Hippie land

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Bean and I wanted to spend a few days relaxing at the beach before we came back to the cold winter in the US, so we decided to go to a little town on the northern coast of Karnataka that was rumored to have some spectacular beaches with little thatch huts to sleep in. We booked one of the most expensive buses that are available in India for the night journey, hoping that we could actually sleep. Even full size heavily cushioned beds weren't enough to keep the Indian roads from keeping us awake all night. We shared this bus with a bunch of westerners all heading to either Goa or Gokarna. The majority of them were hippies all trying to make it to the party scene in Goa. We were dropped of at the outskirts of Gokarna at about 4:30 am and we then took a rickshaw down a long rocky dirt road to the edge of Om beach. In the early morning light we were greeted with a beautiful rocky coastline with a wonderful lagoon like beach. We sat there and watched the sun rise and the beach come to life. It wasn't very crowded, but it didn't feel like India at all because the majority of people there were white skinned. We found a little thatch hut with a sand floor for $1 a night. The second day we went to the village for the Shiva festival. It was packed with pilgrims waiting in line for darshan at the different temples. We felt like we were back in India. Later in the evening on the way back to Om beach we followed some of the pilgrims down a cliff side. We then experinced one of the coolest Hindu events yet. We made our way down the cliff bare foot behind men and women of all ages. At the bottom, near the edge of the ocean we came upon a large crack in the cliff. Everyone was climbing into the crack to see something. So we followed a woman into the crack, all the while chanting to Shiva. At the back wall of the opening a long root hung down from the top of the cliff. It was dripping water and everyone said their prayers and took a sip of the water. Bean and I joined in and the woman showed us what to do. We later found out that we were inside a crack that Shiva had made in the rock to rescue the then trapped Sita, Rama's wife. The roots were actually Sita's hair. The experience was surreal. One magical thing about Hinduism is that they actually can make pilgrimages to the places where these past events and miracles took place. Unlike Christianity in American where we are removed from the places that Christ, Moses and others actually walked the earth. After a few days of tanning and relaxing at the beach, we called up our contacts in the city of Solapur. They invited us to come and visit their farm, so we got on a bus and left so we could spend a couple of days there before we had to fly back to the US.

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