Weekend today

Spent some time with relatives today. Had planned to go to Decathlon today, but could not. Instead drove along Mysore road in the evening. for around 15 kilometers!

It was a nice quiet interior place along Mysore road. After coming back got some food to eat from a nearby hotel. All in all a great day!

Came back and started playing Chain reaction on one of the mobiles and in the end we were 7 people playing the game at a single moment in time! Rather I could say, it was a 7 player game. It was indeed good too!

Cheers,

PS- Cannot call this as a road trip, but still labelling!

2 days beach trek Honnavara to Gokarna - November 2013... part 7

Return journey was even more fantastic. I shall remember it for many such reasons. We started out from Gokarna that day around 9 30 PM. We were driving along the Ghats to reach Sirsi. We proceeded very slow. I was not sure what was the reason.

I was sitting at the last but one seat of the vehicle. All the people had closed their windows and there was no fresh air to breathe at all!  Meanwhile I had some interesting conversations with a fellow trekker.

Once we reached Sirsi, I decided to sit next to the driver. We had a new passenger along the vehicle. Incidentally a cleaner friend of our driver had landed at Gokarna that day. He had a week long trip to Mumbai and our driver had voluntarily agreed to drop this chap to Bangalore.

It looked like he had worked very hard and was sleeping right next to the driver that too snoring. I was surprised, with such a heavy sounding engine, how this guy managed to sleep so peacefully.

All in all very slow road, the road condition was poor. There was road work going on many such deviations and the driver was looking for some Tea to keep him awake. But he could not find any.

Somehow we made it to NH4. and after reaching NH4 it was another story. The driver could not reach speeds above 80 kmph. The  front left wheel used to wobble the moment we crossed the speed 80. As a result we had limited ourselves to this speed all through the return journey. Bangalore was 300 kilometers and more. It was a slow journey.

I always enjoyed driving along the highway. But today it was difficult keeping awake. The driver was too dozing. He smoked cigarette drank water did all the circus in the world to keep himself awake.

Finally at a toll, found some tea and drank tea. After drinking tea. he slept for sometime.  But the fellow passengers did not allow him to sleep instead woke him up saying, they needed to reach Bangalore early.

I made myself comfortable in the last but one seat and after some distance and sometime, the driver eventually stopped at a petrol pump near Chitradurga unable to drive any further. He dozed off for an hour or so.

So we were going to be delayed but the delay turned out to be huge. Eventually we made it to Tumkur by 8 AM and most people readily agreed to stop for morning breakfast too at Kyathasandra.

Once done, we managed to reach Bangalore by 10 30 AM. Reached home by around 11 40AM.

This brought to an end a memorable outing. Not all things went as per plan. We could not complete the entire beach trek. But it was sweet indeed.

Cheers,

PS - Ever since then I have fallen in love with Gokarna, Kumtaa, Honnavara. Love to visit these places again and again.

2 days beach trek Honnavara to Gokarna - November 2013... part 6

So finally, we did manage to reach OM beach in Gokarna. Meanwhile we could see couple of dolphins in the sea. So our beach trek came to an end pretty early. We skipped many beaches. Also we were running out of time.

As a result, this was the only viable option. Along with it, we also never found time to take a dip in the water. Now the time had come. We plunged into the water. Borrowed a fellows football and began playing in the water.

After good 30-40 minutes, wound up and proceeded to have a bath over there. After bath all the tiredness of the trek was gone. Felt really refreshed and lost enthu was back.

Now it was time to wind up and proceed towards the Sri Mahashiva temple for Darshan. Completed the Darshan and then proceeded towards Bhojanalaya for the Prasadam.

Felt really good. It was indeed refreshing. Completed the dinner and then got ready to start our return journey around 9 30 PM.

Cheers,

2 days beach trek Honnavara to Gokarna - November 2013... part 5

It happened so, as we started to trek for the day, we climbed up a hill and basically ended up losing our way. We did circles around the beach. Along with us, there was one more group. Now both the groups were doing rounds around the beach with no concrete roads to Aghanashani port.

This was at Barkha beach. We ended up at a place in the middle of nowhere. In front of us it was the sea, to our left and right, it was huge rocks. And there was a climb to our back which we had to take. We did and we ended up at the same place where we started.

We found one house asked for the path and tried the path but ended up in the middle of nowhere. In the end we retraced our path back to the house. It was 3 hours into the trek and we ended up calling off our efforts to reach Aghanashani port via trek.

As a result, we decided to find the nearest road and then take a bus to Aghanashani port from there a boat to Tadadi port or another beach.

So we walked a couple of kilometers to the road, where we found a Mahindra vehicle. We climbed on to it. It happened to take us to Aghanashani river port. Over there, we took some time out to munch on to some chocolates and drank some aerated drinks till the time the shop owner arranged a boat for us.

The boat came after a good 30-40 minutes. We were kinda partially tired after trekking round in circles and it was a hot day too!

We initially decided to make a move towards Paradise beach and continue the trek from there on. But once we reached Paradise beach we decided to move all the way along to Om beach.

So this would bring an end to our glorious trek, where we could soak up in the water and catch our shuttle back to Bangalore.

Cheers,

2 days beach trek Honnavara to Gokarna - November 2013... part 4

Had a good night's sleep. Woke up couple of times during the night just to check how much the water level had come towards us. It was a still good 50 feet away from us. The waves were pretty rough. It was a good experience sleeping under the open sky. There were insects crawling on the sand, but it was manageable.

It was nice. Woke up around 6 am. Rest of the guys too woke up around the same time. Few of us went into the beach just to soak up till our feet. Few others started building sand castles on the beach. All in all a great experience to remember.

We accumulated the Maggi packets brought and then started the breakfast preparation. Meanwhile we got ready and packed our belongings. Completed our breakfast and generously thanked and tipped couple of guys who had helped us with the vessel and wood.

So we started our journey towards Barka beach and then Aghanashani river port, where we had to take a boat to the other side before we could make our way to Gokarna.

Cheers,

2 days beach trek Honnavara to Gokarna - November 2013... part 3

After taking a break, we proceeded couple of kilometers, it was almost sunset and we had to find a place to camp. Remember we had to camp out in the open.

To our luck, we found a place, where couple of gentlemen were trying to build a hut kind of thing. We asked them if we could camp opposite to their establishment and just a few meters away from the beach. They even agreed to provide portable water to us along with a huge vessel/container for holding the water. This place was none other than Sangam beach!

We had hit a jackpot. So we started to unpack and it turned dark pretty quickly. We also borrowed wood from these gentlemen and then we started the campfire. Few guys started out with chopping vegetables few others started soaking rice for preparing BisiBele Bath.

We had forgotten to bring salt and couple of guys went ahead and brought salt. So we prepared dinner under moonlight with no electricity. There were few people on the beach that day.

We played couple of games in the dark in front of the campfire and thus brought an eventful day 1 to an end. It was a different kind of experience.

Cheers,

2 days beach trek Honnavara to Gokarna - November 2013... part 2

In order to have our packed lunch, we needed to chose a place, It was Mangodlu beach. There were couple of hills to climb and on climbing the second hill, we decided to take a break. It was pretty nice experience, sitting on top the hill under shade, with the sea directly opposite to you, having food etc etc.

While descending from this hill, towards Dhareshwar beach we found a trio from Germany sunbathing on one of the cliffs. Wished them afternoon and then proceeded.

But in the middle, many of our guys in the team ran out of water. It was easy to get water. Just need to move out of the beach into a neighboring village and ask for water from any of the households. There is also a road which runs parallel to the beach, where we could see few vehicles every now and then.

Somewhere in the meantime, we crossed Holanagadde beach, not sure, because I do not have pictures of the same.

It was around 5pm when we once again stopped for sometime, where we completed our snacks. It was indeed turning out to be fun. We decided to cover some more distance before we could actually make a halt for the day.

In the meanwhile, we encountered one more group from Bangalore which had come to do the beach trek. Co-Incidentally the organizers of that group and our group seemed to know each other.

Cheers,

2 days beach trek Honnavara to Gokarna - November 2013... part 1

Disclaimer - I do not know the names of all the beaches that we walked along. But there were aplenty. Please excuse my bad memories!

The year was 2013, it was my first trek with this group. I had got shortlisted and this trek was kind of unique, because it was a beach trek. It involved walking along the beaches or rather sea shores.

It was indeed fun. It also involved camping in the open, since it was a full moon day, there would be sufficient moonlight. The idea was awesome, Getting shortlisted was even more fun. What happened during the event was bit of up and down. But in the end, I need to digest it as another experience.

It all started on Friday, around 10 PM, when we had assembled at our pickup point. It was another routine pickup, but things did not look as usual.

Within 1 kilometer from the pickup, we discovered the vehicle had some problem with the clutch and the driver was finding it difficult to engage quickly.

Finally with things set, we started on NH4. Initial plan was to move to Haveri and then take a deviation towards Sirsi and then Gokarna. But due to some reason, we ended up going interior of Tumkur and stopped at Tumkur for over an hour.

In the end when we started from Tumkur we had come too much interior of Tumkur and as a result proceeded through the Shimoga road. It was getting cold, the month was November. Stopped somewhere near Arsikere for tea then proceeded.

I found some sleep and woke up in the morning when we had reached Sagara. Stopped in front of a hotel for breakfast. We brushed our teeth and then completed breakfast and started towards Jog Falls.

Then it was a slow descend to Honnavara, where we picked up groceries for preparation of evening dinner. We also got packed lunch from a hotel in Honnavara. The day was getting hotter as we got ready for the trek. It was almost 12 in the noon when we started the trek.

We started out at from Kumta beach. The sun was directly above us, but we were very happy to get rolling since we were travelling for the last 12 hours or so. The exercise was nice indeed. Then we passed the Vanamali beach.

It was over here, we could see lots of people who were engaged in fishing. There were boats too ferrying people, lots of eagles/hawks in the sky. One by one we made our way through the fishing village.

Cheers,

Few pics