VARKALA Christmas Cheer

Dame India Average

 A Merry Christmas and a very happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year

to all our friends and family around the world.

- KKXX

VARKALA Postcards From The Edge

Hotel dog in a manger.  

It is Christmas Eve, we are in Varkala in the state of Kerala and this blog is finally live and up to date.

We'd woken in Madurai on Saturday morning, bags packed for Varkala via nearby Trivandrum, when we found the train was cancelled two hours before takeoff, with no reason given.

Fortunately, our hostel guy Jagan (above) sorted us an Ola (Ola is the new Uber) and we relaxed into a seven-hour cab ride which took us out of town and up into the green, calmer and less dusty state of Kerala, passing loads of small towns and villages en route.

I've only just noticed that guy giving me the Vs

It was pricey but, treated as a sightseeing trip, we justified the cost when offset against a plodding cross-country train or headlong coach charge.

We stopped for a snack and a coffee at a fudge factory outlet, where we bought a couple of boxes of the sweet, rich goods manufactured in an outhouse 'round the back by the toilets.

It'll be fine - it was well-boiled, though I'm not sure it would pass Thornton's standards.

So, a fine drive by our man Arun (above), who had to make the seven-hour return leg that evening. He'll need a bit of that fudge to keep him going.

Varkala is great, extremely relaxed.

Another day, another temple, another banyan tree. We've done the highest, the biggest, the sprawlingest, and I'm not paying another two-fifty for photos, so here are a couple of surreptitious shots of the local Janardanaswamy temple, and its tree:

Our hotel is set back between the "Helipad" car park and the strip of cafes, shops, bars and restaurants which run the length of a long clifftop, dropping straight down to a clean, sandy beach where we have already browned off a bit more in front of a rolling, surfy sea as the horizon dissolves into the sky.

SRI LANKA Island Lifeless

A one-hour hop in a big lawnmower (as a fellow traveller put it) or a very small prop-powered Bombardier aeroplane saw us in Marissa, Sri Lanka for eight days.

We'd been to Sri Lanka early last year and Kim had particularly wanted to revisit Marissa, a trendyish resort with a lovely beach, featuring predominantly young folks and families from Russia, Sweden, Holland, France and Italy. No selfies here, only tranquility.

We did raise our game once, an early morning boat trip to see some blue whales, pilot whales, flying fish and spinner dolphins.

Other than that, it was eight days of sleep, beach, eat, sleep beach, sleep, earache, beach, sleep, eat, runs, beach, eat, terrible wifi, sleep and more beach (and sleep) before returning to real life, for Madurai part three.

The Blue Whale Holiday Resort - no actual whales here