February 2010
On our trip to Kerala, it was the first time back to India for Brian and me (well, he had been back for work, but that hardly counts). The flight took us to Trivandrum and we arranged transport right to the beach resort town of Kovalam, the "Goa" of the south.
What an inauspicious start to our trip.
I can't even remember the hotel, but I assume it was acceptable. Kovalam Beach, however, was absolutely overdeveloped and filthy. We could see that years ago its sweeping bay with a lighthouse view must have been gorgeous (with blue water perhaps?). These days it had been madly developed along the shoreline with no planning whatsoever. All those restaurants and hotels' wastewater went right into Kovalam Bay. I felt like we were back in Bombay [see: Istanbul to Kushinagar] on our first trip to India some 20 years before. Brian grumbled, "I see nothing has changed".
The whole town was given over to "ayurvedic medicine". Brian and I went for one of the famous "oil massages". I had a "two man" massage where two guys pulled and contorted my body while slathering it with herb-infused, warm coconut oil. I thought they were going to bend me into a pretzel and bake me. Nothing about that massage was good except that I had the experience and can laugh about it now. The oil (cooking oil for me) so seeped into my skin that I felt like a lunch preparation the entire following day. In short, it felt gross - that kind of feeling when you think you can't ever make your skin clean again. Everything in Kovalam was ayurvedic. Europeans especially visited its spas MONTHS at a time for treatments. Brian and I joked if some had mysteriously vanished and wound up on some restaurant menu after being deeply massaged with herbs and oil.
We had a walk along the beach and found the next beach over (beyond the lighthouse) was less developed and a little more enjoyable. Overall though, we questioned the whole experience. In short, the place sucked. People had spoken so highly of Kovalam, but the reality presented differently. Our friend in Singapore, Chandran, grew up just south of Kovalam and told us that his family never let him go there in his youth as it was perceived as a "foreign den of iniquity". Maybe they were just worried he was going to be oil rubbed and served up for lunch?
One bright spot was buying the ticket to Ernakulum (Kochi), our next leg of the journey. I steeled myself for the experience of going to a major Indian railway station and buying a ticket. In fact, I took an autorickshaw to Trivandrum Station and found it blissfully empty and well-organized. I walked up to the counter and booked two AC seats for Brian and me in less than 5 minutes. I was in shock after all the drama we had gone through in the past to purchase India Railways tickets. Maybe India had improved after all - or was it just Trivandrum was a well-ordered town?
We had a couple of good seafood meals in Kovalam and crossed our fingers that the fishermen were not harvesting the fish from the brown waters directly in front of the restaurants. The food in Kerala was delicious and Kovalam gave us our first taste. Malayali seafood must be the best in all of India. In spite of the good food, our landfall in Kerala started us off on a bad footing from which Brian never really recovered. We were happy to leave Kovalam and catch our train north. We hoped Kochi would be better.