A Step Away From Heaven

It was a few months ago a friend had come back from the Caribbean islands and was over cloud nine over it. For about a month he went Caribbean this Caribbean that and how Goa Indian beach paradise can never compare to it ever. His logic was all Indian tourists places have temples and other religious places…. And in his opinion religion corrupts….. Be it man or nature religion corrupts every thing near it. I am not a very religious person… but I didn’t agree with his opinion on religion but derogatory comment about India touched a nerve, and why should it not?? We are such a diverse country.. we have everything be it snow capped mountains of the Himalayas or the burning desert of Thar or rain forests or pristine beaches of Goa…. (Ok fine, that last part was over the top, but I love my country and every thing it has to offer so sue me!!).     

Anyways I wanted to show him he was wrong India has many beautiful places to offer that was just as beautiful as the Caribbean, If not more beautiful. So I invited him to come with me to my trip to Gokarna, a small beach town in Karnataka reaching here is quite easy it is connected to major cities of south by road and from Mumbai it is a stop on the Mumbai Mangalore route. But I prefer the road trip as the sights on the way while travelling by the roads in the Western Ghats are heavenly…..

So we left Mumbai by road early in the morning for Gokarna. Well the sights on the way once we crossed Goa and entered the Western Ghats the sights we saw finally shut him up about how any trip India can in no way compare to his trip to the Caribbean. It was late in the night or early in the morning (depending on how you read time) we reached Gokarna. We were dead tired and no hotel was open but we did have rooms booked at Namaste café. Sun rise was about 2 hours away and so we sat on the beach under the clear starry sky. It was beautiful!! The pitch black of the sky and our surroundings gave it a solitary effect but the starry sky and the breeze took away all our weariness. Later we saw the sun rise and were greeted with a sight of biblical proportion. That was when I told him in detail about the place…. It is named after a beach which is in the shape of the cow’s ear there are two temples on this beach which are very old and have their own unique story. The mention of temples I could see made him skeptical about visiting it. And it we sensed it in him when we visited it later in the day. But what he saw was very different, a very organized and clean atmosphere that is when I started ribbing him about his comment about religion, to which he grudgingly conceded that this was not what he expected. Later during the next 5 days we spent a day each on 3 beaches of kudlee beach, om beach and gokarna beah staying in shacks and trekked to paradise beach and half-moon beach. We learned that is also called the holy beaches as 3 of the 5 beaches have religious references.

 At the end of the trip we calculated the total expense of the trip and it cost the both of us Rs10,000, i.e. 5000 a head. After enough ribbing even he accepted that this trip to what I referred to a step below heaven was almost as much fun as his trip to the Caribbean. Then he asked be why did I call Gokarna as “a step below heaven.” To which my answer was

 “NEXT STOP ANDAMAN!!!!”