Varkala
Varkala Beach is about 54 Km north from Thiruvananthapuram. Varkala Beach is an ideal location
for those looking for a relaxed and quieter holiday. The beach with its brown sand, panoramic
landscape and seascapes is a tropical paradise. Today, this beach attracts hundreds of locals, as
well as tourists, all year round.
The 2000 year old Janardana Swamy Temple and the Nature Centre are the two main attractions here.
High cliffs border the excellent beach.
Hundreds of Hindu devotees perform 'Vavubali', a ritual performed for the ancestors soul to rest
in peace, on the new moon day of the Malayalam month Karkidam, hence the name 'Papanashini' for
this shore.
Varkala is the only place in southern Kerala where one can find cliffs adjacent to the Arabian
sea. These tertiary sedimentary formation cliffs are a unique geological feature in the otherwise
flat Kerala coast, and is known among geologists as Varkala Formation and a geological monument
as declared by the Geological survey of India. There are numerous water spouts and spas on the
sides of these cliffs.