Trains, Rain, Spirit & Splendour Part 1: Insert 3 Gokarna

GOKARNA      30^th December 2012

Clean Bathrooms. Finally. Only yet again to realise that the real necessity here is toilet paper! The infamous and elusive ‘white gold’! I must be on my fourth or fifth dodgy toilet experience now. I do foresee the benefit of strong legs from all this squatting!

I still feel like I’m on the undulating creature of a bus that we took to get down here. I’m exhausted, but we’ve finally hit the coast and I’m sitting with Lauren at Namaste Café, sipping away at her very first India brewed chai while I gulp down some mango juice and await a rather continental serving of honey on toast.

The First (of many sweet) Chai

We’ve been wandering up and down the curving curls of sand that are Ohm Beach scouring for accommodation and hoping that one of the 25 doors we peeked into would reveal our friends Joshua and Dan. Our backpacks were heavy, we were dehydrated and I had run out of my sneaky stash of tissues which had been keeping my sinuses at bay. Namaste Café was our only mild solace.

It was a tricky situation to get to this point. We had landed, in the pitch blackness of Gokarna, at a petrol station around 04:00 am, not a soul in sight, but for a welcoming looking (and rather tiny) white mini taxi.  In just as much of a rush as we had  boarded our bus, we had been ejected hurriedly out, the conductors wails of ‘Pani Bottle! Water! Pani Bottle!’ , fading into the deep night as we stood on the side of the road. We were quickly snapped to by the waiting taxi driver ‘You need lift?’, ‘Yes Please! To Ohm Beach!’. We climbed in and in the few moments of silence he again piped up, ‘You want song?’ and, naturally, being as close to Goa as we were, a loud and happy trance track ensued.

We bumbled up and down the roads, watching sari-clad women swaying down the early morning road with clay pots on their heads, wandering how close we were and why on earth Gangnam Style had made its way onto the radio.

We arrived in the dark still, a lilac glow beginning to creep over the horizon. But we had no idea where to go from here. Taxi long gone, Lauren and I stood on the edge of a cliff, where we found a lone bench to lie our bags and our bodies down until the sun rose.

Waiting on the Edge of Ohm Beach 

____

Back in Namaste Café, we were feeling immediately settled by the arrival of our friends. Breakfast and chai in our bellies, feeling the need to rest but our souls beginning to smile as the heaviness of the past 24 hours began to leave us and the Gokarna sunrise lifted our spirits.

The salt water stung me as it sang to my body as I rediscovered floating. Water bottles flying over the murky, cool sea water, delightful shrieks of play echoing across the small bay. My fingers are already itching to greet strings. It’s going to take me some time to settle into this new rhythm, this unfathomably peaceful flow. I will gladly take restful refuge in one of our palm leaf huts tonight.

Palm Leaf Huts @ Om Shanti Cafe, Om Beach, Gokarna