Another Seaside Idyll.

Reaching the best parts of Gokarna can leave one feeling like Tantalus. You’ll find Gokarna’s name on milestones along the Mumbai – Goa – Mangalore highway NH17. But on approach you’ll realize with dismay that the town doesn’t lie on the highway at all. It lies 9km away on a narrow, bumpy side road that is traversed only by infrequent rickety buses.

Once you get to Gokarna town, you’ll have another twinge of disappointment awaiting you. You’ll find that the Om beach, the biggest attraction in town, is 7km away from the bus stand, and that there is no public transport to the place.

Then you’ll be helpfully told that from the Om beach, you’ve to traverse 2, 2 and 3 kilometres respectively to get to the three other beaches around (Kudle, Half Moon and Paradise). Now, that wouldn’t be so much of a bother if it weren’t for the fact that there are no roads to any of these beaches from Om. The only way to get to these beaches is to hike across hills.

I had all day, and was curious enough to travel slowly, to take my time seeing things. So I set out on walk from Gokarna town bus stand. The road to Om beach lay along what looked like a nondescript bylane. I walked along the deserted village road, past thatched houses hidden behind shrub fences.

Shortly after the 5km-to-Om milestone, the road rose to reveal just a little glimpse of the wide open sea in the distance. I regretted walking on, for the road dipped again, and the sea hid behind a hill. As I impatiently awaited the shore, the road swerved around a couple of hills. At the 2km-to-Om milestone, the hill to my right dropped away to reveal a yawning valley.

I stood staring across the valley, as the vast expanse of the Arabian Sea shimmered across it in the late morning sun. The infinite silvery stretch seemed just beneath me, yet the intervening forests made it seem tantalisingly unreachable. The empty grey of the road waved about ahead of me, and I walked on, for the shore was still some way off.

The Om beach, my first port of call, is named thus because it is shaped like the letter ‘Om’. While you can see the two semicircular shores that form halves of the Om, the meagre elevation isn’t enough to reveal the Om-shape very clearly.

Because Om is the only beach in Gokarna accessible by road, it is the only one that draws crowds. It was quite an interesting mix of people too. Beer guzzling Europeans occupied tables in the numerous seaside restaurants, as did Indian joint families. Middle aged women wrapped up in drenched saris got out of the water and walked past sunbathers. A 6 year old girl pointed excitedly at a bikini clad woman and screamed in Kannada - “she’s in her underwear!” as her parents made frantic attempts to look elsewhere.

I walked across the two arcs of the Om, past the numerous restaurants dotting the fringe. At the southern end, a narrow hill-path sneaked out behind Sunset Cafe, the last restaurant on the beach. The path quickly rose upwards. It made its way into the forests that just a little while ago had been a green blanket covering the hills bordering the sea.

Trees on either side were slender and short, and accompanied by undergrowth. The foliage completely obscured the sea. There were no people along the trail. At times the path dissolved into a clump of trees and became ill defined. Sometimes two roads diverged in a wood. I found my way from the fact that Half Moon and Paradise beaches lay in a general southward direction, across a couple of hills.

After what seemed an age of walking through the canopy of forest cover, the path stepped outdoors. I walked along a ledge, right above the sea. There was nothing but the cold blue of the boundless water below me. The gentle wrinkles of wavelets twinkled in the sunshine. The crowds, the restaurants, the noises that lay just across a hill seemed a world away.

I climbed down to Half Moon beach. It was empty. The golden sand looked never stepped in. The beach was just some 40-50 metres across, yet its solitude gave it an air of purity, of peace. The few shacks being built, the wannabe restaurants hadn’t quite managed to spoil the calm of Half Moon.

Paradise beach was two hills away. This stretch spared me forest walks, but furnished rocks to climb across, sometimes amid clear water that gently gurgled in frothy pools under my feet.
Paradise beach was a mass of seaside restaurants. The beach was much smaller than Om, just 150 metres or so long. There wasnt much space between the hills and the water, and the six or seven restaurants packed what little space there was. Shacks for rent lay tucked in the hills behind the restaurants, where a few foreigners lay slung in hammocks, in the midst of idyllic seaside vacations. My initial surprise at the existence of commerce in this outpost lasted only till I noticed boats depositing people here.

I stepped into one of the open air restaurants for lunch. Conversations wafted across the wet, still air from neighbouring tables. There was a “but I’m just disillusioned with all the commercialism” as was “and then she found another boyfriend”.

From the edge of Paradise, I retraced my steps on the two hour trek back to Om. It was late afternoon by the time I got to Om. I began walking towards yet another beach – Kudle, to the north of the Om beach. Kudle lay across two mounds that were relatively tame compared to the others I’d faced earlier in the day.

The Kudle beach was a semicircular bowl of hills that contained the sea within. The water was nearly still. Waves rolled in, not crashed through. Kudle looked like a placid backwater, a forgotten lake, a long way from civilization. Along the sprawling half-kilometre circumference of the beach, there were no more than a dozen bathers. A dolphin’s leap punctured the grey water surface in the distance.

The late evening sun lowered itself into the water far, far away. Soon, the only remnant of the day was a diffuse orange light draped over the water.

(Images here.)

On arrivals.

**

Arrival # last-but-one was at Pune. The first sight there was the rear of platform 1. Cement-grey backdrop. Never been painted. Looked like it never deserved to be. Only a few bored, listless porters and tramps. Great ambience for a godown, but not exactly red carpet material.

More bleakness when I stepped out of the station. 8am, and the sun didn’t look like it’d ever come out.

Hotel Kundan Palace gave me a heavily carpeted and cushioned room. Tried way too hard for a red carpet. Much heaviness, stuffiness in the room.

10am. Skies diffused from mere sunless-ness to near-darkness. Dampness and dankness seeped through the gloom, I could only helplessly watch as they did so. The inevitable finally happened. Rain began to belt down, it was not to stop for two days.

Essentials such as local-food sampling had to wait. Relative luxuries such as cell and internet connections didn’t stand a chance. Vehement bursts puncutuated lulls in the rain, dissuading me from any attempts at going out.

The watery, lukewarm tea matched the weather just fine. Pathetic attempts at continental cuisine fit the mood just right. The cook even managed to make bad curd rice.

It was only slightly warm under a blanket. The wetness outside sucked the coziness out of any warmth there was within.

There was only so much peering-at-rain-outside-window that you could do.

**

The last arrival was on a bike. I was out of Mysore in the chill of early morning. Cold shafts of air rushed into my crouched upper body. Twas an invigorating coolness, though. The shivers it caused were those of alertness, not fright. Perhaps what coolness does to you depends only on what you feel like letting it do.

At 7, the coolness had slowly condensed into the chirpy warmth of morning. By 8, it was a bright sunniness amid which I was coasting away. Smooth, straight, steady, amidst equanimity. The bike was a near-noiseless purr of effortlessness.

I got out of the hotel at Kalpetta after a late breakfast. The world was a different one now. A grey smokiness had come out of nowhere and flung itself across the clear blue skies of the morning. There was rumbling in the distance. There was a hint of hesitation, a teeny bit of trepidation as I left the last house behind, exit the town limits, and go into the arms of the approaching thunderstorm.

The first refuge was under a tree. The precipitation gave no time to seek out man made shelter. A brave attempt at driving through didn’t succeed. I impatiently waited, twiddling fingers.

The storm subsided just a bit, I droned through the shower that remained.

Every piece of clothing on me was dripping. There was still 80km to go. The rain didn’t look like it’d stop all day. The morning’s sun was a distant memory.

Still amid the deluge, I descended the Wayanad ghats. Through the water curtain, I stared disbelievingly at the valley below, as the bike noiselessly glides down the 15km long downward slope. The only sound was that of wheels cutting through water on the road amid the tapping of raindrops. I was so wet, I wasnt feeling the clothes clinging to me any longer.

A renewed burst of rain forced another stop. By now, there was no fear of the rain. There was no exasperation in the inevitable wait. There was no helplessness in knowing that it was not going to stop anyway, or in knowing that I was going to have to drive through it anyway.

There was only the liberating feeling of knowing that the rain couldnt get me any wetter, that it couldnt do a thing. Perhaps that’s how hope begins.

**

This arrival was in the morning. Not much sleep – perhaps there was too much of anticipation of the morning. The impatience for the arrival made me cut the morning run short.

I made up for the lack of exercise by lugging boxes of material possessions. Down to the auto, into the elevator and through into the new apartment.

In every new house, there’s the inviting vacancy, emptiness, a craving for things undone and thoughts unthought. Here, today, though, there was some preoccupation with things to be done. Even the blue of the Arabian sea stretching away forever couldn’t dislodge that.

But not for long. It was in the evening, after-office, amidst twilight, when all sank in. That was when I really saw the dim lamplike glow of the lights on the beach road. I gently tiptoed to my switchboard, turned off the lights, and stood watching the row of orange embers below.

There was the sheer immensity of possibility that lay in the eternity of the deep, deep blue sea outside my balcony, as it slowly faded to black. I stood listening to the faint hum of the waves crash into the shore.

On my first day in her company, the Arabian sea made me cry.