It’s January 1994. Dusk has fallen over the ocean. There are 12 of us around a table on Kovalam Beach in Kerala – Britons, Canadians, New Zealanders – all barefoot, hair crunchy with saltwater, swimwear still damp. Empty bottles of cheap rum are amassing on the table and swordfish is cooking on the grill after being carried from the shore by fishermen. We’re enjoying the easy camaraderie of young backpackers whose lives are intersecting for a moment in time.
My boyfriend, with whom I’ve been travelling around India, laughs. “Are you sure it wasn’t eight people a year, not six?” he says to one of the Kiwi blondes, whose name I’ve forgotten.
We all laugh. We know this is how urban myths evolve, and we also know we’re being flippant about something serious. But we don’t care. Nobody has a copy of Lonely Planet’s guide to India to hand, but the next evening I check and read that three to four people a year drown in riptides off Kovalam Beach. Its configuration creates dangerous undercurrents even when the sea isn’t rough.
I’d always been at home in the sea. As a child, I loved the aftermath of tropical storms: the waves that picked me up and tossed me around and threw me breathless onto the beach.
But the next day at Kovalam, I don’t get far out before something changes. The water churns. The wave pattern has broken and something has taken its place, something less predictable, less readable. Although I’m not at any great depth, the water suddenly takes me, pulling me back and under. I gasp and saltwater gushes into my mouth. Everything fizzes and rushes in front of my eyes.
When I come back up, I try to summon my boyfriend. He smiles and waves from the beach.
“I’m not waving, I’m drowning,” I try to scream. But another wave bowls my feet from under me and I go down again. I spin and spin, sand swirling around me. I feel myself losing strength and breath.
It happens again, and again, and again, until I think: This is it.
And, I think, I’m only just starting my real life.
But then the water stops. The riptide vanishes as quickly as it appeared. Stumbling towards the beach, I fall onto the sand, water pouring from my nose and mouth, past my boyfriend – who knows, now – that the guide book joke isn’t funny anymore. It never was.
We’ve been revealed to ourselves as blasé, idiot travellers – ill-informed, laughing at warnings, too stupid to find out what to do if you get caught in a riptide.
It was during the pandemic when I realised I didn’t want to be married anymore, that I developed an obsession with coming back to Kovalam. It was something to do with facing my fears – my fears of the sea (my near-drowning had made me very nervous of ever going out of my depth in the water), but also my fears of the future and of being safe. And of course, being cooped up in lockdown made me think a lot about a time in life when I had been free.
When I finally make it back, it’s January 2024, and I find that Kovalam has changed. Of course it’s changed, just as I have. How could it not? Where last time we stayed in a cheap room in a local family’s home, this time, learning that Kerala is a centre for Ayurvedic medicine, I check into a famous retreat four miles from Kovalam, Somatheeram. I am curious to know what it can do for my midlife ailments, physical and spiritual (answer: a lot – but that’s another story).
Kovalam itself is a bit busier and more developed, but still has somewhat of a backpacker-slash-hippy feel and an off-the-beaten-track feel during to being almost at the southern tip of India, far from the crowds of Goa. Curiously, though, it doesn’t make me feel nostalgia for my backpacking days or even my youth; I’m glad to be back alone, and with money.
Thirty years to the exact day when I nearly drowned (by weird chance, rather than design), I walk along the beach, eyeing the waves. Then I notice the lifeguard. There were no lifeguards here in 1994. He sees me looking and walks over, urging me, in faltering English, to go for a swim. I ask about the riptides but he assures me the water is safe.
I’m still not sure. I carry on walking, thinking about friends who haven’t made it as far as I have. Back in 1994, just after the riptide, I collected my mail, and one letter from home told me that one of my best childhood friends, Rosie, was dying of cancer, aged only 24. Within two weeks of my near-drowning, she was gone. The two events have always been linked in my mind. Why was I saved and she not?
Last year, I lost another friend, Catherine, suddenly, and too young – she was 42. Catherine had got divorced and was planning a solo trip to India, so coming back like this has made me feel guilty. But I also feel like am carrying her fierce, life-loving spirit with me like a talisman.
I sit on the sand. There are other lifeguards further along. A couple of lads with boards are hurling themselves into the surf. It’s rough, but isn’t that what thrilled me as a kid?
In 1994, post-uni and before my first job, I had no idea what the future had in store, and I desperately wanted to know. What would I do with my life? Would my boyfriend and I get married? Would we have kids?
Back here today, 55, and separated from my husband, I still have no idea what life has in store. But suddenly I understand that’s actually the point: the not-knowing. I’ve come back rich in 30 years’ experience – motherhood, career success, great friendships, and some regrets, too – but new pieces of me are waiting to be discovered, and that’s scary but also thrilling. I don’t need to be afraid – I need to embrace it.
I stand up, tear off my clothes and run into the waves, laughing as I let them submerge me. When I turn around, the lifeguard is waving at me. I wonder if he’s warning me of a riptide, but then I see him point at my bag on the sand. It has my phone in, all my Indian currency. The tide is about to reach it. I start running. At the last moment, the lifeguard kicks it out of the way of the water and saves me.
I burst out laughing. I am still that blasé, idiot traveller, it seems. Some things don’t change.
Travel essentials
Getting there
Several airlines fly to Mumbai or Bangalore from the UK. From Mumbai, Rhonda flew to Thiruvananthapuram Airport 13km from Kovalam, returning to Mumbai on the Kochuveli Superfast Express 29-hour sleeper train from Thiruvananthapuram; tickets for (cheap) domestic flights and trains are most easily arranged via 12Go Asia, 12go.asia/enStaying there
Rhonda stayed at Somatheeram Ayurvedic Resort, where room-only rates start at £49pppn but where most guests book a 14-night package including food, massages, yoga, and Ayurvedic consultations and remedies, starting at £1862pp, somatheeram.orgFurther information
keralatourism.org