Varkala

Saturday 2 March

Vale Varkala

Today I finally get to see an elephant. Not just see one, but ride on it. The guidebook mentions the Anathavalam "elephant farm" at Puthenkulam, 15 kms up the road, where some of the elephants used in temple festivals are cared for (I use the term loosely). After a morning dip in the ocean and a shopping expedition, I meet with Katriona for a cucumber juice (an unacquired taste). We abandon our scheme to rent mopeds and head for the ellies by auto-rickshaw instead. Most of the resident pachiderms (this is current guidebookese for elephant) are out on hire to temples, this being a busy festival season. So we find just one young one, chomping his legs and looking doleful. He is quite tightly hobbled with one front and one back leg chained. For riding, there is also an adult who is out of sorts having just taken a family of Russians for a tour of the paddock. Now he has us to carry.

We mount the steps of an elephant-height mounting block and climb aboard, perching ourselves precariously on a blanket on the elephant's back. Riding jumbos (effectively) bareback is not easy, as I remember from a previous experience in Zimbabwe. They lumber along, lurching from side to side; you can't get much of a grip with your knees as they're so fat, and there's nothing to hold on to. Oh for an "elephant and castle" like a nawab or maharaja of old. Our mahout is a mean-spirited young man who leads us along thwacking the elephant with his stick. But when we get to the bottom of the field, we halt. Elephant (I've forgotten his name) refuses to move further despite increasingly shrill orders/threats from mahout. He (eli, not mahout) 

1. flaps his ears (elephant body language for "I'm cross, so watch out!"; 
2. emits deep base rumbling noises like a digeridoo; and 
3. raises his head and bellows. 

This registers a good deal higher up the scale of my riskometer than hanging out of open train doors. It's a long way down to the ground, and a long way back to base. There have been recent stories in the Indian press of elephants running amok. Happily, our steed has a compassionate streak, and is persuaded to return us to the mounting block in one piece. Phew.

Katriona, in good spirits

On the way back, we ask our autorickshawwallah to take us to a somewhere to buy alcohol, hoping it won't offend his principles. Katriona is going on to the Maldives in a few days' time where, apparently, there is a total booze ban. She believes they may search her luggage on entry, but figures that gin or voddie decanted into a drinking water bottle may get through. So we pull up at the bottom of an alley somewhere in Varkala town, and he points us to a long queue of rather sleazy looking men (plus one Englishman) outside the state liquor store, just a shuttered counter in a wall. K joins the queue, the only female, but is then pulled out by someone and shoved to the front. I suppose this is on the basis that state-run enterprises (e.g. buses, as I now know) usually have "ladies only" sections. Within minutes, she comes away brandishing a bottle of pineapple-flavour vodka, much to the chagrin of English woman who is still patiently waiting for her husband to get to the head of the queue. Pineapple-flavoured Vodka, we later discover, goes well with tonic.

I've been told that the ancient Janardhana Swamy Temple in Varkala town opens at 5 pm, so I take another rickshaw ride to see it. This is my final temple this trip, and it surpasses all expectations. It crowns the top of a hillock in the centre of town, approached by a long flight of steps. I must, of course, remove my footwear at the shoe-wallah's rack, and buy a R. 10 firecracker ("make a big bang for God") from the firecracker-wallah, who lets it off with a bang and a puff of white smoke then gives me a mango. There's a Rs. 100 fee for photography collected by a scary woman with a stick. 

The walled temple enclosure covers a sizeable site, with many separate buildings, thousands of oil lamps (unlit) and a tall brass pillar which gleams in the late sun. Non-Hindus are banned from the central "sanctum sanctorum" (as it's called), where even Hindus must remove their shirts and touch their foreheads with sandalwood paste. This is evening prayers time, and though there is no formal ceremony (it may be later at sundown after I leave) a stream of devout and well-dressed worshippers "circumambulate" the site clockwise, making offerings and clasping their hands in prayer at the various mini-shrines. Back outside the temple, at the foot of the hill, the temple tank is a rectangular lake where many people swim, shampoo their hair and wash their clothes on stone steps at the end of the day, like ghats on the Ganges. Back near to south beach is a cremation site where ashes are tossed into the breakers on their final journey.

I cut here, OK?

I shop for a rug (left - salesman not included), then pack my bags before another fishy dinner of fresh-caught baracuda. Tomorrow it's farewell to beautiful Varkala beach, this little enclave of not-really-India in India. 

It is also goodbye to Katriona who has been an engaging good companion for the last few days. 

And at the end of tomorrow, "Good-bye India."

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