Travel Day 964 – Varkala, Kerala, INDIA
Since I really enjoyed my little exploration walk yesterday morning, today I obviously had to get up early again and see something else…
Holi Man waiting for Customers in Varkala
While I made my way up north along the coast yesterday, it seemed only a natural choice that I would walk in the opposite direction to see what I would find there. So first I walked along the big parking lot where I had initially arrived and then I made my way down from the cliff on a winding road until I reached the beach again. In this area there appeared to be a local beach situated between two cliffs and since it had road access, a lot of local people had come to do an early morning puja…
It was actually quite an interesting sight and while everybody was minding their own business, I could sit down for a little while and take everything in . There must have been 8 or 10 holy men, each of them having a little parcel of sand by the beach and each of them had arranged that little parcel as to their liking. Some had just a blanket and a little shrine while other had quite elaborate shrines and nice flower decorations everywhere. In the same manner some of the holy men seemed to be quite popular and they were busy with whole families, while others patiently waited for any customer to show up…
Morning Puja at the Beach in Varkala
The puja itself seemed to mostly involve bare breasted mean, wearing nothing but a white dhoti and it always went along with some mumbling, some bowing down, some passing of things or circling them around the head. The final act was always for everyone to carry something on their head to the sea and submerge in the water. Everything seemed really traditional and connected to local culture which made it hard for me to believe that we were only a few hundred meters away from the same beach where Western girls were enjoying the sun in as little as a g-string bikini…
After such a nice cultural start of my day, I decided to follow the music in the air which was coming from a close by temple and so my exploration walk of the day brought me inland rather than along the coast as I thought initially. The temple itself was situated on a hill by a big water tank and while I wasn’t allowed inside the temple itself, at least I was able to walk around and enjoy the quite interesting devotional music. It was played on long skinny trumpets and a kind of bulky drum that I had not seen or heard before, but I quite liked it…
Musicians at the Temple in Varkala, India
So today I not only got to enjoy being by the beach, but I also managed to go on a nice walk again, watch the puja and enjoy the temple with its interesting music. Yeah, today was definitely another nice day in Varkala and I was happy to have done a little something beyond the usual routine… : )
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