Varkala And a lovely place it certainly is. We have a little bungalow on the sea shore with the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks as the soundtrack. There is a little beach with easy access to the water. Every evening, the beach is laid out with tables for dinner by the shore. A 15 minute walk to the left takes us to the cliff top village of Varkala where there is a large selection of restaurants and shops selling tea shirts and elephants etc. I bought ...

3rd Class to Varkala We ended up in 3rd class non AC Sleeper because Saj was sure that we would be most likely to get confirmed tickets in this area. I won't bore you with the details of the Indian Railways ticket reservation system but I've had it explained to me half a dozen times and I still can't get my head around it. Suffice to say that you pay your money but you don't know until the day before you travel whether you have a seat or not. Our tickets cost £...