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.
“NEXT STOP ANDAMAN!!!!”