Travels of my Twenties: Gokarna

Three female friends and I went on an epic trip after a good semester. We have never glowed like we did after this one. If you know me, Instagram (in 2019) will show you just how much the sunshine and sand can help a weary soul. 🙂

Why Gokarna

It’s new, it’s untouched, it’s quiet, the sands are light and clean, it’s breathtakingly scenic & doesn’t smell of diesel nor fishing boats- it’s hard to give you a reason you shouldn’t head to this beach. Just be quiet and mindful of others’ space and peace while you try to get your chill down.

(Or Why Not Goa)

Goa is wild. It’s loud. It’s wonderful for a whole another set of other reasons. Cheap booze. Cheap rentals for vehicles. It’s a tourist paradise. Gokarna, in turn, merely 180km away, is expensive, tailored towards foreign nationals with little constraints on their wallets. There’s no practical reason you shouldn’t stay in Goa, of course- everything’s about half price there- but Goa and Gokarna are two sides of what a sea facing paradise can be.

You’ve got to forage for dried bark yourself to build fires on the beach.

Geography

Gokarna has a lot of beaches. There’s 6-7 along undulating hills perfect for trekkers (and budget travellers), as you can potentially walk your way everywhere. I would not recommend in the heat of the town, but an enthusiastic solo female traveller gave us an ambitious plan for hardcore sightseeing involving 3 treks over 4 beaches/ a boat ride to a private beach for the night. The town is also a peninsula so you can make your way to where the Aghanashini river meets the sea as well. The shells there are meant to be spectacular. We visited Om and Kudle, Om being a cove and Kudle being a rocky, long strip of beach looking straight into the Arabian sea.

Local Culture

There’s meant to be multiple temples, Hanuman Janmabhumi and Murudeshwar and Mahabaleshwar, each with an accompanying mythological fable. Mahabaleshwar being a kilometer from our hostel on the same beach, was the most accessible so we visited to pray to a God with a dramatic origin story. There’s also many sights (caves, waterfalls, forts- lots of local history and culture) near Kumta but my friends & I were too chicken to drive scooters onto a highway, so we stayed put in Gokarna for 4 days.

Weather

It gets HOT on the beach after 11 so if you’re not in the water, you’re flaying on the sand. December nights are cool- cold (for my fellow cold-blooded creatures). Be prepared for both extremes. Carry your sunscreen!

 

Trippr Gokarna, 100m from Kariyappa Katte, is situated right on the beach.

Dress

If you’re going into the temples, be mindful of the local customs and cover up before heading to a place of worship. Otherwise, Gokarna Main Beach is very quiet and with very few people around, there’s even fewer to judge what you’re wearing. It’s very swimsuit-friendy, unlike Om/ Kudle Beach. There are too many people with different worldviews and tons of families that may not appreciate skimpy dressing (or might make it their business to appreciate your attire in an unwanted, loud fashion).

Cash and Payment Options

Carry enough cash from the get-go, we had 3 days go by where none of the 4 ATMs in Gokarna village were functional. None of the locals we shopped from had online payment options and eventually, we had to trust the small business owners to give us credit until we scoured cash.

Food & Drinks

As four vegetarians on a relaxing trip, we stuck to drinking juices and coconut water and ate from the shacks or the Iyengar Bakery in town (the masala buns are surprising, pleasantly hot and we enjoyed the violently yellow pineapple sponge cake). Coconut water prices varied from 15-45 apiece and we thoroughly enjoyed them all without complaint. We rediscovered our love for tropical fruit, curd rice and paneer starters and Nutella on bread for most meals. The shacks also had this quaint little chocolate-coconut energy ball item that was our go-to dessert and once we found a place we liked, we pretty much stuck to it (Chill Out Cafe and the Trippr In-House Restaurant). They didn’t do continental food all too well, but shout out to the pizza at Chill Out Cafe.

What I would not recommend are the banana fritters or fries there, nor the extra dark coffee (not everyone’s tolerance for instant coffee matches mine). However, Trippr had amazing food quality- those fries! (and the dosa :))- albeit poor service time. We were to go to a resort called Laguna, but couldn’t find accurate directions and gave it a slip. Gokarna has good ice-cream weather and miniature ice creams from a plethora of local brands, so we obviously ate those. I was a little surprised to find so much Northern and Centralized Indian cuisine there but ate without hesitation. For a town this close to Goa, alcohol had nary an appearance (maybe owing to its religious population or just stricter laws on drinking), with shacks serving contraband beers and cigarettes without advertisement.

Itinerary

What I followed with my friends is available to preview. We didn’t load up our schedule, nor plan the trip to save a ton of cash with deals. As a first trip, we pretty much followed our gut instincts and had a whale (no, dolphin) of a time!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/198D_ZVz81-QpTzyDvmmaXj6OG-OzkLe0901gR5fhKYY/edit?usp=sharing

Highlights

Private beach styles, Gokarna Main Beach

#1 PHYTOPLANKTON
So no Instagrammable phytoplankton came into our lives, but a trek to Paradise beach at midnight brought us close to pitch darkness, murdering Charlie-Puth-loving-fellow-trekkers. Then you can make out a twinking in the turbid waters that was definitely not the million stars reflecting from a pitch black sky above. It was a Top 10 moment for me, certainly.

#2 DOLPHINS
One planned sighting on the boat ride and one unplanned at 12pm as we were brunching. They don’t always breach and they’re shy when it comes to humans, so we didn’t see NatGeo spectacles, but they were pretty nice.

#3 SHOOTING STARS

We went perfectly in the Geminid period and definitely caught 4-5 of these bad boys, and on that day when we saw the plankton & unplanned dolphins as well, this was a sweet cherry on top of perfection.

Local Help and Contacts

Do leave a comment if you’re planning a similar trip and need contacts of some uber-helpful locals (scooter rental, auto drivers, etc.).