A rail journey around India, beginning & ending in Mumbai...

A rail journey around India, beginning & ending in Mumbai...

Thursday 20 November 2014

Life is a beach resort.....

                Still revelling at the tranquillity and silence of the Akhil Resort, Varkala, ($30/night) secreted away
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at the top of an ocean front cliff amongst the swaying & graceful coconut palms---albeit in pouring rain and temperatures that have plummeted this morning to a mere 23C. Did I say coconuts? I have been threading my way, eyes  ever cast skywards and with increasing trepidation along the resorts winding footpaths. Each morning it is hard not to notice the smashed coconuts lying on the ground. Yesterday---sweet relief, the coconut harvesting crew was on the job. Fun to watch the ‘wallahs’ shinny up these massive trees and hack loose the ripe nuts. When it is my time to leave this world, rather it not be by having a coconut brain me from 40 foot! Interesting aside here---one sees massive and rampant disregard in India for safety: personal and industrial. People ducking under trains to cross tracks, hydro substations & transformers lacking any protective restraining barriers, chaotic and dangerous roads and the list is endless. Clearly, a major opportunity for the legal profession to step up and litigate. I am told however, that the average time to initial hearing in India is three years, and to trial 10 years. Often one of the parties has died before the formal court process can commence!!
             
I sense at this resort, currently about 20% occupancy, and along ‘gift shop alley’ that runs atop the nearby north cliff, that their hearts are in their mouths, ready for the crack of the starter’s pistol about 15 December, signal to let loose the tourist hordes and to start making some serious moollah. As previously mentioned, Russian tourists are a major group here and I am not at all sure that they will be arriving in the numbers of recent years--- the Russian rouble is down 50% due to western sanctions (Ukraine). Combine that, with the fact that the EU is still in the economic doldrums and it may be a very quiet tourist season for this stretch of Indian beach resort paradise. Although that I have noted several ‘German style’ restaurants and bakeries, usually a harbinger of crowds from Hamburg and Stuttgart, I have only heard German spoken a couple of times. Personally, I much prefer to be here during ‘shoulder’ season when prices are moderate and service is better.
              Occurs to me when I see the folks around the pool, that some, might not even realise that they are in India! There are no local or expat Indians staying here—only Europeans, and most of the staff are seasonal workers that come in from Nepal. Easy to wake up in the morning and feel that one might just as well be half a hemisphere away in the Dominican Republic or Majorca.. This touristic enclave and likely the whole stretch of coast north from here, is so 100% removed, economically & culturally from the ‘real’ India that I have come to love & hate these past 8 weeks travelling the rails. Even the food is great at this resort! These hedonists earn themselves nice suntans & tacky souvenirs, but what  real life experiences did they gain for their self- induced jet lags?

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