Gokarna – The Stay
While walking down the stairs, while keeping an eye on the morning sea, we never thought that our stay in Gokarna is going to be that awesome! There were about 50 steps down, which reached to the sea shore – and guess what? Just there, as the stairs ended, we find the very first resort – the Namaste Café. The boundary of the resort would be no more than 25 feet from the water – believe me on that. It was literarily an ‘on-the-beach’ resort! The beach was rocky and if there would be a higher wave that breaks on those rocks, the water would splash inside the resort for sure.
We went into the resort and headed through the cafeteria towards the reception which was amongst the various rooms available in there. We enquired and checked a few rooms, which were not in a condition that we were hoping for (luckily) and declined those. Then the receptionist, far from being friendly, told hesitantly that there were a few cottages also that were available. We were asked to walk up the hill to reach to those cottages.
Not the best of lodging that you would find in similar places around the world. But having said that, Gokarna is not the costliest place too! There are mosquitoes, spiders and rats at large too, but with the experience that you will have on the beach, these things are ignorable. We already had that in mind while planning for the trip and based on that, the cottages were better off. We took one.
SPIDERS: To tell you something about the spiders there – those are not big spiders like the tarantula or something like that. I saw plenty of smaller spiders, but they are very quick. We booked the cottage and kept a pair of trousers on the rope hanging outside, in the veranda. We got freshen up, took bath, got ready and came out – in about 20 minutes – and there was that huge a web woven around the legs of the trouser, that that portion was completely whitened!
MOSQUITOES: There are mosquitoes for sure and whoever tells you that there are no mosquitoes, has not visited the place. The hoteliers will give you mosquito nets, but most of those are torn and have big holes in them. We covered that up with a cloth, lit a coil and put the fan on full speed, and that helped!
RATS: You need not be worried about rats if you are going for a short visit, for about a week or two. They stay mostly outside the cottages and if you spill food around, there is a possibility that you would see them loitering around you.
CATS: Where there are rats, there are cats too! The same is true here. There are lots of cats around. Not as many that could scare you, but enough in number to creep below your chair when you might be sitting in the veranda with a beer in hand in those slow afternoons or relaxing evenings.
There are plenty of similar resorts in Gokarna and majority of them are ‘on-the-beach’ resorts. We got in to this resort because we heard, read (and later saw) that it is one of the bests that you can get there. This resort is on the Om Beach. There are many more resorts on that beach. Moreover, there are a few more beaches, like the Gokarna beach, Kudle Beach, Half moon & Full moon (also known as Paradise Beach) Beaches. There are beach resorts all over those, except, I guess on the Gokarna beach, which is near the Mahabaleshwar temple and is considered to be more auspicious.
There are also various other inns and hotels in the city, but living in these places will not give you that ‘on-the-beach’ experience, for which Gokarna is famous.
The food at Namaste Café is also great. You will get a wide variety and I have seen people staying in other resorts having food there, with us. That is commendable indeed.
That’s all that I could recall about the stay. We will see what all are there in and around this Namaste Café in the next post. If you have any queries, please put a comment or write to me…
No comments:
Post a Comment