The Coral Crown of India

The morning rush hour is chaos in southern India’s port city of Kochi. Thousands of auto rickshaw drivers, bus riders, and motor bikers squeeze through the humid arteries, slowed at every turn by crater-sized potholes and crossing cows. Brakes squeal, buses hiss, and never were there streets pierced by a more diverse array of honks and horns.

We’re packed in a van, along with our surfboards, among India’s 1.3 billion people, who all seem to be trying to get somewhere important today. Our driver is lost. He’s looking for the ferry that will take us to an offshore island, but so far every dock we’ve checked is empty. He rolls down his window to talk to a harbor official in a tightly pressed uniform and trimmed mustache. He also doesn’t know where the ferry is, or when it arrives, or which dock is the correct one. 

The shores of Kochi have no surf today, just fishing nets, plastic debris, and murky water lapping the sand. Where we’re headed the water is blue and deep. There’s a hollow wave wrapping over shallow coral, difficult to reach and rarely surfed.

For this reason Kishore Kumar is with us, sitting at the front of the bus, directing our driver. He and his friend Ram are the two unlikely gatekeepers of the wave. Growing up near a land-locked mega-city, it was the vision of a guru that led Kishore to a perfect outer island reef many years ago. Since then he and Ram have carefully guarded its access. On the mainland they have become known as the pioneers of surfing in India, having uncovered waves across far-flung corners of the country. Of all the places they’ve made their way to, this island still poses the greatest challenge.

Our voyage is the first the ferry has made since the monsoon season ended—and because of permitting complications, we’re the first surfers to visit the island in five years. Ram has a contact there who sends him videos when the swell gets big. He shows me a clip on his phone from earlier in the year, during a particularly large storm. Massive waves explode over a pier, crack it, and break off pieces of concrete. Swells like these are usually impossible to score because the ferry can shut down for weeks at a time.

Ram smiles. “My dream is to see it like this some day,” he says.

Our driver takes us down a road that rattles our van like a jackhammer. He stops in front of a building choked with people. Auto rickshaws and vans gridlock the entrance. Throngs of passengers unload bags and boxes wrapped with plastic and rope. This must be the place. 

I press into the terminal and join a security line that snakes through a series of checkpoints. My hand reaches back to make sure my wallet is still in my pocket, which it is. Inside, the air is thick and heavy. Officers check bags randomly for alcohol, which is highly illegal on the Islam-adhering islands. My papers are stamped, a bottle of whiskey is confiscated from the backpack of a passenger in front of me, and then we board. It’s a 16-hour journey to the island. Hundreds of people pack into the ship’s lower levels, shuffling into a grid of rusted bunk beds below deck for the overnight crossing.

*

Kishore learned of surfing through a guru, his spiritual master and guide. Growing up near one of the most populated cities in the world, surfing had never crossed his mind. It wasn’t until he joined the spiritual monastery of Jack Hebner, a surfer and swami who originated from the far-off land of Jacksonville, Florida, that Kishore discovered what would soon become a lifelong pursuit.

Often referred to as the Surfing Swami, Hebner came from the colorful surf culture of the early 1960s and made his way to India in the 70s in search of spiritual knowledge. It was through him that surfing arrived in the country. Kishore and Ram were some of his early disciples. Hebner would take them on excursions to the coast where he taught his students how to swim, surf, and read the ocean.

“His life is based on giving,” Ram says of Hebner. “When he established a surf retreat on the coast, he saw our interest and gave the responsibility of it to us.”

It was around this time that Hebner brought Kishore in on an idea that had been orbiting in his mind for some time. He wanted to see if there was surf in the Lakshadweeps, a cluster of islands 250 miles off the western coast.

*

The island appears as a sliver on the horizon. Low and flat, it hardly rises above sea level from my perspective on the deck of the ferry. We’re anchored a few hundred yards from the blast-weary pier that I had seen in Ram’s video. Big swells heave the boat side to side.

“Normally we dock at the pier,” Kishore says. “But with this swell, it’s not safe.”

In the distance, a small flotilla approaches us from the island, each boat packed with a crew of oarsmen. Colorful flags snap on the bows in the wind. They steer next to the ferry and a side door opens on our vessel. Passengers from inside the ferry lower luggage into the wooden boats, followed by infants and an old lady sitting in a chair. Then the rest of the people climb aboard. As soon as the first boat is full, it leaves and the next comes up alongside us and takes on more people. This goes on for hours as the ship’s cargo is shuttled to the island, bit by bit. 

We’re on the last boat. It’s low and wide, designed to navigate heavy shorebreak over a shallow reef. As we near the island, the crew cuts the motor and drops their oars into the water to propel us through the impact zone. Just inside of us, shoulder-high swells unload onto a coral beach. I’m certain this can’t end well. 

A particularly large wave passes under us and a man standing at the bow orders the rowers to take us in. As the oars kick into gear, I look back and see the next wave of the set closing in behind us. It’s bigger than the previous one, so I slide to the center of the cockpit and hold onto my backpack, ready to be ejected onto the reef. 

The crew continues rowing at full speed and we narrowly outrace the wave. As it explodes, it sends us safely into the shallows. Down the coast I can see walls of whitewater marching in under the pier.

*

As the story goes, a few hundred years ago the island belonged to the king of the Maldives. His kingdom had recently been raided and his treasure stolen. When a monsoon raked through the islands, he was unable to help the Lakshadweep people rebuild. The islanders turned to India for help and, from then on, their land became Indian territory. To this day, the island has more in common with the Maldives than India, sharing its customs, religion, and language.

When Hebner and Kishore first arrived on the island, they didn’t know what they would find. They were relying on limited research and their own intuition. Hebner hired an auto rickshaw to drop them off at the beach. As soon as they got out, a set wave bent around the island and peeled through the pier—a crystal blue barrel that twisted down the length of the reef. They could barely believe their eyes. They had it all
to themselves. 

Soon afterward, however, things started to develop in strange ways. The day they returned to Kochi, Hebner received a call from a friend. An American named Taylor Steele had reached out to him. Steele was in the area with a group of traveling professional surfers, trying to shoot a segment for his next film. The crew had spent the last week driving in circles, unable to find quality surf. Unsure of what to do next, they were looking for guidance. 

Within a few days, Hebner and Kishore had arranged permits for them through a government agency. They were headed back to their newly minted discovery, this time with Dave Rastovich in tow, for what would become his transcendent solo segment in Steele’s film, Castles in the Sky.

Not long after, another group contacted Kishore—a crew of pro surfers that included Craig Anderson and Trevor Gordon. Within a year, Kishore and Ram were back on the island. This excursion was followed by more trips and more traveling pros. Aware of the rarity of what they had found, the Indians led more expeditions for a handful years, but then this dropped off completely.

“It was so difficult to get permits, it was taking so much time,” Ram explains. “We had other things we wanted to do too. We were setting up a surf retreat on the mainland and wanted to focus on exploring other areas of India.”

*

The lighthouse is the only high vantage point on the island. From the top you can see the entire coast. If framed at the right angle, it’s a postcard-perfect atoll, complete with white sand beaches and turquoise water, colorfully painted houses, hand-carved boats, and bustling fish markets. A few villages sit clustered in the palms. Goats meander in the shade. 

Outside of the postcard frame, however, trash fires burn on the beach and wall-mounted signs discourage public defecation. The reefs that circle the island are boulder strewn and unnotable, a poor place for surf, apart from one singular exception: the horn of reef that juts out beneath the pier into the Laccadive Sea. 

We find the pier filled with spectators. Word must have circulated that we were surfing the evening session. Families line the railings, dressed up for the occasion. A motorbike gang cruises up and down the roadway. Goats watch from the shore. The water is clear, all the way down to the bottom, where the reef is smooth and free of urchins. The wave begins on the far side of the pier and is intersected by the pilings. Nole Cossart, one of our crew, catches a set on the outside, finds a barrel, then connects a line through the pier to gasps from the crowd. Ram laments the decisions of the engineers who placed the structure in the middle of a perfect wave. 

The next day we head back again to surf. This time the pier is empty and the crowd is gone, except for one local, who paddles out on the inside on a dinged yellow board. It’s a thruster that Kishore and Ram left with him on a previous visit. After five years of practice, the local has become proficient. He tells us there’s a group of islanders who bodysurf the shorebreak down the coast, but are uninterested in this place. He seems comfortable in the larger surf. Kishore cheers as he paddles into a set wave, drops in, and pulls into a hollow section. 

Although Kishore and Ram have discovered countless waves on obscure shores and islands throughout India, they haven’t found another place like this. Now they hope to transfer that perspective, and their understanding of its attributes, to the locals.

“When we first started,” Ram reflects, “Swami passed on to us the experience and knowledge he had gained since the 60s. And now we want to pass it on to others.”