South India Adventure :: Traveling From Varkala to Kollam to Ama's Ashram

Hey everyone! I’m enjoying my third day in India and am loving this country already! I am in India for a 200 hour yoga teacher training. My training starts in 8 days, and until then I am backpacking around Kerala. Kerala is termed by the locals “God’s Own Country” for it’s incredible beauty. It is also the center of Ayurvedic Medicine.

Today I woke up in Varkala and set out on my journey to Matha Amrithanandamayi Mission. This is the mission of one of the few Indian female gurus, Ama, who is known as the hugging mother. She gives darshans (audiences) during which she hugs thousands of people all night long. Anyways, my friends had told me about her famous hugs and I was pretty curious about ashram life.

I found a rickshaw from the taxi stand at Varkala Beach to take me to the train station in Varkala City for 80 INR. This was my first ride in a rickshaw in India and it was fun! I love all trying all types of transportation, especially when I can feel the wind blowing by and hear all the street noises that cars usually shut out. Roads in India are slightly terrifying if you’re not used to a place where traffic rules barley exist and lanes are merely suggestions. Often times the rickshaw driver would pass a car by driving in the lane over with oncoming traffic just seconds away from hitting us. However, there is some order to the madness and you just have to trust that your driver knows what he is doing (which he does, since it’s his job).

I got to the train station in Varkala and bought a train ticket to Kollam for 30 INR. A note about short train journeys - often times any train that is going in the direction of your destination (in my case, North) will work. These trains will not say your destination on them, since it is a long distance train and you are only going for a short leg of it. For example, I wanted to get from Varkala to Kollam. The next train that arrived said it was going from Trivandrum (in the South) to Mysore (in the North). I asked a couple of locals if it stopped in Kollam and they said yes and I hopped on.

The train ride was an easy 30 minutes. After hopping off at the Kollam train station I took a rickshaw to the ferry station where the I found the government canal boat that goes from Kollam to Alleppey. It is an 8 hour boat ride for a total of 450 INR. Matha Amrithanandamayi Mission is about halfway to Alleppey and costs 180 INR. The boat leaves at 10:30am and Lonely Planet tells you to be there by 9:30am, though this is not necessary unless you want to get the best seats. I dropped my backpack off at the boat and wandered down the street to get some breakfast. I wandered into Hotel Arya Shayan and got poori with three vegetable curries. Poori is an unleavened deep-fried bread that is often eaten for breakfast. This meal was 40 INR (about 60 cents) and was the best meal that I had had so far in India.

After breakfast, I returned to the boat and we set off at 10:30am. The boat ride was incredible. This part of Kerala is known for its backwaters, which are a set of lakes and lagoons that run parallel to the ocean. They are connected by canals and fed by 38 rivers. The backwaters are all fresh water, which are used for irrigation (many rice fields line the backwaters). Alleppey is the most well-known backwaters destination, with a city that caters to hundreds of tourists per day requesting houseboat tours. Kollam is known as the back entrance into the waters and is much less touristy.

The ride was incredible and offered so many snapshots of the way of life along the canals. I saw countless women washing clothes in the river, saw groups of boys swimming in the water splashing each other and tossing around balls, saw little prawn farms in front of people’s homes. I saw heaps of coconut shells piled by the waterside, groups of women and men in circles talking, a boy jumping into the water via a rope swing, a woman tossing a plastic bag of trash into the water and watching it float away. I saw so many smiles and hundreds of waves from children that ended in enthusiastic jumping or blowing of kisses. This boat ride was really sweet. We stopped at 12:30 for lunch, which I thought was pretty terrible (even the rice was bad…). After lunch, we traveled down south for another half hour and ended at Matha Amrithanandamayi Mission around 1:30pm. The large pink buildings among the coconut trees, ocean, and river were a pretty impressive sight. After hopping off the ferry, I grabbed my backpack, walked over the bridge, and entered into the ashram. More on this experience tomorrow… :-)