Kovalam Trip 2016
Kovalam means a grove of coconut palm trees. We were mesmerized by one such picture of Kovalam at an airport in one of our earlier trips. Since then Kovalam was on our wishlist.
In March 2016, we went on a trip to Kovalam. Our trip started with an early morning flight to Trivandrum. We hired a taxi at Trivandrum Airport and reached Kovalam in 40 minutes. We stayed at Soma Palmshore Beach Resort, in Kovalam.
Kovalam has three beaches: the Lighthouse Beach, Hawah Beach and Samudra Beach. They are crescent shaped and located next to each other. Out of these three, the Lighthouse Beach is very popular among tourists. Light House Beach got its name from the Vizhinjam Lighthouse. The shallow waters make it ideal for swimming. One can learn to surf or go on speed boat rides at this beach. One can also rent beach chairs with umbrella and watch the pristine beach, read a book, or simply get lost in thoughts while listening to the waves as we did on most days. 😊
Hawah Beach is adjacent to the Lighthouse Beach. Hawah Beach had lot of fishing activity going on. Samudra Beach is adjacent to Hawah beach. Samudra Beach was crowded with locals in the evening.
Kovalam Beach is lined by an elevated pavement known as Kovalam Beach Road with various shops, restaurants and hotels. The restaurants provide a good view of the beach and serve sea food. As opposed to Goa, Kovalam has a laid back lifestyle. Most foreigners stay here for months together and they can be seen relaxing at the beach or at restaurants reading books or working on their computers.
After sunset the beach road comes alive with the restaurants prepped up for dinner. We spent most of our evenings here. Some of these places stealthily serve chilled beer in porcelain mugs. 😊
We chose to stay at Soma Palmshore Beach Resort as it was our first visit to Kovalam and we were not sure of the quality of rooms at the beach road. The resort is about 10 minutes walk from the happening beaches of Kovalam. This could be a little bit of inconvenience due to street dogs if you are returning by walk late at night. But this resort has a serene private beach.
The resort is situated on a hilly region and it takes about a minute to climb down the hill via stairs to reach the private beach. The private beach is truely private and this makes it a good place for a quiet dip in the Arabian Sea. We spent hours together playing at the beach and the pool.
While the restaurants at the beach road provided sea food, we found the food at the resort to be more authentic and of finer taste. The fresh pineapple juice that we had with each meal is praiseworthy. The fish and prawns we had in this place were the best we could find in Kovalam.
The four days we spent in this calm and easy-going beach town motivated us to explore more Kovalam-like places in future. With this inspiration we left to Bangalore.
