This trip was supposed to be undertaken without any planning as such. We just decided to go to a beach for a weekend. No accomodation bookings, no route plan, venue to be decided at the last minute, none of the usual taam-jhaam. But, as they say... old habits die hard. And we being we... having everything pefectly planned is just a part of life. So, after deliberating over Goa, Gokarna, Murdeshwar and Karwar, we finally settled on Gokarna. On Wednesday night, we opened up our (in fact, one of our) favourite website - www.ksrtc.in. Quickly looked up all buses from Bangalore to Gokarna. But could'nt find any. Then, realised that Kumta is a town closeby and there is a Rajahansa Executive going there at 11.15 pm. It was just perfect for us. We took two seats on the same and also booked two return tickets at 6.30 pm from Kumta to Bangalore, for two days later. Total to and fro cost for two persons - Rs 1700.
We took the bus on Friday night and managed to reach Kumta on Saturday morning, without much incident. The coastline along Kumta-Gokarna-Karwar is supposed to be a trekkers' paradise called the Golden Route. It was very difficult to restrain ourselves from starting off on the trek. But, since we had decided to just relax as much as possible and not exert ourselves, we managed to stick to our plan. Our next destination was Gokarna town. There are KSRTC buses from Kumta to Gokarna (a distance of 36 km by road, but hardly 20 km as the Nazgul flies...). A 45 minute journey worth Rs 19, will take you to Gokarna. Anup's pattern matching skills need a special mention here. He has been on a Kannada learning spree of late. He could identify a bus with its route board mentioning Gokarna. Of course, we did confirm this with the conductor, before boarding. The route from Kumta to Gokarna is mostly along NH17. Seeing the urgency with which the bus was being driven, we were sure to reach in 20-25 mins, had it not been for a punctured tyre at Madangiri village, around 10 km from Gokarna. All the passengers got down, waited around for some time, then shuffled into another bus coming from Ankola, and then we finally reached Gokarna around 12 pm.
We toyed around with the idea of going to Gokarna beach right away. But, then finally settled on moving on to Om beach, a distance of around 8-10 kms from Gokarna town. After haggling with an autodriver, we settled on a fare of Rs 100. He took us along a hilly road, going up and down for some distance, and finally dropped us at the entrance of Namaste Cafe. It is right on Om beach, and the road comes uptil here. We enquired for a room to stay, but were told "No vacancy", the charge being Rs 500 for a night. We were more surprised with the attitude of the guy at the reception desk. He seemed to be reluctant to provide accomodation to two non-foreigners. Finally, after enquiring at numerous places, we got a room at Ganesh Cafe for 200 bucks a night. Most of the places around here are in the range of 150-500. Lunch was not an elaborate affair. Some rice, rotis and seafood. A word of advice here - make sure to order the food well in advance. These places are not like our regular restaurants. Quick service is certainly not their USP.
After finishing lunch at around 4 pm, we thought of going to Half moon and Paradise beaches. Having heard a lot about the 'trekking route' between these beaches, and that being the only land route to reach them, we finally got into our ol' trek-mode. Off we went, searching for the path to half-moon beach. It is to the South of Om, and the route is all along the shore. It was quite an exhilarating experience - the hill on one side and the sea on the other. It was quite a view to take in - the lush greenery on the hill, the roar of the waves as they crashed into the rocks on the shore, the swaying palm trees, and the gentle sun-rays reflected off the water. The place is really enchanting. I just could not get myself to go on. Felt like settling down there for the rest of my life. The path to half-moon beach is not very difficult to follow. We did meet some people on their way to Om from there. Just do not go too inland. Stay along the coast and you shall reach half-moon in about 25 mins time. What we did see there, turned out to be a little disappointing. The beach is hardly around 200 metres long and we saw just two shacks providing basic accomodation and food. Since sunset was approaching, we decided to ditch paradise beach. A big reason that earned Om beach lots of points with me was its complete lack of cellphone coverage. I ended up giving it a thousand points (a system which is understood by only a privileged few). But, if you plan to call up your loved ones (unless you are already with them), then the road from Om to half moon is where cellphones will work. Post our hike, I right away jumped into the water with Anup justing plonking down on the beach and staying put for the next two hours. I did join him in some time and we surrendered ourselves to nature. What better way to spend an evening than - looking at a setting sun coloring up the sea in all hues of red and gold; the waves lapping at the beach, each one trying to better the earlier in reaching up to us; little children frolicking around in the water; people playing frisbee without any care in the world. We just sat there without any sense of time. It was undoubtedly the best part of the trip.
Compared to lunch, dinner was rather lavish. We weren't surprised to see a section of Israeli dishes in the menu, cosidering most of the other guests were from Israel. We gorged upon Egg and Chips, Chicken Schnitzel , Lebane with chapatis and Veg Pakodas. Lebane is a tangy cheese made of yoghurt and it went really well with the Schnitzel instead of the chapatis.
Early in the morning, we tried to scale the 'Mountain of Om', i.e. the rock in the middle of the Om. It can be a little treacherous and care should be taken about the incoming or outgoing tide.We were just deliberating about our further course of action, when a local boatman approached us and offered a boat-tour of Paradise and Half-moon beaches for Rs 200. After some bargaining he settled for 100. We again saw half-moon, but now from the sea. Paradise is more habitated then Half-moon and has some food places too. When we reached Paradise, the boat broke down. Actually the accelerator wire of the engine snapped. Thats when the 'jugaad' ingenuity of Indians came to the fore. The boatman took a long string, passed it through the handle and tied it to a hook in the engine. He started it and with this was controlling the speed of the boat. And I was handed over the task of navigating. After a show of rowing skills by Anup, we finally landed back on Om. By the time we got back to base camp, it was time for a dip in the sea. We ordered a breakfast of sandwiches, boiled eggs and toast and hit the water. The beach at Om is shallower than that at half-moon and Paradise and is a pleasure to swim in.
Post breakfast, we checked-out and started off on our hike to Gokarna via Kudlee. The path to Kudlee starts from the northern end of Om, near Namaste cafe. It is a short 20 min walk. The road there reminded me of the trek to Rajgad from the Pali darwaja side. It is bordered on both sides with tall tress and the sea can be seen peeking in between them to the left. Kudlee beach is quite expansive and is more populated than Om. We did not wait here for long. Just walked along the beach to the other side and enquired about the road to Gokarna. Another 25 min walk brought us to the town of Gokarna. We visited the Mahabaleshwar temple, took a sneak peek at the beach and moved on towards the bus stand. There aren't many good eateries around here. We managed to get a decent meal at a small restaurant and got into a bus going to Kumta.
Our bus to Bangalore was at 6.30 pm from Kumta, but we reached there at 3.30. Now we had another 3 hours to spare. So, we decided to take a look at Kumta beach too. An auto took us there in Rs 35. It turned out to be an almost deserted beach. Except for a few local boys playing cricket and the both of us roaming aimlessly on the beach, there was not a soul on it. Not even a shack or an eatery was to be found. We returned back to Kumta and boarded our bus. Within 11 hours, we were back in Bangalore, having made good use of the weekend.
Photos :-
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| Gokarna Beach trip |
PS:- There are direct buses to Gokarna from Bangalore. On KSRTC's website it is listed as 'Gokarn'.
