68 THE WEEK^ • JULY 29, 2018
COVER STORY
TRAVEL●Va r k a l a ’s
winking bartender
IN VARKALA, WE stayed in a hotel called Blue-
water Beach Resort, which conjured images of
blonde women sea-gazing from a cottage while
sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them. Th e
reality turned out to be a disappointment, as it
so often does. Th e room smelled of wet sand,
and the only person who did any gazing was the
hotel dog, an accomplished licker. If you take a
walk by the North Cliff —Varkala is famous for its
cliff seemingly rising from the sea—you will fi nd
it strewn with misnamed homestays and hotels,
like the dour-looking Happy Land Beach Resort
and the deeply mundane Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Nandan, one of the local men soliciting cus-
tomers to his seafood restaurant, told me that
most of these homestays are illegally owned by
Russians, although I did not see any of them dur-
ing my stay there. (Th ey were probably like the
mafi a, or a good banoff ee pie—it is so diffi cult to
come across one.) Th en he asked me to come to
his restaurant for ‘specialised’ seafood. I asked
him what was so specialised, and he reeled off
a few dishes like butter garlic prawns and fried
pearl spot, and I told him there was nothing ‘spe-
cialised’ about them. He looked a little guilty and
didn’t meet my eyes. Th en he said that what wasspecialised was the technique used to prepare
them and gave me such a withering look that I
dared not ask him what those techniques were.
He said that Varkala is usually full of music and
dance parties but now, during off -season, there
are only weekend parties for techies from the
city at a nearby place called Chillout. As it was
a Saturday, the only people in Varkala were the
Indian techies and a few foreigners. Kipling was
wrong when he said that the east and west would
never meet. Th ey had not only met but had
interchanged. Th e Indians dressed western and
had a distinctly American air of restlessness, like
those people you see in airport lounges when the
loudspeaker announces that their fl ight has been
delayed by two hours. And the westerners wore
cotton kurtas and hibernated on beach mats, like
the Malayali labourers you fi nd dozing inside
the half-fi nished buildings they are supposed to
build.
In the afternoon, I went for a reiki session
at a yoga studio, and my chakras were opened
by a reiki student from the Netherlands called
Sharmiley Davey. Sharmiley came to India
because she was gifted with the power of healing
and found she could cure her relatives back
home when she touched them. She told me my
indigo chakra was missing, and hence my con-
sciousness could not be properly opened. After-Ranking States % share of
visitors
1 Tamil Nadu 21.31%
2 Uttar Pradesh 13.12%
3 Andhra Pradesh 9.49%
4 Madhya Pradesh 9.33%
5 Karnataka 8.04%
6 Maharashtra 7.22%
7 Telangana 5.90%
8 West Bengal 4.61%
9 Gujarat 2.62%
10 Rajasthan 2.57%MOST VISITED
STATESDOMESTIC
TOURISTS
10
Ranking States % share of
visitors
1 Tamil Nadu 19.11%
2 Maharashtra 18.90%
3 Uttar Pradesh 12.78%
4 Delhi 10.20%
5 West Bengal 6.19%
6 Rajasthan 6.13%
7 Kerala 4.20%
8 Bihar 4.09%
9 Goa 2.75%
10 Punjab 2.67%
Source: India Tourism Statistics, 2017, Ministry of Tourism, Government of IndiaMOST VISITED
STATESFOREIGN
10 TOURISTSGRAPHICS: DENILAL