Some strange and familar faces in Gokhana

We had to take another three local buses to make the journey from Palolem to Gokhana. We were far too English when it came to boarding the first bus, we waited while everyone got on and when it came to our turn there was no room, people were hanging out of the doors. Luckily the conductor let us ride up front with the driver which worked out to be rather more comfortable than being squashed in with everyone else. The second bus we were again too polite and there was standing room only by the time we got on. By the third we had realised what needed to be done ino order to get a seat. As the bus pulled into the station we barged our way through the crowd, elbowing and shoving people out of the way, and clambered aboard the bus and took our seats. Success.

We decied to stop in Gokhana on route to our destination which is Kerala. We had hoped to get a train from Mumbai to Kerala but as i mentioned in an earlier enrty it is Indian holidays so the trains were full. This has meant we have had to take local buses all the way down and we are breaking up the trip with a few stops along the way.

Gokhana is a small, Hindu pilrimage village by the sea. It has numerous temples dotted around its quiet, old streets and although tourists aren't alowed inside them we saw lots of religious activity going on around them. The cast of people we had seen in our first stop, Varanasi, all seemed to be here. Ancient women with no hair, bare chested men in loin cloths and the bearded holy men were all wandering around clutching offerings of flowers. The evening, when it seemed the whole town was heading to the temples for prayer, was the best time to people watch and witness the holy rituals.

We stayed two days in Gokhana and didn't do much apart from wander around the town looking at the pretty old bulidings and the colourful people. There isn't much to do here but we enjoyed just watching village life and the activity around the temples. There are few nice beaches around town but we decided to give them a miss. I think one our main reasons for staying two days and not one was because we found an amazing and cheap restaurant by the sea. It did Masala Dosas and had an extensive range of Lassi's including flavours such as 'butterscotch icecream' and 'peanut butter with banana'. Yum. We found ourselves in here rather a lot, trying to escape the heat outside and drinking the ice cream lassi's.

Gokhana was an interesting and relaxing stop to make but we couldn't waste anymore time there so after two nights we headed further south... Destination KERALA.

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