Shankumugham Beach is the city's own beach, about 8 km from the centre near the international airport. It is not the finest beach in Kerala — the water is rough and the sand is coarser than at Kovalam — but it has a genuine local character that the resort beaches lack. The beach is popular with Thiruvananthapuram residents in the evenings, when the light on the Arabian Sea is beautiful and the stalls selling fried fish and coconut drinks come into their own.
The beach has a large sculpture of a mermaid, a promenade, and a children's park. The sunsets here are reliably spectacular, framed between the water and the flat horizon. If you want to experience the beach as locals use it rather than as a tourist facility, come in the late afternoon on a weekday.