Guests eating dinner together at a long table under a thatched roof at night

Experiences

Coffee & Music Evenings

Guitars appear, coffee keeps coming, and the day's waves get retold taller than they were. Nobody plans it; it happens most nights anyway.

Not an event, a habit. Bring an instrument if you travel with one; borrow one if you don't. The skate bowl runs under the bulbs until someone declares tomorrow a dawn mission.

People dancing under string lights at night, one with her arms raised

Two women talking at a table in warm evening light under the thatch

A man dancing on the grass at night beneath strings of bulbs

How it runs

How the evenings go

When: Terrace hours start around 7pm with dinner, and the music follows. The rooftop has its dance nights too.
On a camp week: Dinner is included every night, from the welcome dinner on Day 1 to the closing barbecue on Day 5, so the evening starts at the table.
Volume: Drinks are welcome, and so is noise within reason, because somebody always has a dawn surf.
Flow Cult: A new skatepark just around the corner from Edava, busiest from late afternoon into the evening, with surfers, local skaters and travellers.
First time on wheels: Start on the flat and wear shoes. Go early in the evening, before it gets busy, and wait your turn in the bowl: never start a run while someone else is riding it. Wrist guards and a helmet help for the first few sessions.
No board?: Plenty of travellers borrow or buy one locally. For a surfer, a surf-skate is the easiest start: its front truck swivels further than a normal one, so it carves surf-style turns.
Why surfers skate: Stance, turning and balance work the same way on concrete, and you get minutes of riding instead of the few seconds a wave gives you. It does not replace time in the water. It makes that time count for more.

The skate session that runs on into the evening. Filmed at Kuma Surf. Watch: Surfskating with the Kuma Surf crew in Varkala

No line-up

Music evenings in Varkala, free and unplanned

Nobody books a band. One guitar comes out, then another, and the coffee keeps pace with the requests.

You do not need to play anything. Singing along badly still counts as joining in.

There are louder evenings in Varkala. This one happens on a terrace, costs nothing, and finishes when people get sleepy.

Wheels

When the board has wheels

Skate is part of the week for anyone who wants it. On the camps it comes up twice, and both times it is voluntary.

The bowl keeps going after dark under the bulbs. A flat sea is not a wasted day if there is concrete nearby.

A skater in a black tee and jeans mid-air above his flipping skateboard, a curved concrete wall and palms behind — Board below, skater above, landing not pictured.

A skater pops an ollie in a concrete skate area ringed by palms while a man walks off with a board and a woman watches — Low sun, long shadows, one close observer.

A bearded man in a yellow-print shirt jumps off a skateboard, arms out, with two other skaters behind — Sometimes the trick is getting off.

Three people skate barefoot down a concrete slope under a grey sky, with palms and houses behind — Barefoot, and nobody looks worried about it.

Shoes optional

Just rolling

Not every roll needs a trick. Some of it is just people coasting down a slope together, trying not to collide.

The evening moves around: coffee, a guitar, a board with wheels. People drift between them until the energy runs out.