Eurotrip 2.0 : Day 6,7 - Prague, and the beautiful game!

Berlin to Prague is one of the most scenic train rides you’ll ever do. The train rolled off at 5 am from Berlin (4.59 actually!). With less than 20 minutes, cumulative, of sleep all night, I was looking forward to a nice nap on the train. Before I could get settled in, show the TC my tickets et al, the sun was beginning to break through and the stunning countryside was in full view. Clearly, there was going to be no sleeping on this one! Soon bathed in sunshine, the rivers and hills soaked with greenery were rolling by.

The 4½ hour train ride went by in what seemed like 20 minutes! And then I remembered that I hadn’t slept. But then as I stepped out of Prague station, this captivating city woke me up again. There’s a beautiful garden right outside the train station and loads of trees around. You would never think you’re outside a busy train junction! The weather was just about perfect with a light breeze and warm sunshine, around 18° C, I later gathered. I had booked myself into Hostel Elf, which was supposedly a 15 minute walk from the station. I thought I had gotten my directions right (from the hostel’s website) but I wasn’t carrying a map and ended up taking a wrong turn and walking right into the old town. I then walked back to the station, bought a map for some 60 crowns (1 crown ~= 3 rupees) (which served me excellently till the end of the trip). On my way, at one of the crossroads where I was trying to figure out where to go, I remember being helped by a most stunningly beautiful woman who appeared out of nowhere, gave me directions, and then promptly disappeared. It felt like almost divine intervention at that point coz there was nobody around and I had inexplicably forgotten the name of the road where I was to find my hostel!

The receptionist at Hostel Elf was typically helpful with the room setup, etc. and it was quite a breeze checking in. It was 12ish, I was hungry and I was also very determined to get tickets to the Czech Republic vs Spain match the next day. As I was about to leave the room, an old white gentleman walked in and asked me in perfect Hindi “Namaste..! Aap kahan se hain?” (Where are you from!?). For the longest time I didn’t have a reply. I was shocked to meet this white guy speaking perfect Hindi in Eastern Europe! Turned out the cheerful old man was extremely well-traveled, had been in India several times over a period of 25 years, had acted in Tollywood & Bollywood movies, done social service during floods in Orissa, and pretty much fallen so much in love with India that he kept going there every year. But he had not gone for the last 15-20 years, because he thought "the country had changed, for the worse, the innocence was lost and the big corporates were running things…"

After a quick chat with Dennis, I set out on my quest to get a ticket for the game. That was quite clearly my objective of coming to Prague - not the bridges, not the castles, not the hills and not the valleys! The walk to the stadium was a long one. Up and over a hill, for about 1 hour. I reached by around 2pm. Luckily for me, the ticket counters were ready to open only by 3. And there was, shockingly, not a soul in sight! I dinked into the McDonald’s by the Letna stadium to catch a filet-o-fish and some fries. Exactly the same as you’d get in India, heavy junk food which makes you feel queasy in 30 seconds. Yuck! But I didn’t really have much of a choice, there was nothing else around!

Then I strolled across to the ticket counter and one elderly Czech man had made his way there. We figured the common language that we could both speak and understand was French! So he was talking his fluent, but slowed-down-for-me French, whereas I was struggling with my pronunciation, but we managed to get a conversation going! Turned out he was a huge fan of Sparta Prague and was looking forward to an International game for a change. We talked for over an hour about football - the world cups, great games that he had watched live and how much we both enjoyed specific moments in some matches. It was the kind of joy only a true football fan will know. As the 3pm deadline for the ticket counter to open approached, a few people, around 25 had queued up behind us. It included a young Spanish guy from Granada, Javi, who was studying to be a doctor in Prague. He too joined in the conversation (thankfully he spoke English) and we really hit it off well talking about our favorite team, Spain.

The ticket counters opened and we got our tickets within minutes. I was shocked that I got the tickets for Rs.1,500! When I had checked online, the least that was available was 200 pounds (16,000 rupees!). Teary eyed, I smelled the ticket, ran my fingers over it, read and re-read it – yes it was real! YES, I was going to watch Spain LIVE! And a humongous bonus was a free pass to a training session later that evening. I was in seventh heaven.

I took an extended route back to the hostel to see some of Prague’s sights, but I don’t quite remember going wow with anything, I was too pre-occupied in my head with what was going to transpire in the evening at the training session. I reached the hostel, took a shower, and was ready to go back to the stadium. I met Anna on the way for a drink – we’d connected on Couchsurfing and she gave me some tips on what to check out the next day, and helped me on my way into a bus which would take me directly to the stadium.

Then came the big moment. I walked into the stadium, 7pm, the smallish crowd cheering the Spanish team coming on to the field for a 1 hour training session. I was there. I walked down almost to the touchline and grabbed a seat. Xavi, Silva, Villa and Mata started whipping crosses for the likes of Torres & Puyol to head into goal where the giant figure of St.Iker was diving around. All this, just 20 feet away. I had tears in my eyes. No jokes. This was really a dream come true. It had been a great trip so far, but I could easily give up anything that I did, or anything that I was going to do, whatever screw-up could happen on the remainder of the trip – NOTHING was going to take away this moment. I had missed going to the World Cup in South Africa after having everything booked, and I had come to Prague with a singular goal, of watching Spain play.

The session was reminding me of my endless days of playing Football Manager. I could allocate time to different kinds of training sessions, crossing, 5 x 5, heading, etc etc., all of it was happening in front of my eyes. They switched to a half-pitch game with about 8 vs 8. David Villa was on fire, scoring goals from impossible angles. They were having an absolute ball. Torres was chugging along rather lifelessly and it was really sad to see a striker whom I’d admired so much in his Athletico days to be reduced to this. Xavi was clinical as usual, passing through an impossible maze of players and making goals out of thin air. The game went on for about 25 minutes. Intense running, close passing and breathtaking finishing! And after this tiring game, they all came to the centre of the pitch and started doing push-ups, 50 of them at a stretch. It was super-human. I can barely manage 10, and although I know I’m not exactly the benchmark on fitness, to do what these guys were doing and that too after THAT kind of a game, it was truly out of this world.

Xavi and Valdes concluded the session by doing some free kicks and brilliant diving saves, respectively. I could scarcely believe what I had witnessed, that too at such close quarters.

As the training session closed out, I decided to walk all the way back to the hostel. Must have been a 5km walk, at least! But the weather was perfect (around 14-15 °C), and the excitement of watching the training session was pumping energy to the last little toe in my body. I stopped for dinner at a cool looking restaurant close to the business area, and reached the hostel for my warm bed and a long-overdue sleep!

Day 2 in Prague was going to be a typical walk through the city, over the famous Charle’s bridge and up the hill to Prague Castle. I was a bit apprehensive about the weather as the forecast said 8°C and rain! I picked up all my warm clothes, as usual and left by walk first for the station. The walk from Hostel Elf to the station via on old, now-unused tramway was particularly memorable. There was absolutely nobody around and I wondered to myself as most Indian tourists in Europe would (where are all the people!?). It’s ironic that most foreign tourists in India find peace when they come to ‘crowded’ India, and Indian tourists abroad find it peaceful, coz there’s no noise & crowds!

I dropped my luggage off at the station, stored safely in a locker for the equivalent of Rs. 600/- for 24 hours. Quite expensive!

The walk through the city, Charles’ bridge, Old town & up to the castle was thoroughly enjoyable, and I recommend it highly for anybody wanting to truly see Prague. It’s a small city and it wouldn’t take more than a day to cover all the main sights on foot.

The weather was surprisingly holding up, no rain and no chilly breeze! In fact the sun was out, and I was even able to spend an hour in a random garden soaking in the heat and clicking photographs of an equally random statue in that garden.

I reached the castle right on time for the customary changing of guards and somehow found myself on the other side of all the action. There was a crowd waiting at the gate, and I was actually inside the castle walking along with these guards who were marching out to be replace the ones waiting at the gate. Good fun! The castle itself was beautiful and imposing, but I left it to another day to go exploring inside it. I had a game to catch! :)

I trotted along to the stadium a good hour and a half before kick-off, and as I had become habituated to, there wasn’t a damn soul in sight… Just a few policemen with sniffer dogs walking around in the distance! As I waited, a bunch of loud fans in Czech overalls came in, shouting, singing and generally having a good time of it. The crowd was slowly starting to build. Lots of dads with their sons, lots of young college groups and not to mention a ton of good-looking women, unquestionably there to Czech out their footballers!

As they opened the gates, my eyes went over to the back side of my ticket, which I had thus far guarded like Frodo guarding The One Ring. And what I saw sent shivers down my spine. In a big, bold sign, there was a camera with a cross on it. And I was carrying my HUGE DSLR Canon 500D with me. A deluge of thoughts flooded my mind:

“How the HELL did you miss seeing that on the ticket!? You should have seen it before! You could have easily left the camera in the locker at the station. You came here to watch a game, not to click photographs, what were you thinking!??”

My heart sank. I couldn’t believe I was soon going to be asked to step aside, leave the camera someplace, or worse still, go and keep the camera back at the station, and then come and watch the game. I moved up towards the gate, and moved my ticket over the scanner so that it screeched open.

Heart pounding.

I managed a smile at the security guard who took a long, hard look at the camera. All my prayers of all my mornings to that date would have to help conjure some spell on that guy to make him not notice the obvious camera in my hand.

He looked at me from head to toe, and then, without a moment’s notice, waved me IN, with a smile, and, what’s more, an “Enjoy the game!”

Relief... Ecstasy.

I was in! I went down to the seat, right behind the goal. The players were coming out for their warm-up sessions.

For the next 2 hours, I was under their spell. As Xavi & co ran circles around the Czech defense, I watched smitten, by the symphony of the beautiful game.

I left at the 80^th minute, to avoid the crowd and to get to the station on time. On time for my 3-train journey to Krakow, Poland.

Eurotrip 2.0: Day 3,4,5 - Berlin!

The train from Munich to Berlin was a fairly comfortable one. About 60 euros for a sleeper ride that was about 10 hours. We deliberately took a train that takes longer so we could sleep more. As the train started to approach Berlin, I remember some rather foggy bogs and horror-movie-set like dark, empty fields. Fingers crossed, hoping for bright & sunny weather in Berlin!

Berlin Hauptbahnhof (the main train station) though was anything but dark - a 5-floor mega structure with trains coming in and leaving at different levels, bustling eating places with people stuffing themselves with breakfast, and best of all, a glass front façade that helped the sunlight spectacularly illuminate the entire building!

We had booked ourselves into Wombats Hostel, which one of Berlin’s best rated ones. It was indeed impressive with a classy yet cool reception area, 6 floors worth of clean rooms and a nice bar on the 7^th. The folks at the reception were quite resourceful and had answers to pretty much all our queries.

The plan for the day was to do a ‘Free’ Walking tour of the city. We took a day pass for 2-5 people for ~15 euros so we could use any train or bus for the entire day upto 3am the next day. Only later did we realize that we could have taken a 3-day pass for much less and saved some moolah.

The ‘Free’ tour is actually free, but the guide calls out quite clearly that they ‘work on a tips-only’ basis and you’re pretty much ‘supposed to’ give a tip at the end of the tour. The group size is about 25 people, and a 5 euro per head tip means that’s a cool 100-150 euros for our ‘free-tour guide’ for 4 hours of walking and talking stories about each monument! Of course you could just give him 2 euros at the end of it, but wanting to demolish images of ‘chindi’ Indian tourists, the three of us paid a massive grand total of 15 euros. The trip also serves as segue for several ‘paid’ trips that our guide never failed to mention once every 20 minutes.

How was the tour? Well, it was alrightish, led by a humorous guy named Sebastian, who spoke QUITE a bit! We started with the BrandenburgerTor at Paris Platz - A nice ‘little’ gate on a nice little square with the Goddess of Victory (formerly Goddess of Peace) on top of it. It was the anniversary of the re-unification of East & West Germany and there were bands playing behind the gate which was not open to the public on that morning. Right next to the Paris Platz is the hotel where Micheal Jackson famously held out his son from the balcony. Room rents can go up to 15,000 euros a night. I mean, really? It doesn’t even have like a stunning view, duh!

Then there was the Jewish memorial, a photo of a soldier jumping over the Berlin ‘wall’, a car park which was formerly where Hitler’s quarters were, a memorial to the dead ‘sons’ in the war (both the Jews who were massacred as well as the soldiers of Hitler’s army – lives lost, are lives lost, I really liked the concept), Charlie checkpoint, a gay king’s palace, and that of his brother’s, a couple of museums and a restaurant where we had a snack break. Sebastian told us some interesting stories behind every monument/landmark/non-landmark and since I wasn’t exactly taking notes, I hardly remember any of it. But it was fun while it lasted.

The sun was really beginning to belt down and Sebastian’s humor was starting to turn into a bit of a rant. We wished it was over sooner rather than later and finally we got done by around 3. I was quite famished, and once done, we rushed to the nearest restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet and helped ourselves to a sumptuous meal.

We headed back to the hostel, got some rest, took a shower and headed back out for dinner. Berlin has innumerable good restaurants and bars to choose from and we didn’t go too far from our hostel, which itself is in quite a good area, and had a good meal. With me trying to keep off meat, it was usually a pasta or, at most, a fish dish that would be on the menu, with always a new beer to try. I found a particular liking to the taste of the dark beers and quite enjoyed sampling them at every meal (Yes, quite the ‘drunkard’ I was).

Berlin’s pubs are deserted till about 11, or so said many sources, so we drifted into one just after 12. It was called White Trash and was just a 2 minute walk from our hostel. Some really random music was on, and they for some reason I will never understand, had a screen showing some soft porn. We had a beer each and moved on to another place. Turned out later it was actually a café… The next place, was actually a pub with college-goers dancing away to glory completely out of sync with the music. I looked at them and went “Hahhaha! Idiots!”, at the same time realizing that I was laughing at myself 3-4 years ago doing the exact same thing J. The beer continued to flow, and after I was sufficiently sleepy, I made a beeline for the hostel and fell into a deep slumber almost just before my head hit the pillow.

The next morning started with the project of finding an awesome breakfast place. Out came the Lonely Planet Guide 2008 and we were off on this walk. And we walked, and walked, and walked. We must have gone up and down the same street some 7 times I think. Finally we figured the place had closed down. After all, it was the 2008 edition of the book, and the recession had since come and not quite gone! So we ended up having breakfast at around 12, and it was a cheese and salmon overload as our hungry stomachs gorged on anything in sight!

Then, while the ladies took a tour of this place, I took a 2 hour nap on the grass under the sun, contemplating the meaning of life & such. It was also the moment when I realized I should be writing my blog entries lest I forget what all has happened. So I headed back to Wombats to write this blog and the ladies went off to see a Nazi concentration camp! I had no intentions of doing that; it was way too creepy for me!

Dinner & drinks was further away from the hostel this time, in a place called Kurfurstenstrasse (I hope I got that spelling somewhat close to what it is)! We walked out of the station and felt quite out of place, as the place was teeming with ‘escorts’ just standing pretty much in the middle of the road. We walked for about 10 minutes to get to our destination – Einstein Café. The desserts were outta the world and we filled our tummies with unlimited quantities of raisins, ice-creams, and such. Not very friendly on the pocket, but I guess it was worth the walk.

We then headed up to catch a glimpse of the Reichstag by night. It is a truly imposing structure and has a huge open garden right in front of it. This is what I loved about almost all the buildings in Berlin – they were huge, magnificent, built by probably fairly megalomaniacal rulers, and they completely and utterly dominated the surroundings they were in. And they stood in complete contrast to the drab, aesthetically not-so-pleasing buildings of Capitalist backgrounds in the Western half of the city.

That was end of day 2 and day 3 was going to be a trip up to Potsdam, about 1 hour from Berlin to see a pretty little castle. I wasn’t too impressed with the place, but it was a bright, sunny day and good time to just soak in the atmosphere. We came back the hostel sometime in the evening and our stay in Berlin was about to come to an end. But not before we had made the long walk along the East End Gallery which has some really cool paintings on the last remaining piece of the famed Berlin Wall. It was an absolute delight to walk this stretch at night (it was about 9 pm), with absolutely no one around and a cool breeze floating around. I also saw my first spots of rain on this walk and I guess it was a sign that winter was just round the corner. My gloves, monkey cap and jacket were about to come in really handy in Prague & Krakow!

The train to Prague was at 5 in the morning and despite my relative lack of sleep in the days before, I was up, excited and wide awake in wonder as the train rolled by mountains and rivers and forests and about the most awesome train ride one could ever have!!

Eurotrip 2.0: Day 1,2 - Munich Oktoberfest!

My train to Munich from Darmstadt was slated to leave at 8.37am and reach in 3 hours and 37 minutes. Talk about being sticklers for time!! It’s a wonder the Germans don’t add seconds as well to their timings! I didn’t have a reservation (as is the case usually for anyone traveling by the Deutsche Bahn as its not really ever ‘full’), so 1 hour into the journey a whole bunch of people were standing as they had quite clearly overbooked the train. I went past the Hockenheim station which reminded me of the Hockenheim race track that I so used to love (driving on my F1 2000 PC Game) for the endless straights!

As the train climbed towards Munich, the beautiful German countryside was on full display! Bathed in sunshine (probably for the last time in quite a few months), the pine forests and agricultural fields rolled by…

The entry into Munich station was fairly undramatic, and it looked like a cleaner version of CST station (!!) at around 5 in the evening on a weekday. The rush was of course for the last summer weekend and the last 2 days of the OktoberFest!!

By the time I stopped at the tourist info shop, bought my train tickets and made it to the hotel, it was nearly 3pm! Its best to take a day ride ticket in Munich, and if traveling in a group a group day ticket for 2-5 persons (9.80 euros). But after 2 days of roaming around I didn’t remember anybody asking for the ticket. I’d imagine the adventurous ones would opt not to buy one or buy a cheaper one and pass it off as another.

Once Richa & Tanvi were also in and ready, Munich awaited!

Saturday 4.30pm, and the agenda was quite clear. Get into the Oktoberfest and get out on Sunday morning. The crowd, as we reached the ‘English Gardens’ was maddening! The Oktoberfest has several ‘tents’ and each tent can house more than 2-3000 people I’m sure…! There’s the usual fare of giant ferris wheels and rides which will make your stomach really woosie, but ALL of that was to be for *after* of course!

As we excitedly got into the line of one of the tents, after about 1 hour of waiting, we realized something was amiss. The line wasn’t moving, and the 2-3 people that were getting in in about every 10 minutes were all holding some tickets!! This was NOT good news. Mustering courage to go and talk to a massive guard, we asked him what the scene was? And when were we going to get in? He replied, in typically curt, to the point, economical thickly German-accented English “NEXT YEAR.”… I was shocked! Surely there’s not SO much of a crowd that they can’t let people in!?! Tent after tent it was the same story. Hordes of people queuing up only to realize that they weren’t going to get in! I sensed the making of a disaster, that I went allll the way to Munich and did not get into the Oktoberfest!!

Someone suggested that our best bet was to come and queue up early next morning. Disheartened, but with the determination to not go back ‘empty handed’, we swore to try our luck again the next day. But before that we still had the entire evening to walk around the main Marineplatz area of Munich. Its absolutely littered with cafes and bars and people are out having a fantastic time. We had a relaxed sit-down drink followed by dinner. By the time we headed back to the hotel, it was nearly 2am and the early morning next morning looked ominously impossible!

My jetlag was luckily still not completely gone, and I woke up sprightly as a prairie dog on a savannah morning, at 6 a.m! After several minutes of pestering so that everyone was up, we finally got ready and were out by 7.30! It was 8.15 by the time we reached, and the crowd in the train just made my heart beat that bit quicker. It was going to be touch & go…! As we entered the festival grounds, the difference versus last evening was quite clear. The crowd was much lesser, but there were huuuuuge lines in front of EACH tent. We picked the first one and just joined it. Fingers crossed. We waited for about 15 minutes, and then there was a huge collective roar. The gates were open… What was going to happen? Were they going to ask for tickets? Were we going to go back ‘dry’ from the OktoberFest???

Within 2 minutes, literally, the entire line had emptied out into one of the biggest tents you will ever see. With rows upon rows of tables & chairs, much like a school mess!

And we were IN!

No questions asked.

We just went and grabbed the seat closest to the entrance and swore never to let go! After about a 10 minute wait, the band started, to a thunderous roar from the crowd!

The waitresses in their Bavarian dresses swarmed in with the first round of stuff to eat before the beer. White sausages are supposed to be the specialty but I didn’t quite feel up to trying one. I got more of the salty vegetarian stuff and a fish sandwich.

And then, came the beer. In tall glasses of 1 litre each, with a waitress carrying upto 6-7 at a time! ‘Prost!!’ we shouted, and off the mark we went! Within a few minutes, we witnessed our first ‘entertainer’.

So basically, anyone can just stand up on his table and announce to the rest of the crowd that he’s going to go ahead and down his, or her, beer in a single go! Luckily the first one to do it was sitting right next table to us, and as he started, the roar from the crowd was unbelievable! As he swiftly gurgled down his 1 litre (mega-) glass, the crowd went ballistic! THIS is what I had come for. NOT for the 400 different kinds of beer. NOT to see the Bavarian women (well ok, a bit, yes :P ).

And then another went up and downed one. The cheers kept getting bigger. The loudest ones were, of course, reserved for the women. There were a couple of guys who also lost their way mid way and they were greeted with laughs and boos. I’d imagine these people would be pretty scarred like for life! J Surely, their friends would continue to take their case for some time to come!

Now the beer was flowing and this is where my memory starts to fail me. The period from the end of the 2^nd litre of beer to lunch at 4pm is QUITE hazy. I remember, hmm, lets see, the pavement…, the metro ride…, and an inordinately long time in some toilet.

Then there was the BMW Museum and the hugely impressive OlympikStadion! On a clearer head day, I’d probably have been able to appreciate these EVEN more than I ended up doing. That said, Munich left me with some fond, fond memories.

Next stop, Berlin!

Eurotrip 2.0 : Day -3,-2,-1 - Frankfurt & Darmstadt

As my flight touched down at Frankfurt airport, there was almost a sense of déjà vu. Bright sunshine reflected off the humongous metallic building. It seemed for a moment that I was at the Hyderabad airport. (Bummer! :D) But that sense quickly disappeared as the size of the airport dawned upon me. The flight bays were there far & wide into the distance. As I marveled at the sheer scale of things, the lack of creativity, colour and focus on function over form was also immediately apparent. A 7-foot-tall police officer then stopped me (being one of the very few non-German/non-EU looking people coming out) and checked my visa and waved me on. Traveling without check-in baggage was a huge bonus as I was out of the airport in less than 15 minutes.

My pickup was waiting for me and it was a nice and BIG Audi with a pleasant driver. We were on the Autobahn towards Basel in no time, and the car zipped along at 150+ km/hr without the slightest complaint from the engine or the suspension. A right turn to Darmstadt off of the Autobahn and the ride was over in less than 20 minutes.

There was time to kill till the evening and I had a drink and went for a walk. The city was quite minimalistic with hardly any people around, and some rather boring looking buildings. I walked up to the central ‘platz’, as squares, I took it, are called in Germany. When you look at some of these squares in Germany you feel as though they really didn’t have any space constraints when they built them. Very unlike Bombay, and quite similar in fact to New Delhi.

Dinner & jet-lag induced sleep and early wake-up later, the next two days of meeting went by in no time.

On an evening walk on the 2^nd day, I stumbled upon the railway station and promptly booked my ticket to Munich! Oktoberfest awaited! :-)

Varkala, and the 'follow the monsoon' holiday

Kerala undoubtedly has some of the best places to visit in the country. But you go at the wrong time, and you could be in for a bit of a shock. Its quite clear that the best time to visit Kerala is from October to February. The weather's fantastic, the seas are calm, there's a festive atmosphere all round and the tourism industry's in top gear. But all this also means that the rush is near maddening, the hotel rates are pretty expensive and its quite challenging to find that quiet corner.

The next best time to go to Kerala is during the monsoons. I'd guess this is a great time for non-touristy couples to go there. The rain is obviously incessant and traveling a big problem. The only thing you do is sit in the room, sip hot chai, and watch the weather fog the windows. There'd be plenty of places offering rooms with a view, and, at throwaway prices. I'd bet there are quite a few people who'd want exactly that.

The summer's a real no-no, hot, humid & sticky. But then there's this period, between summer & the rains when things can get quite interesting.

I went to Varkala in the last week of May. We were to have a meeting there starting on a Monday. It was that time of the year... enduv summer and beginning of the monsoon. And I didn't want to catch either of them in full flow. Neither a hot Kerala summer day, nor a typical monsoon 'downpour', that could last the weekend.

I checked up the weather report and it said 'Chance of showers'! That pretty much meant that Kerala was going to receive its first rains that weekend!

There's something about that first shower after a long, hot summer.

The smell of fresh soil, the breeze caressing your face, the wind buzzing in your ears and of course, the water cooling the surface of your skin, as if from within.

GK & I arrived to a perfect Saturday afternoon, with a slight nip in the air and the warm sun beating down. A 1-hour or so cab ride from Trivandrum airport brought me to Varkala. GK was already there, after taking a rather fortuitous train journey from Coimbatore to Quilon (Kollam) where he missed his original train and somehow found a special train where he was the only person in the whole compartment!

The cab had been running along the coast for a while, and before I knew it, I was in Varkala. Going past the entrance of the city, I headed for the cliff & helipad, which is where all the action was! As the cab came out of the city and to the helipad, I had my first of several 'wohhhhhhhhhooo' moments in Varkala. On top of a hill top with a sheer steep cliff-face overlooking the mighty Arabian Sea with sunlight shimmering off the glistening water! I couldn't wait to drop off my bags in a room and head straight for a swim!

Hotels are a-plenty on both the North & South cliffs. I found the North cliff to be better off, in terms of view, price, general eating places etc.

Swimming just before the monsoons is quite risky and the coastguard (who're usually around) never let anybody venture too far deep. The water was quite choppy and I was circumspect throughout. Its a very different feeling, swimming in the sea when rain's just round the corner; you can almost tell that the sea knows there's a storm brewing somewhere far out and she keeps dropping these hints. There'd be this big wave from time to time, and it'll pull back just as quickly. Its exciting and scary at the same time!

After an evening swim, we headed back to our hotel which was bang in the centre of the North cliff. As dusk approached, so did the first signs of dark clouds and loud claps of thunder. The breeze picked up considerably, and before we knew it, the first monsoon downpour was absolutely drenching the landscape.

I think it must have rained all night. We awoke to a brilliant sunny morning with few clouds in sight. While having breakfast, our waiter excitedly pointed out a group of dolphins swimming in the ocean. It was my first sighting of dolphins free in the wild, and it was an exhilarating experience, despite the fact that they were a good 200-300 meters from shore.

The rest of the gang joined in during the day (Sunday), and brought with them the full wrath of the monsoon, as the rains plundered the coast. We didn't have much to do until Monday morning, when we made our way to Kovalam, for the national meeting.

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This trip had me thinking about a 'Follow the monsoon' trip, from the South to the North, as the monsoon broke across the country. Starting end of May in Kerala, right up to the first weeks of July up say, in Jammu. It'd be a nice trip to make. Getting to places just before the rains lash, joining people in becoming kids as they celebrate the end of summer...

(Completing this post exactly a year after I started it... Procrastination. Says the critical half. Combined with loads of work, says the other, lazy half, of my little head).