Our close to 1875kms long Kerala trip is still continuing as we have moved from Mysore to Sultan Bathery to Wayanad to Alleppey to Varkala. Now After Cochin, we move to the calendar beach of India, Kovalam.
We reached during the late evening and I vow to say that the roads leading into Kovalam are not the ones to be praised. There are a few great looking IT Hubs and residential community as we approached Kovalam. Once into the town, the place barely looked like a seaside.Trolling with huge number of north Indian eateries, it looked like one of those busy tourist locations.
We straight headed to the beach and the first one we saw was Samudra Beach, then the Hawa beach or the Eves Beach and last was the lighthouse beach.
Samudra beach is famous for the resorts bordering the bay like Leela Kovalam. It is a beautiful picturesque with the unbearable odor of fishing net and sewage around. We decided to grab an exotic coffee and get the feel to be at Leela’s Kovalam. A beautiful fairyland it is and a definite feeling of a seven star hospitality. We enjoyed the hour we had spent there.
Once done, reality did bite the cheque we paid and we went for our budget stay hunting. Just a 2 mins walk up road from the light house beach is a beautiful Kerala style Mansion called Vijaya Varma Beach Resort, in about 3 minutes walk from the light house beach. The hotel is beautiful, a huge Kerala style mansion with room heavily wood crafted and bathrooms as beautiful as the bedrooms. Every room has a private balcony looking on to the sea. The restaurant remains closed since we went during the off seasons. But, anytime of the year, they offer you a great pocket friendly price in comparison to the pricey tourist places in kovalam which are not worth the price.
Kovalam has nothing much other than enjoying the sea from dawn to dusk. The food outlets by the decorated and paved lighthouse beach are great hang out. The German Bakery, Rock café, Malabar café all serve good seafood and look onto the sea.
Tired, as we were, we finished our first day dinner in one of the outlets on the beach. Expensive in comparison to the quality and quantity of the food served.
We retired early post a small in-house beer drinking party in the hotel balcony which we enjoyed the most. Next day was early. We aimed to see the sunrise on the light house beach. The weather being gloomy, the plan was done for. We walked down the beach, had a quick grab on appam from a street food cart and that tasted amazing. I would have given away any five-star breakfast for the fresh appam and stew.
Our excitement of getting into the water was discouraged by the dirty beach that we saw in both Samudra and Light house beach. With advice from the food cart man, we drove down to a place called Poovar, 17 kms from Kovalam. We drove through the green to find the beautiful beach of Poovar. Poovar has few of the secluded yet the best resorts of Kovalam. The beach is comparatively less crowded and cleaner. Though the pollution in the sea definitely disheartened us, this place was better to enjoy the beach.
Water was extremely oily and heavy. The current was huge and the waves brought with it fishes, dead and black in color. We also spotted huge jelly fish, weighing close to 2-3 kg being thrown onto the shore by the waves. While the state of the sea animals looked sad, it was scary enough for us. We decided not to get into the water at all. We spent some time around and came back to Kovalam.
On our way back, we asked for local Kerala meal and was guided by the locals to a small place just beside the Kovalam police station. They served us Authentic Kerala meal for Rs. 60/- each and we topped it up with more fish fry and fish curry. This was the best meal we had in our entire Kerala trip for the last 7 days. Not only did the food taste out of the world but it was as inexpensive as cannot be imagined. Anyone who visits Kovalam must and must definitely visit this outlet beside the Kovalam Police Station for authentic, clean, tasty, pocket friendly and out of the world experience.
After our sumptuous lunch, we decided to retire for a good 2-3 hours and finally hit the road for our home calling.
MindPrintSohni !! 