Stuck in the Sand

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Gokarna is one of those places where the days can blow by like minutes leaving you wondering where the time has gone. At its worst its an unabashed traveler's hangout where banana pancakes and Tibetan Momos are menu staples alongside chapati and rice. Bracelet vendors roam the beach and trance music is heard just as much as Bollywood hits. However, Gokarna also has many things going for it - beautiful beaches, rugged coastline, cheap huts to stay in. and above all a close-knit community of other long term travelers. The town itself is a Hindu temple town, a holy place and small backwater along the Konkan coast. As you head south along the coast you come to 4 beaches, each one more rugged and remote than the last. The path between the beaches is rocky and steep, and sometimes becomes lost altogether among the boulders. Between the beaches sharp currents slam the water against the sides of the steep cliffs. It was at Paradise Beach, the furthest and most remote of the beaches, where I have been staying for most of the past couple weeks. I spent over a week living in a small bamboo shack without electricity or running water right on Paradise Beach.

Because Paradise Beach is so remote and time consuming to travel to, the visitors it attracts generally really want to make the effort to be there. For casual day trippers and people just passing through, the beach's isolation is more trouble getting to than its worth. As a result there was a small community of longer-stay travelers living at Paradise Beach. With a long an arduous journey back to town I spent most of my days hanging out with the other travelers at Paradise, singing around bonfires, swimming in the currents, and playing frisbee on the beach. I made friends with a group of Iranians staying nearby as well as hippie travelers from Australia, Nepal, and various European countries.

I also spent a good portion of many days hiking back to the less remote beaches to use internet and pick up things I couldn't buy at Paradise. In one of my more recent forays into town I even picked up batteries, but alas too late to get many pictures out at Paradise.
This afternoon I am leaving by train to Mumbai to meet my friend Caroline who is coming to India for a month. I have yet to meet a single person down here with anything positive to say about Mumbai, but I will have to wait and see for myself what I think. So far the only place in India that I didn't really like was Bangalore.

Stay tuned for my next blog, which will hopefully have pictures and stories about the two day hippie festival in the jungle that I just got back from.
Stay tuned

Steve

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