Among The Brahmins: Gokarna

Gokarna’s glorious beaches are the main reason to visit, with prices and visitor numbers both lower than up the coast in Palolem. There are four beaches south of the scruffy area of sand in the village, Kudle, Om, Half Moon, and Paradise, each more isolated than the last, at least until the first guests begin to arrive at the luxury Om Beach Resort. High season on the beaches is during December and January, though the few accommodation options are busy from October.

Gokarna village is quiet and charming and a lovely place to unwind. You won’t be able to get into any of the temples, but you’ll see lots of pilgrims around the village bathing in the sea or at the temple tank. The best time to visit is during one of the big religious festivals, such as " target="_blank">Diwali around the end of October or Maha Shivaratri in February or March (February 26th in 2006), when 20,000 pilgrims converge and huge temple chariots are wheeled around the village streets.

Quick Tips:

Although Gokarna is officially dry, you can find alcohol at a few places in the village, such as the restaurant below the Hotel Gokarna International, and it’s readily available out on the beaches.

Try to book ahead if you want to stay on Om Beach. Namaste (08386 257141) and the Shree Ganesh were both completely full when I visited. In the village, two places recommended by other travellers were the Hotel Gokarna International (hotelgokarn@yahoo.com) and Shastri’s Guest House, both on Main Street near the bus station.

Gokarna has sleeper bus services to Bangalore and Hampi. You’ll find booking agents along Car Street. There is also a daily 6:45am bus to Mysore that stops in Udupi and arrives in Mangalore at 12.45pm.

One direct bus a day runs between Goa and Gokarna, leaving Margao at 1pm and stopping at Chaudi (for Palolem) an hour later, Ankola and Karwar, before arriving at 5pm.

There’s Internet access in the village at Mahalaxmi Cyber Café, next to Mahalaxmi Restaurant and Shema Internet in Car Street. Both charge 40 rupees an hour. There’s also a small book shop between Mahalaxmi and Mahabaleshwara Temple.

You won’t find any ATMs in Gokarna, but you can change cash at the Pai STD shop opposite the bus station.

Best Way To Get Around:

The narrow streets of Gokarna are best explored on foot. The main temples are all within a few hundred metres of each other, and the beach and temple tank, at opposite ends of the village, are only just over half a mile apart.

Om and Kudle beaches are also easily reached on foot via a coastal path that you can join either behind Ganapti Temple or, closer to the beach, next to the small cliff top temple at the end of the road running parallel to the coast between Mahalaxmi and Prema restaurants. Auto rickshaw drivers charge 100 rupees to Kudle and double to Om. From Om, it takes around half an hour to reach Half Moon Beach on foot and the same again to Paradise Beach, the future venue of Om Beach Resort’s boat tours and barbecues.

The bus station is in the centre of the village but Gokarna Road railway station - on the Konkan line - is nine kilometres inland. There are hourly buses between the two if you don’t want to pay the 100 rupees auto rickshaw drivers charge. You can find train schedule information on the Indian Rail site. The station code for Gokarna is GOK. For other destinations, enter the first three or four letters of the station name into the box and you’ll get a list of options. Trains for Goa and Kerala stop more frequently at Ankola or Gumta stations, both on bus routes up the coast.

Set back from the beach road, with views of the sea through the palm trees out front, Nimmu House (nimmuhouse@sancharnet.in) looks a bit shabby from the outside but is a good option for a few nights in spite of the strict rules--"Silence in the rooms," "No smoking or drinking," and "No outside visitors"--and 10am check-out time. There are nine rooms, five on the first floor and another four above. The lower ones are 50 rupees less (200 for a double, 150 for a single) and slightly smaller than the ones upstairs, with pokey bathrooms, doors that open onto an internal corridor, and kitchen sounds drifting through the floorboards. All the rooms have the same basic facilities: a double bed, two plastic chairs, a noisy ceiling fan, combined Western/squat toilet, and cold shower. The main reason to stay here is the location, 100m from Gokarna Beach and handily placed for the start of the path to Kudle and Om beaches, too.

I stayed on the top floor, which has sunnier rooms and a tiled walkway you can sit outside on. The room was clean but unexceptional, about 3m by 3m, with a red tiled floor, two windows, and fluorescent strip lighting. The bed had a pine frame and a plastic mattress that made it look and feel like a sofa, while the bathroom was bare but clean, with a rubber floor and a mirror above the sink. It's all fine for the price, comfortable enough to spend a couple of hours in before you go to sleep and obviously well kept. Less likable were the stiff bolts on the door, the disturbingly low ceiling, and the absence of mosquito screens on the windows. The rooms get very hot in the evenings and the stagnant stream in front of the hotel attracts mosquitoes, so make sure you have something to keep them away.

The family who owns the hotel lives on the ground floor and seemed reasonably friendly. You can leave your luggage downstairs for free after check out and you can have tea, coffee, or mineral water anytime, though you’ll have to drink it in your room.

Mahalaxmi Restaurant is Gokarna’s most popular foreigner hang out, partly because of the food and location, but mainly because of Satish, the owner and the nicest man in the village.

The restaurant is small, with three Formica tables crowding the concrete floor inside and another three under a narrow roof on the street in front. The stucco walls are decorated with wires and bookshelves, boxes of pasta, toilet paper, and random books behind the glass. The open entrance to the kitchen is half covered by a curtain, another door leads to a courtyard out back with a squat toilet and a cold water tap for washing the dishes, and there’s a sink out front if you want to wash your hands.

The menu is varied but strictly vegetarian, with Chinese and Indian standards, like noodles, Gobi Manchurian, and Palak Paneer, plus treats for travellers, like muesli and porridge, ice cream, toasted sandwiches, and wonderful 20 rupee fruit salads made of apple slices, bits of pineapple and papaya, cashew nuts, and orange quarters topped with a coconut sprinkle and served in a beer glass. There are strange concoctions like peanut butter and apple shakes as well as more homely dishes like pasta with homemade sauce, grated cheese, and a buttered bun (from 35 rupees for Indian pasta, an extra 15 for Italian).

The curd, sauces, humus, pesto, and cashew butter are all home-made by Satish, who worked as a chef at his main competitor Prima before opening his own place last year. When he’s not outside trying to attract more business, he floats between the tables making sure the food is okay, gives advice on bus and train times, and talks about his plans for the future: marriage, a rooftop terrace, and maybe even a few rooms for travellers upstairs.

Mahalaxmi is open from 7:30am to 10pm. You’ll find it just before the stream on the road from the centre of the village to the beach.

Dawn in Gokarna. Behind high walls, male voices intone religious verse, a lone old woman sweeps dust around the main road while a cow plods lazily alongside, and a small fire burns inside an open fronted cafe.

Gokarna is a pilgrim town, one of the most important in South India, and though foreigners are no longer allowed into any of the main temples, you'll see signs of religion everywhere, from bathing Brahmins in the large temple tank to the many groups of shaved-head men with caste marks and chotis (pony tail shaped tufts of hair) who walk barefoot around town clad in white robes that make them look like slim, fit sumo wrestlers. The atmosphere is hard to define, foreign tourism jarring with the more traditional, devout feel of the place. There are plenty of smiles from shop owners, but I sense an undercurrent of hostility from the pilgrims and upper-caste villagers, which makes me feel like an interloper.

All roads lead to Car Street in the centre of the village. Linking Venkataraman and Ganapti temples, it’s lined with quaint wooden houses and stalls selling devotional items to the pilgrims, cheap clothes, CDs, and beach toys to the foreigners. Main Street forms a T at the top end, a left turn takes you up to the bus station, and a right leads down to the tank. The streets are narrower at the opposite side, a labyrinth of alleys passing Mahabaleshwara Temple and its phallic image of Shiva in the direction of the sea.

At the end of it all is the village beach, long, featureless, and virtually deserted a couple of hundred metres past the huddle of chai and snack stands at the entrance and the fishing boats farther north. It’s not a patch on the sand at Kudle or Om and the water is too dirty and the waves too strong for swimming, even the pilgrims-only paddle, but it’s a nice enough place to watch the sun as it dips down into the Arabian Sea.

Sandwiched between two hills, a couple of kilometres, and a 25-minute walk south of Gokarna, Kudle Beach is the first in a series of four near perfect stretches of sand. A 1km long, 50m wide golden brown curve fringed by palm trees, huts, and cafes, the sand is hard and bare, free of sun beds, beach shacks, and hawkers. The only facilities are a couple of small guesthouses on one side offering Internet access, Westernised menus, and a broken line of cafes and temporary huts, mostly basic shacks with a rock hard mattress and very little else, under tree cover at the back.

There were no more than 20 people on the beach on the early November morning I was there, down to single figures and a few cows when I came back in the evening. Most were laying at the very edge of the sand in the tiny bit of shade cast by the palm trees. Only a few were in the water--clean enough to swim in but with big waves and some powerful currents that would pose dangers for weak swimmers.

Om Beach is another half an hour away, up the steps that begin where the sand finishes, straight across the road at the top, and at the end of a trail marked by white arrows painted on black rocks. You’ll see the new seven-star (five for the hotel with another two for the attached casino) Om Beach Resort just before the beach itself, a dozen luxury suites built in the style of a jungle retreat halfway up a hill with a multi-cuisine restaurant, badminton courts, an art gallery, and plans to develop the sands below along the lines of Goa: parasailing, banana boats, safaris, and surfing.

Which is a shame, because Om really is spectacular, three arcs of light sand with a rocky spit topped by a single tree in the centre. The beach is long--it takes around 15 minutes to walk from one side to the other--and there’s hardly any shade except for a rounded rock or two and the restaurants at the back of the sand, fronting the budget accommodation at places like the famous Namaste, which serves pizzas, grilled chips with chips and salad, hash potatoes and cheese, and Israeli dishes at prices that are closer to Goa than Gokarna. It’s an excellent swimming beach, but be careful, as the water is deeper than at Kudle and the currents even more treacherous, especially at the southern end.