I'm sure you've heard this before, "It's not about the destination; it's about the journey". I've always felt that that's just a euphemism for "You messed up, buddy". But when it comes to vacations,especially this one, clearly it's as much about the journey (if not more) as it about the destination. And what a destination it was! If you haven't physically been to Gokarna yet, you have absolutely NO idea what you are missing out on!
You take a bit of Goa, subtract the excessively commercialized demeanor, add the quiet and serene of the untainted beaches of Kerala and add an infinite number of quaint little shacks that are neither luxurious nor frugal, but are satisfactorily hygienic (hope i'm not proven wrong!); and ladies and gentlemen i'd like to introduce you to Gokarna!
Thanks to our eventful journey, we arrived a little later than we had hoped. It was around one in the afternoon when we checked into our room. After a little deliberation, we decided to freshen up,slap on a litre of sunscreen, grab a bite and then explore the beach. It took us about an hour to get dressed (not bad huh!) and another hour to have an amazing lunch at cafe Namaste. Details?
Chicken Rum (yum) sizzler, Grilled Kingfish and some-strange-unpronounceable pasta. That, with beer and ice tea and the holiday had begun! Considering we had ordered the relatively more exotic sounding items off the menu, we were mentally prepared to empty our wallet once out tummies were full, but we were amazed at how economical our little feast was. In fact, it wasn't just at cafe Namaste, but all little shacks in Gokarna offered delicious food at affordable prices as well(quite unlike Goa).
Here's another difference between Gokarna and Goa. Like Goa, Gokarna too gets its share of foreign tourists (though the latter are on a more Spiritual vacation rather than looking for a party paradise free from extradition). But from our trip we discovered, that "Our kind" was a rare phenomenon at Gokarna, and we received a lot of unwarranted attention! Three girls from Bangalore. How odd! Though to be honest, it didn't bother us too much and in no time we got used to it (almost felt like celebrities as we often heard "oh! it's those girls..." being whispered by the more local tourists). We walked lazily along the Om beach. I chose to walk by the shore, while the two water babies with me, splashed along knee deep in sea water. All along the beach were little shacks, each with their own innovative theme.
At the end of the Om beach began a trekking trail that connects the OM beach to Half moon beach. Beyond Beyond Half moon beach lies Paradise Beach (which we steered clear of, as it was getting late and we were warned that its quite deserted and possibly dangerous). The trekking trail was interesting to say the least! At the onset the climb was painfully steep, a task made no easier by my osho slippers. Once it leveled out, we were at some sort of crossroad amidst the woods! "Great! Now where!" We Eeny-Meeny-Miney-Mowed a little, but instead of taking the risk of circling around like morons, we asked a European fellow(who popped out of nowhere) for directions. He told us to take the path on our right. He had come from the left. I asked him where he was coming from. He said, "Om beach!"... Hmmm...Wait! WE were coming from Om beach, and not surely Om beach was behind us, not to the left! Now lets be honest, the man was clearly stoned out of his mind! i REFUSED to follow that man's directions. So we stood there, deliberating some more, until Amu came up with the ultimate explanation, "You know, there could be more than one trekking trails from Om beach to Half moon". Made Sense! So we headed down the trail. Being a bit skeptical, i did confirm directions with a couple of other smiling foreigners as well. Seems like the chap was right.
There were green arrows painted on the rock below our feet that pointed out the way to Half moon. The trail itself was thrilling! It was like the build up to a climax of a murder mystery! The path was barely 2 feet wide. At one point we reached the windward side of the cliff; the hill on our left, freefall on our right! We were literally walking on the edge! I had to suppress my sneeze while we crossed this stretch, for one sneeze would be enough to send me bungee-less jumping.
But the view!!! It was quite literally a view to die for! you could see for miles out to sea! From this stretch we caught our first glimpse of half moon beach. It was quite small compared to Om beach, with fewer people and only one odd shack, but clean and placid. We weren't the fittest bunch and so it hardly came as a surprise to any of us that by now we were exhausted! So we rushed down hill along the increasingly narrow trail along the heavily vegetated part of the hill. I was leading the way, tumbling down quite easily, until suddenly i stopped dead in my tracks.
There i was, staring, confused. There she was, staring back, unaffected!
A cow with its little one was making its way up the hill as we were making our way down. The path was so narrow that two humans could barely pass, a cow and a human? i think not! We started to back up, she continued to move towards us. We ended up creating a traffic pile up, with 6 odd people behind us. The men folk tried quite gallantly to make their way past her only to slip and retract. We tried to make room for the cow to pass by climbing up the hill, falling all over the place as an outcome (thanks to the osho slippers), but to no avail. Finally a handfull of local boys who weren't too amused by our ridiculous tactics, decided to show us how its done.
One of them went up to the cow, casually nudged it and gave it a little spank on its backside!! Next thing you know, the cow climbed uphill and off the tracks! A little embarrassed but thoroughly amused, we rushed towards half moon and were there in minutes,sweaty, dehydrated and in desperate need of rest! We sat down at the first(and only) shack we found and ordered Ice Tea's.
The man at the counter was clearly in some parallel universe and he gave us a quizzical look and said, "You mean ice coffees". His challenged attention span gave him away. We knew what we were dealing with and decided to settle for "Ice Coffees".As we sat outside the cafe sipping our "Ice Coffees", i befriended the shack owners giant pet dog (much to my companions' disdain).
At this point, a young chap walked up to us and said, "Excuse me, i don't mean to disturb you, but are you girls coming from Bangalore?". "Yea", said a slightly irritated Amu. He went on to say, "Actually we are coming from Bangalore too. We saw you at the Bus station. You girls got onto the Gokarna bus and then got off didn't you?".
We got rid of him by being cold and constipated, but by now were a little spooked. Not only were the only girls in this quiet little deserted sort of a beach, we had invited stalkers all the way from Bangalore! We decided to scrap the plan of trekking back, and decided to grab the first boat to Om beach instead. After a little haggling, the "boat-walla" agreed to leave in half an hours time.
We sat by the beach just killing time, when suddenly out of the blue,Aakanksha decided she wanted to something crazy and different! "I'm on my first vacation away from Bangalore! Let's smoke up!" This coming from a girl who has never smoked anything despite having infinite opportunities to do so! Amu, who doesn't even drink, wasn't particularly concerned (probably realizing the infeasibility of the desire). But probably she didn't know me too well! Within minutes, i called up Neha Bajaj (who is as clean as clean gets,but knows everything worth knowing!). She gave me a couple of quick pointers.
Don't ask the Indians, they wont be able to handle the excitement.
Find a "Happy" foreigner, he/she wont mind spreading the happiness. But take what you need and get out of there before you get the counterparty's expectations high!
So we looked around for happy people, spotted a group of young fellows huddled up. We were sure they were in high spirits. On closer examination, we discovered they were high on food. We headed back to the shack. There was a miserably over-tanned and creepily over-smiley middle aged white (actually red) man there. We were too spooked by his inappropriate smiling to assess his happiness quotient. Finally we thought about the shack owner who was clearly high as hell! We weren't sure how this would go down, but we figured the boat was almost ready to take off, so what the hell! lets give it a shot! We walked up to him sheepishly, asked for a bottle of water, he gave it , and asked us in a totally uninterested tone, "Anything else?". At this point the i took over control and asked him softly, "actually yes SIR. Where can we get the stuff ". It was amazing how he instantly became lucid. He seemed a little taken aback by how crudely i put it, but it is what it is right? "Well you can get it, but its not for Indians. For foreigners only".I asked him about this discrimination. He claimed that the Indians tend to spread the word too much! and also mentioned that one cant distinguish between an Indian customer and an undercover cop! Clearly we weren't cop material and so he yapped away undeterred. I sold him some nonsense about how Aakanksha and i are seasoned smokers but our dear friend Amu, poor poor Amu, this was supposed to be her first experience! He was convinced. "It's very expensive though. 2 Grand.". Woah! we weren't that keen! "But we don't want so much! we just want enough for one. Can't we get just enough for one?" "Let me see what i can do.", he said and disappeared after telling us to take off our slippers and be seated on the raised mud platform area. We stared around and realized that the people at table alongside the counter knew exactly what was going on and kept staring and grinning at us!
And of course, as luck would have it, this table consisted of the boat-wallas. "Lets trek back", we all thought out loud. At this point the owner came over and started dusting the tables around us. i continued to look away making small talk. He dusted our table, and told us he is leaving "it" on the table and then he went back to the counter. We gazed at the table wide eyed, but couldn't find the greenery we were expecting. Instead we saw what can only be described as rat dropping! We picked it up, went to pay the owner for the water bottle and the dropping. "It's free for you girls".We smiled and thanked him. "Yay! We didn't have to pay for rat shit!". We trekked back as fast as we could, stopping only to take pictures. The trail was pretty deserted by now. Mid way, we realized we were being stalked.We slowed down to let the creep pass, which he did. We waited for five minutes, but much to our horror, the creep came back to talk to us, "Kannadda???no?? The hills not safe after dark". "Okkkk??."(What else does one say really!!). Was that a threat, we wondered.
Any how we made it back safe and sound! We rushed to our room glad to have made it through the day alive.
As i mentioned, i was indeed carrying pepper spray and a penknife on this trip. Sadly, pepper spray isn't of much use when it is in our room and you are in the woods. We were just glad we didn't have to use it.
Now back to our free gift. I was the only experienced one in this department, but even i didn't know what i was looking at. This is when we realized. We need to ask a guy. I called up (the) Chatty, who wasn't too impressed with the privileges we were getting, but instructed me all the same. He told me what we got wasn't the usual stuff but something a lot more potent. (WooHoos around the room). We had the equipment ready, instructions ready. All we needed was experience or skill. We had all seen it being rolled before, but had never tried. This was my day i guess. and after almost 45 minutes, that one rat dropping sized thing was transformed into 1 neat and 2 half terrible joints. "Alright! Let's do this!", i announced.
"Yayy! Oh! by the way, i don't know how to smoke", said Aakanksha. "No problem. I'll show you how it's done.", i said. And i did. We learnt a lot that evening, highlights being:
1.Free stuff rocks.
2. its not easy to get it(smoking) right the first time.
3. Asthmatics/ inhaler users are natural experts at this "art"!
Amu (the inhaler user) wasn't too keen on committing this crime, but Aakanksha's excitement is just too infectious. "You have to try this!"
And i must say, Amu knew how it's done! In minutes she was happy.
Aakanksha on the other hand, tried, while i trained. By the time we were done Aakanksha was as lucid as ever. Me? well i don't remember how the rest of the evening transpired.
Day 2 was relatively uneventful.It was a pretty standard day in a girls life, really.
Awesome breakfast at Cafe Nirvana (Giant glass of coffee- i recommend!), a 2 hour long swim in the clean and open sea. 5 hours of sitting by the sea, relaxing, soaking in the sea breeze and above all, critiquing all the ridiculously overdressed tourists. All in all day well spent. Top that off with a little street shopping and you have a successful vacation!
I guess it's true for all vacations; just when you really start getting into the groove of things, your trip is over.
But though i cant feel the sand between my toes, or the splash of the waves against my knees or the cool clean sea breeze against my face anymore, the experience is not one that will ever be forgotten. The friendship fostered and memories made and the madness executed, give you more than a weekend of revitalization, more than an induced high,more than an adrenaline rush.
They give you something to look forward to. An Encore?
 |
| Holy cow! |
 |
| A view to die for! |
 |
| cow crossing |
 |
| Do appreciate how wide the path is! |
 |
| "Look for happy people", got it neha! |
 |
| Cafe Half Moon |
