Yet Another Heaven, Part-1

It would be an extremely difficult task to find intellectuals in India, who have never heard of Goa. Well there’s no doubt that Goa is the hottest tourist destination, in this part of the world. Goa got a very well Flights connectivity from all major cities. But I am pretty much sure that there would be many ignorant like me, who wouldn't have any idea about Gokarna. Well, I came across this name after a couple of years, when I came to Bangalore about a decade back. Few of my friends highly recommended the place to me much earlier, but it was only in November 2010 that I had the opportunity to experience the exotic heaven.

Gokarna is a town in the northern part "Uttara Kannada" district of Karnataka state.  Even though it’s a Hindu pilgrimage center but the atheists could equally enjoy out there in parallel, as the place is surrounded by some of the exotic beaches. Gokarna doesn't have direct Airlines connectivity and the nearest airport from Gokarna is Panaji, at a distance of 150 km. It was a marvelous trip and some of the events still flashes  out crystal clear in my mind. We traveled together in an awesome group of about 12-15, mostly our college mates. We visited during some holiday season and the guys planned it perfectly and quite well in advance. Initially some guys were more interested for Goa, as Air India came up with some exciting offers that time.

Some of the guys, who visited Gokarna earlier, suggested us not to travel by car and said that it would be much better to travel by bus. Gokarna is at a distance of approximately 500 km from Bangalore and by bus it almost took us 10-11 hours. On the way, in the middle of the night, might be somewhere in the Western Ghats, we felt the awesome jerks and our bodies continued to shake for a prolonged time. 

We reached Gokarna town early morning and from there we traveled in auto rickshaws to Om Beach. The surrounding was quite hilly and as soon as we reached Om Beach, my goodness, it was damn exotic. We already planned to stay in the shacks, very near to the beach. Even though the place was quite crowded, but unlike Goa, it was silent and one could only hear the mesmerizing sea sounds. As it was holiday season, it took us a while to get few shacks out there. We were very much excited to see our place of shelter, but it seemed my wife got little upset and she wondered "how could we stay in such environment, can’t we stay in a good hotel?"

That was the kind of place where I always wanted to visit. The entire surrounding was so fascinating and apart from Om beach, there are few more beaches to explore. I could recollect few names "Kuddle Beach, Half moon Beach, Paradise beach". We noticed that almost 80% of the tourists out there were foreigners and few Indian tourists mostly looked like students. Well, the place is definitely not for family outing.  After lunch at about 3 PM, every one of us went to explore a bit. We trekked through the hills and on one occasion, we even passed through a small tunnel. 

Well, if you visit Gokarna then don’t ever forget to carry torch lights with you. It took us almost 40-45 minutes to reach Paradise beach and as soon as we reached there it started to get slightly darker. We heard trance music being played all over the place and most of the guys were quite busy, as they prepared for their drag. We already got the smell and it was quite intoxicating, but one of my friends made me realize that we’re actually older enough, as he said "it’s OK, we guys are quite old enough and we had enough fun, let the kids enjoy." We simply had coffee out there and few of us satisfied ourselves only with the cigarettes.

We were about to return back to our shakes at Om beach, but there was a problem. It was completely dark and literally nothing was visible. We inquired whether there was any alternate way to go to Om Beach, but to our nightmare, there was only one way out. We started to get a little worried and wondered "how we would go back through the middle of the hills and on top of that, we even have to pass through a tunnel"

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