Text and Photos: Sunil Gupta

Kovalam Beach- Trivendrum - Poovar Island

The memories of a walk on Goa beach were still alive in my mind and the Kovalam beach was inviting me again, so I had already planned the night before to talk a early morning walk on the beach and the alarm was set for 5:30 a.m. The alarm woke me up at the right time, but it was very dark at that time, not very good light for photography, so I decided to postpone it a little. Finally, I was up and ready at around 6:40. There was a shortcut way going straight from our hotel to the beach, which I used, and there the beach was in front of my eyes with all its pristine beauty, only few people around, very different from what it was the last evening with lots of tourist around. It was very calm, but the roar of the waves was breaking the calmness every now and then.

I found Kovalam beach very different from the Kolva beach in goa; the Kolva beach was pretty calm and serene, yet full of life; very few people were there in the morning, yet there were a lot of activities going on. On the other hand, Kovalam beach is a very famous tourist destination, you’ll find a lot of Indian as well as foreigner tourists, but it seemed a little lifeless in the morning apart from few tourists going for a walk on the beach and a few fishermen fighting with the waves for their livelihood. There wasn’t much variety in the activities there. Yet, I found it more beautiful with each and every minute that I spent there. While I coming back, I saw 3-4 fishermen pulling a rope from the sea, I looked them curiously and tried to find out what they were pulling out from the sea, but I couldn’t find the other end of that rope; the rope was getting bigger and bigger and more and more fishermen were coming every minute or two to pull that rope. After some time, there were approximately 15-20 fishermen doing the job and yet I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. I sat in the shadow of a boat for around 40 minutes there; finally, I came to know that they were pulling their fishing net from the sea that was set few kilometers off the coast. It took around 1-1/2 hours for them to get the net on the beach. Meanwhile, Sunny had called me 3-4 times by then to get some chocolates for him and to tell me that members from Trivendrum xbhp had come to the hotel to meet us, so I had to go back to the hotel room, and yes, we also had to leave for the Poovar Island Resort. When I got back to the hotel room, there were a lot of xbhp members waiting for us. I didn’t expect so many members there, I mean the Trivendrum chapter of xbhp has been very quiet, nothing much activity, but yet I was tired of shaking hands and saying hi to so many people, what a pleasant surprise. We canceled the ride to the Poovar Island ride with these guys, instead we went for a ride till Shankhumugam Beach, some 10-12 kms away from Kovalam. What a nice place this was, a very beautiful beach, only handful of tourists there, sexy roads leading up to the beach, and even more beautiful road going along the beach. There was one India Coffee House restaurant just in the front of the beach, on the opposite side of road, where we went for our breakfast. The food there was dirt cheap, yet so delicious and tasty. The breakfast for three of us was only 125 bucks. While going back from there, Comet again met with an accident and this time Ashish was the victim, a dog came running straight in front of him; Ashish hit the dog and flipped the bike. The dog died on the spot; Ashish also got injured and it looked to me as if he had broken some bone in his left foot. And, it was not over yet, the Jupiter had started to leak oil and it was doing so very badly. So, we sent Ashish to the hospital on an autorickshaw with an Trivendrum xbhp member and took both the vehicles to the Kinetic workshop in Trivendrum. Meanwhile, we also got the CBR washed in Trivendrum and tried hard to search for the 97 Octane petrol in Trivendrum, but we were told that it was not available in Trivendrum. Also, we contacted Ashish in the hospital and he told us that luckily there was no fracture, but he’s has a torn ligament in the left foot. By that time, it was 3 p.m. and we were feeling hungry, se went to a restaurant in Trivendrum with the xbhp members and there we also showed them some videos and photographs of xbhp and did little chit-chat about biking scene in Trivendrum. After that it was time to return to the hotel and then go to the Poovar Island resort. We went till the Poovar Island resort in our backup truck because we did not want to leave our bikes  unattended because we can’t take our bikes to the resort. Trivendrum guys again gave us company till the Island but didn’t go to resort itself for some reasons. They charge 125 bucks per person as ferry charges and as the entry fee for the resort, but to me it was a waste of money; I didn’t find the place as beautiful, maybe because we were already too late and it was dark there, so I couldn’t actually see the whole place in its entirety. One more thing, that resort was damn expensive, highly unaffordable. We had to come back to our hotel quickly because we were supposed to meet some members from www.team-bhp.com at 7 p.m. and it was 7 p.m. already and we were still 30 minutes away from the hotel. Luckily, Kartik and his friend (from team-bhp.com) also got a bit late, so they didn’t have to wait for us at the hotel. Karthick had a souped Mitsubishi Lancer with lots of performance and cosmetic mods in his car. We had a brief, but a very nice chat with them and it felt really great to meet somebody from some forum other than xbhp.com. Finally, they left and it was time for us to go for dinner. So, went again to a beachside restaurant for dinner. All those beachside restaurants were empty at that time or almost closed as there were no tourists at that time there because of rain. We chose an empty restaurant for ourselves; how these restaurant discriminate against Indian tourists is something that needs a separate blog entry and I’ll definitely write about it.

Time to doze off for a long journey ahead till Rameshwaram via Kanyakumari, some 320 km, a milestone to be crossed; time to start the journey back to home.