Basic Data
| Country |
India |
| State |
Kerala |
| District |
Ernakulum |
| City |
Mararikulam |
| Location |
The Marari Beach, Mararikulam
90Kms from Cochin International airport,
12 Kms from Alleppey and 160 Kms
from Trivandrum international airport. |
City Information
Everyone loves endless golden beaches. So much so, they've become something of a tourism cliché, often indistinguishable from one another.
But the allure of a beach is not just in the sand and the sea. It's in the living environment that surrounds it.
In the trees and plants, the birds and fishes that call it home. And most of all, in the culture, life and color of the people who belong there. Because it is only this that makes it special, different from other interchangeably pretty stretches of sand around the world.
A beach is just a beach, until you find its living heart. For us, the search ended in the little village of Mararikulam.
Somewhere around the middle section of Kerala's coast, the Indian Ocean finally realizes that it has now become the Arabian Sea. The result of this personality change is a splendid azure color, quite distinctive, with frothy whitecaps and a translucent, pearl-like quality. The sands that fringe this coastline for endless miles are themselves distinctive, deep and rich and fine, in a shade closer to ocher than gold.
This natural brushwork leaves its mark on human life too. The people of the area have been fisher folk for millennia and over this time, they've evolved a way of life that's as tranquil and colorful as their world.
The village of Mararikulam is tucked away behind a line of dense palms that rise like a sudden rampart of green out of the sands. Like all villages, it has evolved naturally, in picturesque disorder.
The huts are slapdash adobe, thatched with-what else? -palm and tied with coir, or coconut rope. (In fact, the coconut tree supplies the villagers with an endless number of useful items, from kitchen ladles to sunhats to boat hulls.) Neat and scrupulously clean footpaths veer between the huts and everywhere; the pungent scents of the sea mingle with the fragrance of coconut oil and spice.
Spread out here and there on rough coir mats is sunbursts of red. These are the famous red chilies, without which no self-respecting fishwife would ever dream of serving up dinner.
Evening in fact, is a special time. The winking of oil lamps and cooking fires transforms the village into a glowing tableau vivant, with a painted sunset as the backdrop. Within moments, you feel your city clock winding gently down, and then dying without protest as you pass through a scene unchanged for centuries.
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