About Kuma
Built around one break.
Kuma Surf is a surf house on Edava beach, a school, a kitchen, a terrace, and a slowly growing family of people who came for three days and stayed for three weeks.
Not a resort.
A house that surfs.
Edava is the quiet end of Varkala, ten minutes from the cliff, a world away from it. The break out front is a soft-bottomed beach break that forgives beginners and still gives the good days teeth.
The house grew around the surf school: first boards, then a kitchen for the surfers, then rooms because nobody wanted to leave after breakfast, then a terrace because the evenings needed somewhere to land. That order, surf first and hotel last, is still how the place is run.
The school is accredited by the Surfing Federation of India, India's national surfing body, and its instructors read this beach every morning before anyone paddles out.
Four things, done properly.
The school
Group lessons with no more than five to an instructor, private ones with two at most, about seventy minutes of each ninety-minute lesson in the water.
Have a look →The house
Five private rooms and one four-bed dorm. Kerala breakfast comes with all of them.
Have a look →The camps
Six a year. Five days, four nights, one group, the same faces at the same table all week.
Have a look →The retreats
Built around your group rather than a calendar. Yoga, recovery, backwaters, or all of it.
Have a look →The founder
When your name is on the door.
Kuma is a nickname, one that stuck since school, carried by the kind of person you just don't forget. Long before there was a surf school or a guesthouse, there was simply Kuma: known up and down Varkala for his radiant smile and big, voluminous curly hair that spread good vibes wherever he goes.
When he built Kuma Surf School, and later Kuma Surf House, the name already meant something. That's also why you can trust it. When your name is on the door, you make sure the door is always worth walking through.
Kuma is Hareesh. He has completed the ISA/ILS Surf and SUP Instructor Aquatic Rescue and Safety course, registered with the International Surfing Association and the International Life Saving Federation, and the school he built is accredited by the Surfing Federation of India. Both certificates open as PDFs.
The team
The people who teach you.
Patient instructors who know how to read the ocean, and their students. Calm, encouraging, and genuinely happy to be out there. On a good day, Kuma himself joins in.
Kuma Surf teaches with a small team of instructors rather than one named coach, so over a week of group lessons you may well surf with more than one of them. Each looks after five surfers at most, stays in the water beside you, and checks the sea before every session. If they don't like what they see, the session is moved or refunded, never pushed through.
Kuma
Founder
His story, you probably already know. If not, ask him. It won't be a short answer, and it will be worth it.
Also on staff
Pulli.
Self-appointed head of vibes
The house dog. Follows you everywhere. Sometimes a little too far. Not allowed in the guest rooms, a rule he considers open to negotiation.
How we run it
A few things we don't do.
We don't write our own reviews.
There are none on this site. The links go to Google, Booking.com, Justdial and MakeMyTrip, where strangers said what they actually thought.
We don't invent prices.
Where a rate isn't confirmed yet the page says so rather than showing a number you'd later be argued out of.
We don't oversell the group size.
Five students per instructor, fourteen beds, five sign-ups to run a camp. Small numbers are the product, not a limitation of it.
We don't take card details over chat.
Once we've confirmed your dates, we send our UPI QR code, or another way to pay, ourselves on WhatsApp or by email. We never ask for card details or passwords. If a payment request doesn't come from our own WhatsApp or email, check with us before paying.
On Instagram
The week, as it happens: reels from the water, stories from the rooftop.
First waves, flat-day skate sessions, the long table after dark. It goes up on @kumasurfsvarkala before it goes anywhere else.
Follow @kumasurfsvarkala
