Soul & Surf's surf and yoga retreat on the Varkala cliff closed on 30 April 2026, after running since December 2009. If it was on your list, the good news is that nothing you went to Varkala for has gone: the waves, the season and a growing number of surf schools are all still here, and so are surf-and-stay weeks with yoga on the side. You just have to put the trip together a little more deliberately.
This post covers what happened, what that kind of retreat offered, and how to find the same things in Varkala now, starting with the checks that matter most.
What happened
Soul & Surf announced the closure on their own journal. The Kerala retreat, which began in December 2009, closed on 30 April 2026 after a dispute with their landlord, and in their words left "thirty-plus local staff out of work at the end of May" (Soul & Surf). Their site now points guests to their retreats in Sri Lanka and Portugal (Soul & Surf).
Fifteen years is a long run for any small business, and a lot of people learned to surf in Varkala because of them. That is worth saying plainly before anything else.
What people went there for
A surf retreat like theirs bundled several things that are otherwise separate:
- Surf coaching in small groups, over several days, so progress built from one session to the next.
- A place to stay with other surfers, so the evenings were part of the trip too.
- Yoga, which suits surfing well: mobility for the pop-up, and something to do when the sea is flat.
- Local knowledge. Someone who knew which beach to use on which tide. Their own writing mentions surfing breaks such as Edava.
None of those depend on a single company. They depend on the beach, the season and the people who teach there, and those are all still in place.
How to rebuild that trip in 2026
| What you want | What to look for | Where to start |
|---|---|---|
| Coaching you can trust | A current Surfing Federation of India accreditation, and a named instructor | Our checklist |
| Small groups | A stated number per instructor, ideally five or fewer | Surf school |
| A week that builds | Several lessons on consecutive mornings, or a camp | Varkala surf camps |
| Somewhere to stay near the water | A base close to the beach where lessons run | Where to stay |
| Yoga and recovery | Classes nearby, on the beach or a rooftop | Experiences |
| A group trip | A custom week built around your dates | Retreats |
Choosing a school now
With a big name gone, the choice looks harder than it is. The most useful single check is accreditation. The Surfing Federation of India, the national body, accredits schools after assessing safety, equipment, instructor ratios and service, and renews that accreditation every year. So ask to see the certificate, and read the date.
Then ask three more things: how many beginners share an instructor, which beach you will learn on and what the bottom is like, and how the start time is decided. The answer to the last one should involve the tide. Kerala Tourism's guide to surfing in Varkala notes that early mornings are usually best, when the wind is lighter.
Our full list of nine checks, with a message you can paste into WhatsApp, is in how to choose a surf school in Varkala.
Where to base yourself
Soul & Surf sat on the cliff, which is Varkala's busy, café-lined heart. Plenty of people want exactly that. Others come for the surf and find the cliff noisier than they expected.
Edava, about ten minutes up the coast to the north, is the quieter alternative: a fishing village with a sandy beach break that suits beginners, and far fewer people on the sand at dawn. We wrote a full comparison in Edava vs Varkala Cliff, and a wider guide to where to stay in Varkala, area by area if you are weighing up more areas.
If you loved the retreat format
Some people want lessons and nothing else. Others want the whole shape of a retreat: the same group all week, meals together, a plan for every morning. There are two ways to get that now.
A fixed-date camp. Our Varkala surf camps are capped at fourteen people, with a two-hour surf every morning, breakfast and dinner at the house, three ice baths, yoga, two video reviews of your own surfing and transport to the beach. They start from ₹18,000 per person. The full calendar is on the camp page.
A custom retreat. If you are bringing a group, a retreat is built around your dates and what you want from the week, whether that is more surf, more yoga, recovery or time on the backwaters.
Where yoga fits
A lot of Soul & Surf's guests came for the yoga as much as the waves. Varkala has been a yoga and Ayurveda town for far longer than it has been a surf town, and classes are easy to find on the cliff and along the beaches. At Kuma, yoga sessions run on the rooftop and on the sand, and the experiences page lists what we can arrange around a surf week.
The sensible rhythm is surf in the morning, when the sea is calmest, and yoga in the late afternoon, when your shoulders will thank you for it.
A note on the people who teach here
Varkala's surf scene is small and local. The instructors, the drivers, the cooks and the people who run the chai stalls after a session are mostly from here, and when a large operator closes, they are the ones who feel it first. Choosing a locally run school is not charity; it is simply where the knowledge of the water lives, because they are on that beach every morning of the season.
Questions we hear from people who had booked with them
Is the surfing still good in Varkala? Yes. The waves, the sandbanks and the season did not change in April. Kerala Tourism still lists October to April as the surfing season here.
Were they the only accredited school? No. The Surfing Federation of India accredits schools across the country every year, and ours in Edava is one of them. Whichever school you pick, ask for its current certificate and check the date.
Can I still do surf and yoga in the same week? Yes, easily. Varkala has a long-established yoga scene, and many surf schools, ours included, can point you to classes or arrange them around your mornings in the water.
Is Edava a good place to learn? For beginners, yes: a sandy beach break with far fewer people than the cliff beaches. It is where we teach.
The short version
Soul & Surf's Varkala chapter is over, but surfing in Varkala is not. Pick an accredited school, keep the group small, stay close to the beach you learn on, and add yoga or a camp if you want the retreat feel back. Our surf school page explains how we teach, and the lessons page has current prices, starting at ₹1,500 per person for a group session.
