Good Bye to Varkala!

Varkala slideshow (2)

One month flew by at this mellow resting beach. We only left the Cliffs a few times to go to the small town of Varkala 3 miles away. We also went to Trivandrum a couple of times - Kerala's unpretentious capital, 30 miles by train. The touristy area around the Cliffs gave us relief from the dusty noisy city, but we missed local meals, coffee shops and the busy markets of the big city. I enjoyed my daily salty baths in the Arabian Sea, our walks to Temple Junction to get fresh coconut juice and daily encounters with people we got to know – the chai wallahs, the waiters at the beach front restaurants, the coconut lady, the hundreds of vendors.

During our explorations in the nearby villages around the cliff, we encountered smiling children, friendly parents, all of them saying hi, practicing the few words they know in English and inviting us into their houses. We even saw a milkman, the old fashion way, pouring the milk from a faucet into people's containers. I hope Varkala never grow the tourist hotels enough to replace this vibrant villages around the beach.

I visited with lots of old friends from other times I was here, like Ibrahim, Krishna, Abdulah, and Ganesh. The latter two are now in relationships with Europeans – a German and French women. Their horizons are expanded beyond the Cliff as they visit and live in these places abroad part of the year.

The Cliff has indeed changed and it continues to change even during the last month we were here with new restaurants and shops open, even though I am told there are only half as many tourists this year as there were last year. We've met people coming from as far away as Nepal to wait on tables, with promises of a chunk of money at the end of the season. I am wondering if they will be paid as expected with so few tourists around.

Tomorrow morning we head out to Poonmudi, a tea plantation on the mountains about 3 ½ hours from here by taxi with Britt and her father. We'll spend the night there and then two weeks at Sivananda Ashram for a “yoga vacation.”

Resting at Varkala Beach

Varkala slideshow

We didn't really plan to come to Varkala Beach, let alone spend a whole month here, but after we finished our Ayurvedic treatment and left Samajan Hospital, the doctor advised us to rest for three weeks. In addition, Britt, a long time friend said she was going to be in Varkala for the first two weeks in December. So, once again, this beach serves as my get away from the noisy, dusty cities in India.

Varkala Beach, 45 minutes from Trivandrum, has changed a lot from the last time I was here five years ago. There are a lot more established hotels and restaurants, the road at the edge of the Cliff bordering the Indian Ocean is paved with large red stones and it feels like packaged tourism is starting to hit this once mellow enclave. Its charming restaurants with tables lit by candlelight overlooking the vast green Arabian Sea, and above, a million stars, were the main attractions for me during the last 10 years I have been coming here. But now, there is electricity everywhere, and “The Cliff” is illuminated by signs and restaurant lights, making it harder for us to notice the beautiful sky high above.

But the place is still very mellow and charming and we can still eat plenty of Kerala style curries and coconut dishes, although, unfortunately, most restaurants cater to tourists and only a few have traditional breakfast of appam, oothapam, idlis and upma. Continental, American, British and Israeli breakfast are more common, to our dissatisfaction. On the other hand, all restaurants serve fresh juices and fruits, which is always a treat.

For the first week, we had Indian style food delivered to our room – it was homemade, prepared by the maid of our hotel. The first week was a real “recovery week” from Samajam - we were so tired - but now we enjoy going out and hanging out at the many places by the cliff. For a real traditional Indian meal, we go into Varkala town, 3 miles away.

The big draw at Varkala Beach is the massage and Ayurvedic treatment, the kind we just went through at Samajan. Several hotels sell packages from one week up to six or seven, which is the whole panchakarma (purification) program. At night, the sea breeze blowing on our bodies at our dinner table is refreshing and the slow service allow us to fully relax and cool off from the day at the beach. Many restaurants have distinctive playlists – some are playing 80's music, several play chillout and Carribean/Brazillian sounds. Thankfully, tables lit by candlelight is still the norm.

We are enjoying taking walks on the beach in the morning and watching the fisherman return with their nets and catch. Every day, nets are laid out on the beach to dry, and meticulously checked and repaired for the next trip out to sea. There are a couple of very traditional fishing communities on both ends of the beach. The fishing communities live in simple huts, and mostly rely on rafts made of 4 lengths of palm tree strung together with rope. Even the large boats are sewn together with rope. I hope they do not get displaced with all the tourism development around here.
Temple Junction, an area near here where it's still mostly locals living is a nice getaway where we can mingle mostly with Indians rather than foreigners. The Ayappam Temple is very popular and it gets very crowded on Saturdays. There are a couple of coconut sellers there, that's always a refreshing treat.

On December 15th we plan to head to the Sivananda Ashram for a yoga vacation, next to Nyar Dam, a wildlife reserve. I've heard that we do yoga to the sound of lions and tigers roaring on the other side of the lake. After so much rest, we are feeling ready for some exercise and yoga is the best way to ease into it.

Ayurvedic Treatments at Samajan

Samajan slideshow

Peter and I have been talking about doing an Ayurvedic treatment in India since we met 5 years ago. This 5,000 years old healing system relies on medicinal plants and addresses health problems by their causes, purifying the blood, strengthening the immune system, and bringing the body back into balance. We are both into natural healing and into India.

We arrived in Trichur, Kerala's cultural center, in the north of the state, on a night bus from Bangalore. We went to Samajam on the same day, and had initial interviews with the resident doctor, “Dr George,” and two days later we took a room at the Samajan Ayurvedic Hospital. Dr George advised 4 to 5 weeks of treatment to address Peter's weak joints and my back and knee pain in addition to my long saga of PMS, now turned into hot flashes concerns.

Samajan is located in a small community - Shorenor, about 30 miles north of Trichur. It was established in 1902, in a lush location fronting Kerala's largest river. Samajan boasts being the first Ayurvedic Hospital in India. It has its own herbal medicines factory, herbal gardens, and a team of doctors, nurses, technicians and assistant technicians. The place is a lot like a nursing home, and all treatments are based on the ancient Ayurvedic medicine system, which administers medicine via medicated oils through the skin.

The medicine factory was truly awe inspiring – huge cauldrons of herbs were simmering over wood fires, and different kinds of machines made pulps and pastes. Employees separated the herbs by hand into uniform sized pieces for cooking into medicine. The place had an idyllic, rural/jungle feeling to it and it was complete with its own Ganesh Temple, cows, stray dogs, stray cats, chickens, birds of many kinds, and a million tropical creatures crawling everywhere.

We stayed in a bungalow with attached treatment room, small kitchen and bathroom. It was very rustic and old but very charming at the same time. The cows roamed around all day and occasionally they'd shock us by stopping and mooing loudly right in front of us.

In Ayurveda, there are several different massage techniques, designed to cleanse the blood, soften body tissues to prepare them for medicines, and administer medicines. Peter and I had the same procedures more or less in the same order, though the oils were specific to our medical complaints. Each massage technique was administered for a week, and for the last three days we did a series of “vasthi's” – an enema done with medicated oil, designed to flush the body of all the detritus that has been cleared and cleaned by the medicines.

We started with Pizhichil – hot oil applied by the technicians with a cloth. Then we did Kizhi – herbal leaves wrapped in cloth and then soaked in medicated heated oil, followed by Sirodhara – medicated oil poured on the forehead. Njavarakizhi, muslin bags filled with a white powder made of rice and medicated herbs were boiled into a thick porridge and applied over the whole body. Each treatment lasts 45 minutes and is administered by two “technicians” who perform a synchronized massage on each side of the body. An assistant kept the supply of heated oil going for the technicians.

I learned a little Malayalam while I was getting my treatment. nale kalam (see you tomorrow), nanee (thank you), shundo (hot), enique istamananine (I like you). The technicians giggled with pleasure when I used my small repertoire with them, when they could understand me. My pronunciation of this difficult language is atrocious.

Our life at Samajan was very structured – we started our day with our first medicine at 6 am delivered to our room, and four more times throughout the day. Chai was at 7 am, breakfast at 8 am, the nurse came to take our blood pressure at 8:30 am, the doctor came for daily visits in the morning and sometimes in the evening, lunch was at 1 pm, chai again at 3 pm, and the “smoke man” came at 7:30 pm to perfume our room with herbs and ward off mosquitoes. A light dinner was served at 8 pm and we went to bed between 9 pm and 10 pm. It was like this every day for the entire month, except when we had vasti, we could only eat rice porridge.

We made a couple of good friends while at Samajam - Esgi, a Turkish woman who happened to be living in San Francisco (!) where she is finishing a graduate degree at California Institute of Integral Studies; we also made friends with Easwaran and his family, from Tamil Nadu, but living in Bahrain and working in Dubai. Esgi was getting treated for a huge lump on her thyroid. According to her it is hereditary, many members of her family had overgrown necks due to this condition. Her doctor advised surgery. I asked Esgi to let me know in a few months if her treatment at Samajan worked for her. Easwaran was being treated for spine and neck calcification. He could not move his neck in any direction and his spine had become brittle, and could be seriously injured in a fall or accident. After four weeks of treatment he was able to move his neck a little. He was advised that he had to return for more treatment three times before he could see significant change in his condition.

We heard through the grapevine that there was a building at the edge of the property, next to one of the many herbal gardens, without any windows, by the river. Our neighborhood, Eswaran overheard the technicians talking about it since he could understand Malayalam. According to what he heard, Samajan used to administer a process called Gayakalpam, to a few select patients, which resulted in up to 30 years rejuvenation, but it is a very dangerous and intense process I was told. The patient has to stay in a dark room with no contact with the exterior world for a period of 21 days or more, undergoing a regimen of herbal treatments. I was very curious about this and found the windowless room, about 300 feet from our cottage. To my surprised, the building was very well maintained. I wanted to try Gayakalpam at a later day, after our treatment, but Dr George did not take me seriously. In addition, this therapy is no longer being practiced at Samajan, he said.

We were advised not to go out of the premises of the hospital, not to walk around too much and to avoid hot sun for the four and a half months we stayed at Samajan. The treatments described above were catalysts for the body to work towards equilibrium and amazingly enough, we were throughly exhausted during and after the treatment. A minimum of two weeks of rest was prescribed after the treatment and we felt very tired during this time. Peter says it's too early to tell if his joints are stronger, because he hasn't really done any kind of exercise yet, but my back and knees already feel much better though I will only see the full results of the treatment when I start exercising. As for my PMS turned into hot flashes, I am not so sure – at the moment I am sticking to bio-identical hormones prescribed by my doctor in California.

The final treatment before leaving the hospital was the vasti (enema treatment). Everyone in the hospital was involved with this; in some ways it's quite hilarious – though at the time of the treatment, there is a lot of apprehension, as you watch them prepare a fairly huge volume of medicine, that gets inserted in the butt, and within minutes, gets drained into the toilet. The man who delivered the food emphasized that he would be delivering our rice porridge instead of regular food, every time he came by with our chai (allowed during the enemas) and all the nurses and technicians acted a little different - more caring?? They must know how traumatic this experience is. During my first two days of vasti, I practically collapsed into my bed between bowel moments, throughly exhausted.

Bengaluru's Arrival

Bangalore Slideshow

I clearly felt India was not the same when we arrived at the new airport in Bengaluru (Bangalore) October 7th early in the morning. Although not completely finished, the main airport looked and worked like any other in developed countries. Orderly lines for customs and immigration moved smoothly, the baggage carts were plenty and the wheels worked. The ATM outside the airport produced crisp rupee notes instead of the pile of worn out ones stapled together that were handed to me years earlier at the exchange counter at different Indian airports.

Outside the immigration, where one is usually greeted by a mob of anxious taxi drivers, there was no mob scene at all and the variety of car models was diverse and modern. The Ambassador, a car introduced by the British before independence, was practically the only model available until even a few years ago. After independence, Hindustan Motors continued to make new Ambassadors without changing the original style, which gave India's car industry a backward look.

The street outside the airport displayed new Maruti/Suzukis, Tatas and General Motors, all Indian made. We also saw lots of imports such as Ford, Mercedes Toyota and Jeep. There were many options of comfortable air-conditioned transportation into town, and it was not difficult to find a bus heading towards Anu's place, our host in Bengaluru.

We met Anu through an international social network: couch surfers dot com. I've hosted several international travelers while living in San Francisco. We share the passion for traveling and meeting people from different cultures. I was looking forward to meeting some members of the community in India.

The bus took us to Anu's place, not far from Electronic City, Bengaluru's local “silicon valley” hi-tech district, with ultra modern glass buildings. She lives in a complex of 15 high rise buildings sharing a gym, walking area, a little lake, near an organic and other produce stores and even a liquor store, completing the picture of the changing face of India for me. The middle class has grown by leaps and bounds – Anu, the holder of a masters degree in Computer Science is a consultant in innovation. She has a great apartment and a cute car, made in India.

But my first impressions of India did not trick me into thinking that the 9% GDP growth India has been enjoying for the last several years benefited all India. As we traveled the streets of Bengaluru either on Anu's car or the zippy auto rickshaws honking every few seconds and missing head on collision by hairs at each turn, we passed neighborhoods where India was the same as when I first visited her in 1990. Beggars holding infants or missing limbs stretched their hands to us for a rupee or two, unpaved streets were hardly the exception and the vendors of anything imaginable, shoe repairs and haircut taking place on the pavement of the noisy dusty streets, were an indication of the level of unemployment and poverty still pervasive.

I read at “The Hindu” newspaper a couple of weeks ago that 50% of Indians eat 80% of their necessary daily calories and most of them are children, And according to another local paper, the “Indian Express”, India's rate of malnutrition is higher than in famine ravaged Sub-Saharan Africa. Not unlike the rest of the world, wealth has been concentrated in the hands of fewer people, even in countries that have enjoyed unprecedented growth. According to the World Bank, during the last 150 years, the income share of the population of the world's 60% halved to 10%, while the top 10% of the population rose to more than 50%. Those are quite staggering statistics, unfortunately very familiar to this Brazilian.

Anu organized a meeting with a group of Bengaluru's couch surfers - a vibrant community, similar to the one in San Francisco. We drank specialty coffees at the Barista Cafe and talked about India culture and travels. I even got to meet a Brazilian woman living and working in Bengaluru! What a surprise that was – I've never encountered many Brazilians in India. Ana had breakfast with us and was sweet enough to spend the rest of the day together since it was Devali holiday. It felt good to speak Portuguese and visit with Ana.

While in Bengaluru I wanted to show Peter a few of my old digs, like the hotel I used to stay – the Anand Sagar in the bustling Gandhi Bazaar district, but to my astonishment, the place has been torn down and new bigger building is under construction. Another sign of the changing times in India.

Despite of the changes, it is good to be part of the colorful, chaotic, bustling streets of India and gorge ourselves with the delicious curries, chutneys, parotas, chapatis and naan, the last three variations of Indian bread. I love the smells of sandalwood, cardamom and coconut oil, the calm look of so many people's eyes, even the animals. Maybe they are sedated by heat, or malnutrition or, can it be possible, just peace? Whatever it is, it is welcoming and sweet and soothing like a mother's embrace.

We had many laughs and good moments with Anu, cooking, talking about astrology, driving around the neighborhood and exchanging East/West impressions. We look forward visiting with her and the couch surfing community again when we return in March to catch our plane back to Seattle.