Om Beach

Yes its really called Om beach. Thats because its shaped like the Om symbol from the Hindu religion and Gokarna town is one of the most sacred Hindu towns in India.
Of course Om neach is also full of hippies, how can it now be with a name like that??
Half of the beach is sealed off but you can walk along the sand but the rear is taken up by an exclusive hotel that is hidden in palm trees. It seems odd to have a place like that here but its for the mega rich seeking seclusion, apparently Paul Macartny is staying there. Its a bit of a contrast to the other half of the beach which has about 10 shacks on the beach front and the price of the average room is about 2 Euro a night.
We had decided that it was time to leave Half Moon beach as we were starting to go a bit funny in the head, Robinson Crusoe style, so we moved back over to Om which has a few places to eat, electricity and a few fires on the beach at night. Its also a very beautifull beach but not as nice as Half Moon.
On Sundays (today) it fills up with Indian blokes who's main mission is to gawk, perve, grope and take photos of western women in thier bikinies. I have seen a few girls in tears because of this and the lads can be quite intimidating. You basically have to shout FUCK OFF and they clear off , it seems to be that any thing less is not taken seriously. It gets on yor tits after a while as these guys would be arrested in 2 minutes in Ireland if they behaved like this there!

Anyway the plan was to chill on Om for a few days and the get the trian to Kerala and then fly from Kerela to Bombay where we catch our flight home on the 25th of Jan. In the end we could not get train tickets on time and had to think seriously about how to spend our last 10 days- running on a mad dash through the bottom half of India or stay on the beach for a few days and make the most of the relaxation before we head home. In the end we have opted to stay on Om and head to Bombay on Monday (tomorrow) and we fly home.
We have been filling the time here on Om pretty much the same way as half moon. There are some nice people here, a mad londener called Nicky who has us in tears all the time. Sol and Sunshine who Lilly knows from Cork and we have got on with and Lilly is staying in the same place so its quite sociable here which is nice.
Its my birthday today so we are going to have some fireworks and shenanigans tonight on the beach. Its great you can buy massive firework bombs over the counter here, Rock n Roll.
OK, I gotta confirm our flights home. Probably do one more post here and thats it, we are back on Thurday morning. Looking forward to it : )

Gokarna

Sorry about the lack of posting, been away from the web for a week and there not so many PC's where we are now!
After new years we hung around Pallolem for a few days but then decided that we had had enough of the same place. We looked at the map and the next set of beaches to the south was in Karanataka provence, a place called Gokarna. We had never heard of it but it was only a 3 hour train ride from the train station in Pallolem. The night before we left we met Lilly and two of her friends that she had met on the train, two girls traveling with thier families from Cork. They had headed out on thier own for a bit and had met Lilly. We all hooked up and had some food on the beach and a few drinks. I had a giant Hookah bong (filled with apple tobbaco) at the same place a few nights before and it was lovly.
We chatted and and wandered down the beach looking for some action but found bugger all. Dee was feeling a bit ill anyway so we split for an early night.

The next mornig we packed had breckfast on the beach and left for the train station in a Rickshaw as the station is a few Km outside town. It was boiling hot at the station and the train was an hour late. It was also packed to the gills and we squeezed on with our packs and I ended up hanging out of the door for the journey which was great fun if a little scary sometimes. Also after the fairly liberal attitude in Goa it was a bit of a shock for us, Dee really, for all the men just to be staring and perving at any western women on the train.
So after a few fun filled housr in teh pressure cooker train we pulled into Gokarna Road station.
We shared a taxi to the beach with an Irish girl and her spanish boyfriend who were sound. It took 30 mins to get to the beach and the sun was setting. We had to make it down a dirt cliff path and then we made ot to Om beach.
This area is known as Gokarna and south and north of the town there are a series of perfect beaches that are either completly undevoloped or have a few beach huts but no electricity. Om beach is the most popular but is also the most busy. Not busy like Goa but we could not find a bed once we got there. We decided to jump on a boat and head for a place called half moon beach a few Km south and only accessable by boat. The sun was setting when we pulled into the beach but we all could see that we had found paradise. If anywhere Ive been is like the movie 'The Beach' then this is it. Its absoultly picture perfect beach surrounded by jungle and NO buildings,roads, people, cars, cows. Also no electricity and the accomidation consisted of some bamboo huts pearched on the edge of the jungle that had to be reached by crossing giant bolders.
Thank god we have mozzie net and anti bug sheets to sleep on because you are pretty much sleeping outside in the jungle and there are a lot of bugs. That night we had a few beers with the couple we met and we all absorbed the place and its beauty. The starts at night were in thier millions and the moon seemed to hang above the tree line, giant and yellow.
The next morning the couple decided to leave as the could not handle the 'basic' conditions. Me and Dee ended up staying there for 7 or 8 days. Its was like our own private world, at night we were the only ones sat one the beach. It was a kind of solitude that is very hard to find in the world these days and we lapped up every moment of it. Our days just consisted of eating, swimming, sunbathing and the odd jungle walk up to the sunset spot. As you sit on the beach here dozens of dolphins splash about in the water in front of you. The whole place is like a Walt Disney version of a tropical Island, its all perfect.
Lilly turned up after 2 days so we had some company and one or two nights we had fire on the beach with the one or two other odd people that we staying there.
No electricity at night so we tended to be in bed buy 8.30 and up around dawn. Its wierd how your body locks into this natrual rythem when away from eletricity and disrtractions at night.
The most exciting thing that happended that week was a giant black scorpian walked through the middle of the place where we were staying and one of the local lads killed it with a big stick. giant hard looking thing it was like a evil toy. Nasty.

New Year - Palolem

Well, we have been here a week or so now, I am having trouble writing my blog as the Indian government keeps blocking blogging sites. This makes it bloody hard to log on and it normaly fails : (
We have been doing the groundhog day thing every day now, breckfast, beach, bar, bed so its quite hard to consider moving on although we still have a bit of ground to cover in the next 3 weeks or so.
Palolem is cool, New years eve was packed with millions of fireworks being set off all over the place and every one partying on the beach. Due to terrorist threats in Goa there has been Police with guns on the beach all the time but they have not botherd anyone and no one has botherd them.
Me and Dee got very drunk new years , obviously, but the partying that we have heard about in Goa seems to be no more . The authorities are sick of stoned hippies dancing for 3 days straight on the beaches so its all very relaxed and we have not even been getting a sniff of a joint which is a first in India.
We is a bit disapointed as we were looking forward to a bit of a boogie after the travel across conservative India but it looks like we will have to wait a few weeks till we get home before we can go boogie!
Still its very nice here and we have spent 7 days now working on the tan and eating to much. I am stuffing myself on seafood every day and its great, giant prawns : )
Every day is a big sunset over the arabian ocean and its beautifull to be sure.
Its all starting to quiten down now , a lot of people were here just for New Years and the Indian holiday makers are back at work so the place is returning to the sleepy village atmosphere.
We took a boat trip in an outrigger dugout and went Dolphin spotting,saw loads ,then went to a
really pretty beach that can only be accesed by boat, we may go back and spend the night there.
So I think we will be here for a bit, making the most of the lazy beach bum life as we go home 3 weeks today and reality will bite for sure; although both of us are looking forward to coming back and enjoying some normality!
It will be odd to be going home but also great to see everyone. We have gotten the travel bug out of our systems ,for now anyway! We are thinking of South America next year maybe....

Not much else to report. We will be here doing the same thing for the next few days and then we have to make our way south to Kerela, our last adventure, we will be cruising the Kerelan Backwaters which are supposed to be fantastic. After that we will spend the 21st, my birthday, on a really nice beach on the very southern most point of India and then flying from there to Bombay for 2 days and then home. Time is flying.
Also, I got a tattoo ; )

Colva and onwards

We went straight to the beach in the morning and it was great. Palm trees, blue sea, no hassle, coconuts, and cocktails. The beach was far from the rave party you think of when you think Goa, as it was more family orientated. We did bugger the entire whole day apart from sunbathe and acclimatize to the heat, lovely. Some nice food and drinks that night and we repeated the whole day again the next day.
We decided that maybe we could do with being around a more 'alternative' crowed than the people around us so the next morning we got a taxi 1 hour south Palolem, Goa's nicest beach apparently and a real hippie and backpacker hang out.
We would have gone to the famous rave beaches in the north but they have been ruined by development apparently and there was a serious bomb threat to Israelis from Al Quedia and the beaches are full of them up there so we thought we would avoid the whole area.
Palolem, while developed a bit (bamboo huts, bars and Internet cafes) is beautiful and is the beach that we have been looking at in the Lonely Planet for a year, ya! I walked the beach looking for a place to stay and the prices I was quoted for accommodation in shitty beach huts was insane, 2000 Rupees, nuts. This is because of the xmas/new year’s peak. We settled for a sensibly priced place at the top of the beach and spent the day vegging out on sun beds sipping drinks on the beach. Heaven again.

To Goa

We rose early, before dawn and had breakfast and jumped in a rickshaw across Udaipur to the bus station. We zipped down to Udaipur and, apart from the roaringly load Bollywood movie that was played on the way it was an easy trip.
We got to Ahamedabad airport around lunchtime, which turned out to be the nicest airport we have seen in India and killed a few hours there before checking in for our Goa flight.
We jetted off and 1 hour and a bit later landed in Goa airport. It was great getting off the plane back into the tropical heat; we have been feeling mildly warm to freezing cold the last few weeks so the heat was welcome.
It was dark by the time we landed but we could tell the place was completely different that Rajasthan or any other part of India. The infrastructure was great, lots of new cars, and lots of bars, tourists, and women in casual clothes. Goa is mostly Roman Catholic and is the wealthiest state in India and probably the most liberal. After verging on getting Dee a Burkha for the last few months it was great for her to feel almost as comfortable as at home. It felt more like a holiday in Spain that India.
We got a taxi the 30mins or so to Colva, a quite beach and found a hotel, well a shitty little place but it did the job and we were in a bar getting some food a few minutes later, kind of shell shocked to be around gangs of pissed westerners and Indian tourists having a ball and drinking in public!! After living like monks sometimes in the rest of India this was a great buzz.

Udaipur agian

After breakfast and saying goodbye to Gemma and Ben again (they were staying for another day) we left to head back to town. We managed to get the same room in our previous hotel and that was cool as the staff were really nice and efficient and Piers could learn a thing or two about actually running a place from them.
That evening we decided to treat ourselves proper by going to the most romantic hotel on the lake for dinner and that was lovely after the last two days. All in all a quite day and it was nice just to have our independence back. We had our flight booked to Goa for new years the next day from Gujarat, which meant getting up early for a 5 hour bus trip first, easy these days!

Christmas Day

Slightly groggy we woke up and had breakfast, which again was not really enough. I don’t think this guy has thought through what running a guesthouse entails, very untogether. Dee had been getting a jacket made by some tailors and they dropped up to do a fitting. I decided to get a suit run up, as I will probably need it in the real world in a few weeks. It was odd as I have never been fitted for anything and was a man intimately measuring odd.
We spent most of the day chilling in the garden and had a few beers that afternoon. The house was quite apart from a few visiting Indian friends that found us fascinating and wanted to talk a lot. The thing is we came here for peace and not to have the same conversation again and again; what country? what name? what Job? Married? So we kind of hid by the pool.
Piers it seemed had not thought of sorting dinner out until one of the other guests mentioned it so he sent one of the cooks into town on a food and beer run. That night we had a decent but agian to small dinner and chatted with some American people whom let us use their work phone to call home. We would have had to go on a trek back into town if not so that was very nice of him. His name was Sean Brennan which was funny as me and Dee work with a Sean Brennan.
To be honest this expensive hotel thing turned out to be a complete let down and I'd have half a mind to write a bit of a complaint on his website. Simple things like access to bottled water was awkward as you felt like you were asking a stranger to get it out of their fridge. Bummer. We should have stayed in town in a nice place but what can you do??
We had a bit of a giggle that evening and Dee got to wear her lovely new jacket so she was happy.
Also we bought a bottle of Champagne for ourselves and Piers opened it and shared it around. Not impressed with that. We crashed out; personally I was gagging to get out of here at this stage.