but they reappeared again early on in the week. To play it safe I went to the local hospital to get checked out. I thought I would be there all day especially when I was told to join a long queue. However, 10 minutes later I was out and back in the rickshaw. I reckon the doctor spent about 30 secs with each patient. I was with him for about a minute
- only because of the language problem. Anyway he thinks I have got vertigo and gave me some tablets to sort it out. Feeling much better yesterday I gave the bikes another service as they were starting to look a bit rusty - probably due to all this sea air. On Sunday we start in ernest to head north towards Goa. It's probably going to take us about 2 - 3 weeks to get there in this heat.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.211s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.1199s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Colin and Corrie
non-member comment
Happy birthday Joy. Whether it's a slight touch of vertigo or rusting bikes or lack of hot water its got to be better than debating whether Jonathan Ross and Russel Brand are worth what the BBC is paying them. Happy pedalling.