Varkala

Our first stop in Kerala was Varkala, a former fisherman village situated on the edge of a cliff on the Lakshadweep Sea. Supposedly alternative and “fricchettona”, we found it in truth pretty touristic (but we have to admit we happen to be there probably during the most touristic week of the year).

In Varkala every individual basically offers two activities: ayurvedic massages and yoga. We tried them both.

The ayurvedic treatment was... an experience. You enter in these ‘ayurvedic centers’ and you are accompanied in a lumber-room that looks more like a torture room than a massage room: barred windows, suffused with light, a tough examination couch and a wooden stool in the middle, ropes and chains hanging from the ceiling and from the walls...

Then you are asked to undress (no changing room), and once you are naked as a worm, you are first massacred (the picture above is not a joke: they literally walk on you for half-hour), and then - once reduced to pulp - taken care of.

Apparently ayurvedic massages provide you with a number of benefits, including giving your sexual vigour back. Well, I only woke up the following morning covered with bruises and aching all over*...

(*) No worries, Silvia and Mathilde had a much more gentle treatment and actually enjoyed it very much

As far as our yoga experience is concerned, we will talk extensively about it in other posts. Just for the record, this was Silvia’s baptism to yoga - so, if it is true that our personality is strongly influenced by our prenatal experiences, then don’t be surprised if in twenty years from now Pesciolino 2 decides to leave Italy to retreat himself in a yoga ashram somewhere on the Himalayas...