The Gokarnic Gospel

I turned right for reasons best known to God and found a narrow pathway that made me curious. "Hold on dudes! I yelled, "I think there's a way!" Vijendra and I then checked it out and it was indeed something and could take us to the proper trekking trail. "Make sure it's a proper trail first!" said Illu bhai and I assured them all it was, as I saw people come back towards OM Beach from the direction of Half-Moon beach and we started towards Half-Moon beach.

After having given it a lot of thought, we had decided that we'd throw Vijendra a bachelor party in Goa. But as it always happens, with any plan of a trip to Goa, things turned out in such a way that we realized it wouldn't work out for us on the dates we chose. We thought of alternatives and zeroed in on Gokarna since it's the other Goa of India. Yashwanth and Vijendra did a lot of research and booked rooms at Coconut Tree resort and a Tata Hexa since we were seven people after we finalized the dates as the 9th and 10th of Feb 2020. On the 8th however, Manu and Imam backed out due to personal issues and we were now five. Yashwanth then got Dinesh onboard and we were finally six. It was about 9 PM and we were supposed to collect the car from somewhere in Kalyannagar but the vendor expressed his inability to deliver the car at Kalyannagar and requested us to collect it from his office(which is basically where he lives) in near Avalahalli near Hoskote. With no choice left, Yashwanth, Vijendra, Dinesh and I took a cab to Kalyannagar where we were also supposed to collect a set of T-shirts that were specially made for the occasion of Vijendra's bachelor party and another cab from there to Gujral's(car vendor) residence to collect the Hexa. It was close to 12 AM when we got there and Gujral wasted more time of ours since he was "busy" with other customers. Professionalism was dying a slow death when we realized we had forgotten our t-shirts in the cab. We immediately called him and he was kind enough to come back to return the t-shirts and when I collected the t-shirts from him, he asked me for a cigarette which I still ponder over, after 2 months of the incident in my shower, everyday. I don't understand why he thought I would have cigarettes with me. I told him I didn't have any and that left him rather disappointed. I am quite certain he's the 100th person I've disappointed in my life after my parents, teachers, friends, bosses, mechanics, vegetable vendors and myself. After having finished all the formalities at Gujral's, we were about to leave when he made a rather unusal request. His bike, it seems had run out of fuel and had to be left in Avalahalli. He wanted us to take one of his boys to the petrol pump and then near the bike so he could bring it back. Since we didn't want to waste any time further and also since we're kind people, we decided to help him. We droppped him off near the bike and went on to pick up Ilyas and Ajit and started off sullenly.

At around 6 AM, I was woken up when Yashwant stopped at a Tea shop on the outskirts of Ranebennur on P-B road. After having had some good tea we started again after a distance of about 30 km, took a deviation from the highway to enter a smaller road. We then started having fun conversations and listening to hilarious folk songs from North Karnataka. We then reached Sirsi by 8.30 AM and finished our breakfast.

Nothing worth mentioning happened until we reached Gokarna. It was about 11.30 AM when we got there. We withdrew some cash and checked in to Artigamya. After having wasted about half an hour, the boys decided to have a go at the pool there. I stayed out and clicked pictures. We then ate lunch, slept for a while and started our beach trek at about 4 PM. We started at Kudle whic was about 300m from the resort and started out towards the beautiful OM beach on a mesmerizing trail.

We then reached OM beach after a hike and spent a few minutes admiring its beauty. It was time to move on towards Half moon beach. We walked along OM beach and got past it and then somehow missed the trail and ended up on a cliff overlooking OM beach. This is where we were stuck for a while before finding our way back.

On the way to Half Moon beach, we found some breath-taking views to which below pictures might not do proper justice. One has to be there to witness the beauty of the west coast this trail has to offer.

We then got to Half moon and decided to head back to Kudle since it wasn't practical to walk further to Paradise beach as the sun was about to set. We headed back and reached Om beach by the time sun was about to set.

After having spent a while at OM beach, we headed back to our resort after having eaten some pakodas at Kudle beach. We got back to the resort and felicitated Vijendra with the special t-shirt we had gotten made for him.

We all then got "dressed" and spent some time discussing important stuff like how french fries at the resort had the potential to be great starters for our dinner and also Vijendra's love story.

We then ate dinner and went out for a stroll on Kudle beach hoping to see beautiful reflections of the objects in the sky on the Arabian Sea and weren't disappointed. We walked back to the resort as we discussed blackholes and Vijendra tried showing us Venus(the planet) that none of us saw. We got back to the resort and called it a night.

Next morning, we headed to Mirjan Fort after having breakfast at the resort. We ran into Mautushi there and made her take some pictures of ours after exchanging pleasantries.

We then started towards Bengaluru and reached Sirsi by 2 PM where we decided to have lunch. Since Ajit was having craving of his lifetime for fish, we went to a Non-Veg restaurant after several comedies of errors happening due to the GPS guiding us to take super narrow roads since Ajit was viewing the route for a two-wheeler. After we got there, the crew took an hour to serve us due to the huge volume of orders they had pending before we walked in, from a family that was probably on the way back from their son's wedding. We were super-mad and when we did get served, we ate like monsters and did not waste any more time before continuing our journey back to Bengaluru. It was a nice drive as we talked about several things and some of us did get some sleep too. We reached Bengaluru by about 11.30 PM and called Gujral(who we fondly refer to as GG) as he was to collect the car that night from Kalyan nagar. He again expressed his inability to collect it that night but was professional enough to not ask us to leave it at his Avalahalli office again. He said one of his boys would collect the car next day so Vijendra, Dinesh, Yashwanth and I went to Yaswant's place to park the car after dropping off Ajit and Ilyas. We then got some dinner at an Andra mess and got back to our respective homes. As soon as I entered my home, using my copy of the key, I heard a voice from the kitchen that said "Pump kettadant layoutnyag, neerind en madtaro nodbeku", which translates to "The pump in the layout has stopped working and I've no idea what they're going to do about the water supply now!"