TSI Luxury Holidays

Kovalam is a beach town on the Arabian Sea in Thiruvananthapuram city, Kerala, India. It is located around 13 km from the down town of Trivandrum. Kovalam means “a grove of coconut trees” and true to its name, the village offers an endless sight of coconut trees. Kovalam first received attention when the Regent Maharani Sethu Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore constructed her beach resort, Halcyon Castle, here towards the end of the 1920s. Thereafter the place was brought to the public eye by her nephew the Maharaja of Travancore. The European guests of the then Travancore kingdom discovered the potentiality of Kovalam beach as a tourist destination in the 1930s. However, Kovalam came into limelight in the early seventies with the arrival of the masses of hippies on their way to Ceylon in the Hippie Trail. This exodus started the transformation of a casual fishing village of Kerala into one of the most important tourist destinations in India.

Kovalam has three beaches separated by the rocky outcroppings in its 17 km coastline; together these three form the famous crescent of the Kovalam beach. The three beaches are Lighthouse Beach, Hawah (EveÆs) Beach and Samudra Beach. The beaches have steep palm covered headlands and are lined with shops that offer all kinds of goods and services. The normal tourist season is from September to May. There are a large number of beach resorts in and around Kovalam. The sea port of Vizhinjam is about 3 km away and famous for its special varieties of fish, old Hindu temples, big churches and a mosque. Kovalam was among the most prominent tourist spots in India especially during the hippy era. It still has a high status among tourists from Europe and Israel. Kovalam is finding a new significance in the light of several Ayurvedic salons, and recuperation and regeneration resorts, which provide a wide variety of Ayurvedic treatments to tourists.