Surya Samudra Beach Garden
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

"Situated on a rocky promontory between two deserted beaches, Surya Samudra is the kind of place you could easily imagine Hemingway or Somerset Maugham retreating to for weeks at a time to bash away at a typewriter in splendid isolation. It's that kind of place."
Herbert Ypma, HIP HOTELS ESCAPE, Thames & Hudson
Welcome to Surya Samudra- Kerala's spacious, lush resort! Here one can get enough of Surya , the Sun or Samudra , the sea.
"This place, Surya Samudra is like a setting in a James Bond film," said a friend. Quite so: exotic wooden cottages, coconut trees, a fine beach…This is a place for dreaming, in the silence and the sun and the roar of the waves… Kerala has no beach resort like it.'
Surya Samudra began as a single octagonal stone house thirty miles from the tip of India and just a few minutes from the historic Vizhinjam harbour (pronounced as Virinyam) Today, it has grown into an eco-friendly beach resort with 23 houses spread over nearly 20 acres of private space and each house comes with a luxuriant foliage of coconut, palm, bamboo, banana, wild shrubs, flowers and the chirping of birds.
Individual cottages or houses make up the resort, call bells at the door have been avoided since the sound is jarring and each terrace has a granite-topped table and stools cut from granite pillars where one can sit and watch the waves lash against the cliff throwing little water beads against the azure sky.

Heritage Cottage

A natural Swimming Pool carved out of rock, gives a rare, once-in-a-lifetime experience to swim in surroundings like royalty of the past.
Dine at the restaurant called the Octopus famous for its excellent.
seafood, fresh vegetables, genuine Kerala dishes, home-made cakes and ice creams.
Trips around Surya Samudra can be undertaken to view the beautiful backwaters, temples and local areas. The resort can make arrangements for them.
Experience the traditional Indian healing sciences of Ayurveda and Yoga , kept alive here, as a tradition.

Dining

The Octopus, the resorts restaurant, specialises in and offers various sea-food ranging from lobsters and tiger prawns to octopus and shark; from barracuda puttu and sea urchins to baked crab and Japanese tuna salad.
Local dishes (vegetables and fish) too are prepared and can be savoured on plantain leaves. With the exception of jam, cream and pickles no preserved food is used in the resort. Fresh fish from the sea, vegetables and fruits grown in the resort garden are used to avoid pollution in food materials.
Bread, cakes and ice creams are prepared here on a daily basis. Such is the taste of the preparations that a regular customer once made a long distance call just to ensure that she got banana cake and mango ice-cream when she would visit them shortly!
The restaurant is semi-circular in shape and can seat upto a 40 people. The sea-sand flooring and the Kerala roof offer an out-of-this-world ambience. Each table has a granite pepper crusher specially made to order from Mahaballipuram. A bronze bell is placed on each table, to call for the waiter. One can also call for sustenance by the pool or down on the beaches.

Surya Samudra has an ayurvedic massage centre and a yoga centre whose treatments customers swear by.
The word Ayurveda is composed of two terms. 'Ayus' means 'life' and 'Veda' means the knowledge or 'Science'. Thus, Ayurveda means the science of life. Ayurveda lays a great deal of emphasis upon the maintenance of positive health of an individual.
Ayurveda evolved around 600 BC in India . Ayurveda has been practiced ever since. Today, it is a unique, indispensable branch of medicine - a complete natural system that depends on the diagnosis of the body's systems, to achieve the right balance.
Ayurveda believes in the treatment of not just the affected part, but also of the individual as a whole. It is a natural way to refresh oneself, to eliminate all toxic substances from the body and thus to regain resistance and good health.

Kerala's equable climate, natural abundance of forests (with a wealth of herbs and medicinal plants), and the cool monsoon season (June - November) are best suited for Ayurveda's curative and restorative packages. Traditional texts reveal that the monsoon is the best season for rejuvenation programmes. The atmosphere remains dust-free and cool, opening the pores of the body to the maximum, making it most receptive to herbal oils and therapy.
Surya Samudra keeps Kerala's ayurvedic medicine alive in an uninterrupted tradition on a luxurious scale. After a consultation with the doctor, one can choose from a variety of soothing treatments. An expert massage using traditional medicinal oils prepared from natural ingredients by the masseur can be enjoyed. Excellent results with all types of pains in the joints and the muscles, and with prophylactics and relief from rheumatism and arthrosis have been seen.

Yoga and Meditation

Mental and physical exercises meant to isolate the ego from the body and mind - designed to hone your concentration, improve health and help attain peace of mind through eight stages of training:
Disciplined behaviour (yama), Self purification (niyama), Bodily postures such as the lotus position (asana), Control of breathing (pranayama), Control of the senses (pratyahara), Fixing of the mind on a chosen object (dharana), Meditation (dhyana), Samadhi - a state of being where you experience absolute tranquillity and well-being.

In Surya Samudra, yoga is offered for beginners and advanced persons, both for individuals and for small groups.

Getting There
The resort complex falls under Trivandrum district and is 18 kilometres away from it, 22 kilometres from the airport. It is 5 kilometres away from the historic Vizhinjam (pronounced as Virinyam) harbour and 6 kilometres from Vizhinjam town.

It is also 8 kilometres away from Kovalam. Air India operates international flights to Delhi , Mumbai ( Bombay ) and Kolkota ( Calcutta ). Indian Airlines and Jet Airways operate flights to connect these cities to smaller cities and towns like Trivandrum . Other international airlines: Kuwait Airways, Gulf Air, Sri Lankan Airlines, Silk Air, Qatar Airways and Oman Air.

Alternatively, Indian railway services or the roads could be utilised to reach Trivandrum . Guests of Surya Samudra can be met at the railway station or the airport.