Anchored Down in Varkala

After a long and heavy heavy sleep I dragged myself out of bed, bypassing the yoga mat (rare but true), and headed for the beach. Ugh. Swollen glands and big headache. Nonetheless, from somewhere in the recesses behind my self-pity I managed to appreciate the gorgeousness of the big laterite cliffs, the white sandy beach and the rolling (although quite vicious-looking) waves. However first and foremost I couldn't help but notice the bizarre segregation of people - Indians up one end of the beach, fully clothed, dipping their toes in the water, keeping their distance from the Westeners up the other end, clad in skimpy bikinis and speedos. Of everything I've read in (ongoing) preparation for my India travels, most emphatic and repetitive is the instruction to 'please respect the local custom and dress modestly.' Ok. So which part of this do people not understand? Seems to me that the Westeners here simply don't care. Not that I think it necessary to go to the other extreme and start windsurfing in a sari, but I think a modest attempt to cover up is respectful when one is a guest in this country. Or maybe it is that some Westeners don't get enough attention at home and simply love having their bare flesh oggled at? Baffling, and certainly not my choice of self-representation. Still, diversity is the spice of life (?).

I took a long walk up the coast, past the mushrooming tourist stalls and restaurants selling endless amounts of Tibetan and Kashmiri wares, Ayurvedic pamperings and endless menus selling everyting from Thalis to beans on toast and cappucinos. However, despite this growing tourism here the vibe is MELLOW, MAN and this is a place where you can really kick back and relax without a car or rickshaw horn in earshot (more likely is an Asutralian accent or a Titanic soundtrack). And before long the stalls fizzle out and merge into a coastline thick with palm trees and sand dunes, interrupted by the occasional fishing village, complete with handmade wooden boats, shacks and perhaps a token temple or mosque.

There's little to report from the next few days - they were spent lying in my bed with the lights off staring at the ceiling, waiting for my head to stop throbbing quite so intensely. Although I brought enough medicines to sink a small ship, average painkillers didn't quite make it into the first aid kit (!), as I'm not normaly a fan of dosing myself up on Iboprufen or whatever. So I slowly sampled all of the recommended homeopathic remedies for headaches from my newly-acquired homeopathic remedies suitcase, but with little success. So I succombed to sitting it out. After having not emerged from my room for 36 hours my wonderful host came to enquire as to my state, and promptly took himself off to the local coconut lady, returning with a coconut for me to drink. "Pure glucose, madam, this is what you need!" Ok, if you say so! It did indeed help a lot, and I found myself on the way to recovery. The following day I managed to make it out of bed and out for an ayurvedic massage, which followed up where the coconut had left off. I knew that ayurvedic massages involved a good deal of oil, but this really exists in another dimension. Added to that is the extremely UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL nature of the experience - not one for those who don't like their foot massages to go above the ankle, let alone anywhere near the knee. Absolutely not - no room for underwear here, disposable or otherwise. This was just me, the table, and a lorra lorra oil. I don't think there was a single inch of me that my dear friend (whose name I have forgotten) didn't get to know quite intimately. I'm normally a fan of deep tissue massage - no pain, no gain and all of that - but I have now come to appreciate the holistic rebalancing effects of ayurvedic massage - inordinate quantities of oil applied in large wave-like motions all over the body. In my delicate state it was exactly what I needed - I felt the energetic pathways of my subtle body being cleared and balanced, leaving me feeling calmer, clearer-headed and gently energised. Furthermore, your mind gets absorbed into the wave-like rhythm and the whole thing turns into a rhythmic meditation - truly hypnotic. As we came close to the end I found myself lying there wondering how on earth I was going to get clean of all of the excess oil, but before long was whisked into the bath and literally scrubbed from head to foot by my new-found friend. Not since I was a wee nipper have I been so thoroughly soaped and lathered and scrubbed and rinsed by somebody else, which was evident in the fact that I kept getting all the wrong limbs in the wrong places at the wrong times. Still, with no possible means of linguistic communication between us, we did what girls do best and had a good old giggle (at least I think we were laughing at the same thing!), before she rubbed and shook me dry, dressed me almost as well as my mum can, and sent me on my way feeling like a new person. So good in fact that after I bounced out of there, still quite stunned from the experience, I took myself out for some of the best food I had tasted yet in India, and then went back to my room and fell into a deep baby sleep. Better still, when I finally made it onto my yoga mat the following morning, I was revitalised and new, nothing like someone who's been clogged up to the eyeballs for the past few days - good old ayurvedic massage, the perfect remedy and highly recommended :)