Varkala highlights

Date: July 10, 2009
Location: Varkala Beach, Kerala State, India
Accomplishments: We cycled 130 kilometers/78 miles today from Allepey to Varkala Beach!

Traveling is not always a dreamy vista over a glass of wine. While it is unpredictable, adventurous, and exciting, sometimes those same exact feelings of unpredictability take a negative avenue and they change from excitement to stressful. After a while the unpredictability piece becomes scary and I yearn for the comforts of my own place. Today while cycling the ocean front road through smog and overbearing traffic, dodging rickshaws, bull drawn carts, buses, cars, people everywhere, I miss the regularity and comfort of the Kal-Haven trail and my own street.
At 1:00, we stop at a vegetarian hotel/restaurant for veg thali (veg set meal of the day). I go to wash my hands and I realize that my face and arms are covered in a gray film. The "ocean view road" has turned out to be "smog lane outlined by garbage, factories,and shacks.
Eating lunch, we order a mineral water, and I feel bad for all the plastic bottles that we waste. I think of all the people and each day all the plastic bottles, containers, wrappers, bags, so much we throw away Even though I care, plastic waste and creating garbage is our human way of life and it is so hard to avoid.

Reader, I challenge you to survive one single day without creating any garbage! Try going to the store to purchase anything! Everything comes in a package!

So after a good chai tea and veg curries with rice, we are re-energized. WE face the crazy streets.

8.5 hours total cycling time, we make the last stretch into Varkala. The main road ends into the ocean. Immediately, I feel the salt stick to my already smog-frosted arms. A man in a humble tea stall says,
"Hello! You are coming from?"
"America!" I say.
"Nice! Your good name?"
"Steve and she is Teresa!"

We rest our bikes on the pole outside and enjoy two glasses of cardamom tea.
"You stay here in Varkala today?" he asks
"Yes," I respond.
"Where is a good place?"
"Direct opposite, nice place, nice family and here I can make for you dinner,
Kerala food," he smiles. Then he brings us a photograph of several American people eating in his restaurant.

Even though we are so hot, sweaty, polluted, grimy, and salty, the sea breeze is welcoming. The cardamom milk spice tea is soothing. We look at the lodge next door. It has a beautiful sea view off of a large room for only 500 rupees. The lodge becomes our haven for the next three days. The man next door and his wife become our chefs of masala dosas, parotas, and vegetable curries.

A few moments to remember from Varkala Beach:

1. Sitting on the balcony, we watch the local Indian tourists do religious chants/prayers under umbrellas on the beach.

2. The waves are phenomenally HUGE. They CRASH into the cliffs that slowly feed the land to the hungry sea.

3. We walk along the cliff with an incredible view on the left of the sea and a chain of restaurants and lodges on our right. As Steve and I walk along, I casually make eye-contact with a girl sitting in a cafe.
"Steve, we just passed this girl in that cafe back there and I swear that I know her from somewhere!"
Then like a light-switch it clicks!
"I know! She is the girl that entered Zina Cottages as we were leaving Munnar! Before she was wearing a pink and blue chudidah shirt that I adored! Now she is wearing all black," I say, " I've got an idea! We will walk back slowly. You look at her and tell me if that is her, the girl from Munnar!"

We turn around and in front of the cafe, she waves to us. We walk up to her. A moment's recognition of an acquaintance becomes an hour conversation with a friend. Tanya, as it turns out is from Chicago-- only three hours from our home of Kalamazoo. It's as if we had to travel half way around the world to meet her. Hopefully, we will cross paths again, only this time it will be closer to home!