Chapter 3 — Auto
And thus begins Chapter Three.
Now, children.
There I stood.
Varkala Railway Station.
The question that had haunted my credibility as a resident of Kerala was finally being answered.
How is Varkala?
The council leans forward.
I walked outside.
Looked around.
And
ordinary.
The council pauses.
Ordinary?
Children.
Completely.
A street.
People.
Vehicles.
Buildings.
Life occurring at normal speed.
Nothing announced itself.
That confused me.
Because previous Wanderings had introductions.
Kasol?
Kasol practically grabbed you by the face.
Stalls.
Vendors.
Backpackers.
Scammers.
The sweet smell of agriculture drifting through the air.
Mountains looming around everything as if geography itself wanted credit for the aesthetic.
The council nods.
You arrived,
and Kasol said:
Welcome.
I am Kasol.
Rishikesh did the same.
Pilgrims.
Travelers.
Temples.
Tuk tuks.
The Ganga eventually making herself known.
A place with an identity visible from the moment you entered its orbit.
But Varkala?
Children.
Nothing.
No tourist swarm.
No suspicious vendor attempting to adopt my wallet.
No particular smell.
No dramatic scenery.
Just Kerala.
Ordinary Kerala.
People going to work.
People buying things.
People existing with absolutely no concern that Nuo had finally arrived to review their town.
The council looks disappointed.
I stood there thinking:
Is this it?
Not negatively.
More
confused.
Remember,
I knew nothing.
Ocean.
That was my entire Varkala database.
And there was currently a severe shortage of ocean.
So I did something dangerous.
The council gasps.
Reached for my phone.
Children.
Maps.
Google.
Research.
All the tools sensible travelers use before entering a place they know absolutely nothing about.
My thumb hovered.
Then
no.
The council smiles.
Maps are against the Wanderings.
Not literally.
Children.
I am aware maps are useful.
They have saved civilizations.
But part of wandering is allowing the place to answer before the internet does.
You choose a road.
You ask someone.
You get mildly lost.
Something appears.
The council nods.
So I put the phone away.
And found an auto driver.
A local.
A man who presumably possessed more Varkala knowledge than my impressive collection of:
Ocean.
I asked him:
“Where do I go?”
The council pauses.
Specific.
“Where are the good spots?”
Better.
The man explained.
And children
that was when I discovered something.
The rules had changed.
The council leans forward.
Previous Wanderings had trained me badly.
Kasol?
Walk.
Pick a direction.
Eventually something happens.
Rishikesh?
Walk.
Follow a road.
Follow a dog.
Follow questionable people.
Sooner or later,
the world presents a side quest.
Even Kodaikanal had eventually reduced itself to:
See flower.
Follow flower.
The council nods.
Movement creates story.
Varkala had that rule too.
I would learn.
But not yet.
Because technically
I was in Varkala.
The council nods.
Correct.
But the Varkala people travelled across states to see?
Three kilometres away.
The council goes silent.
Three kilometres.
Children.
Now.
Three kilometres is not an impossible distance.
Healthy people walk three kilometres.
People voluntarily run farther than that for recreation.
Disturbing creatures.
But remember my condition.
I had returned from Rishikesh yesterday.
Yesterday.
Then I had slept,
woken up,
made one impulsive decision,
and spent forty five minutes being physically integrated into the Indian railway population.
The council assesses Nuo.
Physical condition?
Poor.
Spirit?
Willing.
Legs?
Unionizing.
Children.
I was not walking three kilometres.
The Unbegun possesses limits.
Occasionally he even recognizes them.
So I asked the driver:
“How much?”
He gave me the price.
The council examines the wallet.
And children
roughly half my remaining budget.
The council erupts.
HALF?
Yes.
Was the fare unreasonable?
No.
That was the embarrassing part.
The amount itself was fine.
Perfectly normal.
My budget was simply
how shall we phrase this
reasonably nonexistent.
The council checks the treasury.
One moth exits.
Exactly.
I considered walking.
My body immediately filed an objection.
So I paid.
Children.
Sometimes financial responsibility means acknowledging that your knees have veto power.
I climbed into the auto.
And off we went.
The ordinary streets continued.
People.
Shops.
Turns.
Nothing particularly dramatic.
And I wondered whether maybe Varkala had simply been oversold to me by everyone who kept asking about it.
Then
the world began changing.
The council leans forward.
Slowly.
The atmosphere shifted.
More travelers.
Different buildings.
Little hints that somewhere nearby was the place I had imagined without ever actually imagining it.
Then the auto stopped.
North Cliff.
The council grows quiet.
The promised land.
I climbed out.
Paid the kind man who had just consumed half the Unbegun National Treasury.
And walked.
Children.
At first,
I still couldn’t fully see it.
Then I approached the railing.
And the sea began emerging.
Slowly.
More with every step.
The council looks outward.
Blue.
Light.
Horizon.
Then
all of it.
Children.
Holy shit.
The council waits.
That was the thought?
That was the entire thought.
No poetry.
No philosophy.
No carefully constructed sentence about the majesty of nature.
Just:
Holy shit.
The council nods solemnly.
Sometimes language reaches capacity.
I walked to the railing.
And stared.
The cliff dropped away beneath me.
Far below,
the shore stretched alongside the water.
Waves rolled in,
collapsed into white,
pulled backward,
then returned.
People moved along the beach.
Tiny from where I stood.
Some in the water.
Some walking.
Some simply existing beside the sea.
And beyond them
nothing.
The horizon.
The council grows quiet.
Children.
I had seen oceans.
I am from Kerala.
Water was not a revelation.
Beaches were not new.
Sunlight reflecting from waves was not some rare phenomenon I had travelled halfway across the world to witness.
But this?
Different.
Because I wasn’t standing beside the ocean.
I was above it.
The council listens.
The cliff changed the scale.
From a beach,
the sea begins in front of you.
From there?
It seemed to begin beneath me
and continue until the world ran out.
The horizon formed one clean line so far away that my brain could understand it only as:
endless.
The sun scattered across the water.
Thousands of tiny reflections appearing and disappearing as waves moved.
For a moment,
the entire surface seemed made of moving light.
The council falls silent.
And I just stood there.
No mushrooms.
No acid.
No Ganga prayer.
No emotional crisis required to manufacture significance.
Completely sober.
Completely exhausted.
Almost completely broke.
And
awe.
The council smiles.
Pure awe.
That mattered.
Though again,
Old Nuo was not analysing it.
Old Nuo was currently occupied with:
Holy shit.
The council laughs.
I leaned against the railing.
Looked left.
Cliff continuing.
Looked right.
More cliff.
Below,
the beach.
Ahead,
the sea.
And suddenly I understood why people travelled here.
Not all of it.
I had been in Varkala for perhaps minutes.
But enough.
The question
How is Varkala?
finally possessed the beginning of an answer.
The council leans forward.
Beautiful.
Not in the mountain way.
Not Kasol.
Not Kodaikanal.
Not the strange spiritual beauty of Rishikesh.
Varkala had space.
The council listens.
Open space.
Sea.
Sky.
Horizon.
Standing there made the world feel wider.
There was nothing across the water demanding attention.
No building.
No mountain wall.
No road asking where it led.
Just an enormous blank distance.
Children.
Maybe that’s why I froze.
The other Wanderings constantly pulled me forward.
Something around the corner.
Someone calling.
A road.
A dog.
A quest.
Here,
the first thing Varkala did
was make me stop.
The council grows quiet.
And stare.
I had arrived expecting nothing because I knew nothing.
Perhaps that’s why the reveal worked so well.
There had been no photograph in my head for reality to compete with.
No itinerary.
No list saying:
North Cliff — 4.7 stars — spend twenty minutes.
The ordinary station had hidden the place completely.
Then an auto carried me three kilometres.
I walked toward a railing.
And suddenly
ocean.
Cliff.
Sun.
World.
The council smiles.
Varkala had not announced itself at the station.
It had waited.
Children.
Kasol shouted from the doorway.
Rishikesh introduced herself immediately.
Varkala?
Varkala made me come closer.
And then showed me why.
I stayed at that railing for a while.
How long?
Unknown.
No joint chronology available this time.
The council gasps.
Sober timekeeping remains equally unreliable.
But I remember the feeling.
Awe.
And beneath it
relief.
Not from the weight.
I hadn’t come here carrying a crisis.
Something simpler.
The relief of discovering that curiosity had been rewarded.
I had wondered.
So I came.
And what I found was worth wondering about.
The council nods.
That was enough.
Thus concludes Chapter Three.
The Ordinary Varkala.
The Half Budget Auto.
North Cliff.
And The Promised Land.
Children.
I had travelled forty five minutes
to finally answer a question people had been asking me for years.
How is Varkala?
I still didn’t know.
Not completely.
But standing on that cliff,
watching sunlight scatter across an ocean that seemed to continue forever,
I finally had something better than:
“I have no idea.”
The council leans forward.
I had:
“Holy shit.”
