Kolkata - Home Calling in the cold Winters

Rendezvous - Sri Lanka

15th November 2013 – 20th November 2013

When the air ticket from Chennai, India to Colombo touched almost ground zero, I could not but wait to buy my holiday. The tickets were booked immediately and the travel plan was yet to be made. This is going to be an absolute back packing trip for 5 days.

Time being less, I sat with my usual research of where to stay the economy best through tripadvisor.com and lonelyplanet India guide. I found the places to must see regionally. Being a small tropical island covering up the entire region looked possible, it was only when I reached there, I knew the impossibilities. The beauty of the place keeps the feet tied to stay in one place and enjoy it endlessly, A tight travel plan is definitely not going to serve the hunger to travel the beautiful Sri Lanka.

We landed the Colombo Airport with our minimal pre-planned details in hand at 2:20 am. Visa-on-arrival is easy and hassle free. Once done, we walked out to the lobby to find pre-paid mobile phone simcard stores inside the airport along with money exchanges. they are all in abundant and totally economical. We picked up an Airtel SIM card and exchanged a $100. Outside the departure gate, there were long queue of the budget Taxis of Tata Nano, followed by auto rickshaws called tuk-tuk and luxurious imported vehicles of all kinds. This city never sleeps so traveling is not an issue at all.

As we had pre-booked through Sri Lanka Hostels, we had got our destination planned for the first few hours sleep.We got a tuk-tuk to Negombo, about 16 kms from the Colombo airport. The headed to the Beach Monkey Hostel. It was almost 3:30 am by the time we said goodbye to our friendly and helpful Tuk-Tuk guy – Sumit. A quick coffee offered by the sleepy yet friendly host. We crashed in our clean room with a beautiful attached and spacious bathroom. We woke up early as 9am and sat to interact with our host. the sound of the sea waves in a view-able distance from the hostel made our breakfast amazing. With the help of our host, we chalked out an approximate plan of our visit. Once done, we walked down the beach to see the azure blue waves lashing the beach. We spent some time in Negombo beach and then walked down the market. We had a quick lunch of continental sea food by the beach and walked back to pack up for our journey. there is not much to see in Negombo, but a perfect place to rest and rejuvenate. So we planned to proceed without spending more time there. We exchanged INR with LKR from the nearest moonstone seller as guided by our host. Beach monkey is a simple yet awesome place to be at a price as low as $12/per night including breakfast. The landmark for the hostel is the Lanza Wine Shop at the basement of the establishment.

From Negombo, we took the local bus to the main bus stop. There we hailed the AC bus that took us to our nest destination Kandy. We left Negombo post lunch around 1 pm and were in Kandy by 6pm. As the stay in the Kandy hostel was again done with the help of our host in Negombo. The Kandy Hostel worker picked us from the bus station and took us to the beautiful and luxurious house which has been transformed into a hostel. A feel of a typical Sri Lankan family life experience. We were greeted by the host with coffee, juice and biscuits. A great dinner followed by a good sleep for the day. In the mean while, we had decided our next day plan.

We left at 8 am in the hostel Tuk-Tuk for LKR 2300 for the whole day. We went through Lankan towns, hills, valleys and reached the ancient ruins of Sigiriya in 4 hours. We bought our tickets at LKR1200 for SAARC countries while it is LKR 3600 per person for foreigners. We climbed the top for about 2-3 hours up by more than 2000 steps and saw the ancient kingdom dating back to 6th century AD. The water garden and the beautiful landscaping , the history of one of the most technical irrigation system on globe all are preserved to be viewed by the tourist. After Sigiriya, we headed back to Dambulla, a 25 kms travel. Dambulla is a Buddhist monastery. Huge, beautiful,serene and peaceful. We stayed there for an hour and headed back to Kandy through the rainy mountains. While riding back fro Sigiriya, we stopped by at the famous Batik factory and showroom. Extremely beautiful but very expensive. We stopped for lunch in a small thatched roof buffet place. We had the authentic Sri Lankan vegetarian lunch. At Dambulla, we saw the huge statue of Lord Buddha meditating and 108 statue of Buddhist monks walking there way to the statue of lord Buddha. Once done, We headed back to Kandy.

We reached Kandy at about 4:30 pm and headed directly to the Tooth Relic Temple. This is considered as the most holy shrine in Sri Lanka. The temple is beautiful and the tooth as engraved in writing , says that it exists in the ornate casket. The temple is open from early morning to late evening and the fees is LKR 1000 for foreigners. AT 5 pm sharp starts the Kandy Dance program in the Temple cultural gathering hall. This is a performance not to be missed at any cost and is known as photographer’s delight. Though it has deep history of being originated to drive black magic from the kings, now it has become a famous tourist attraction. At around 7 pm, we walked down the white and spotless town of Kandy. We settled for a dinner at “Bakehouse” on the main street. the balcony view with the aroma of the local food. It was a day well spent and an evening well enjoyed.

We retired for the day and started early to visit Anuradhapura, the next morning. We had planned to buy a cultural triangle ticket for $50 USD to visit all the sites of Anuradhapura. Our Tuk-Tuk driver took us through without the ticket. It is a better idea to take a Tuk-Tuk from Kandy. On the entrance of Anuradhapura, we saw the 2000 years old Bodhi tree. It is the oldest tree on the face of earth so far. It is said that Lord Buddha attained enlightenment there. We saw the stupa of Ruwanwelisaya in a walking distance from the Maha Bodhi Tree. It is a huge white stupa and is restored by the Archaeological department. We also saw the Jetavana from outside, another huge stupa.

We went to the Archaeology Museum and the Folk Museum to see the beautiful artifacts and preserved jewelry, potteries and remains of the past. Once done by late afternoon, we went to the old town of Anuradhapura. Across Sri Lanka we got good local food, well cooked, great aroma and fresh. We were back to Kandy by 8 pm. We had our dinner of fresh fruit and quick packs. From Kandy we boarded the overnight bus to Colombo. It is a 8 hours travel in a local bus. Unplanned we boarded a almost filled bus where passengers were standing their way through till Colombo.

A notable thing about buses in this beautiful country. The first seat of 3 people is reserves for Clergy and the 2nd row is for pregnant women. However crowded the bus is, the people get up for these two categories of people. When the driver saw that we were tourist, he had the 3rd seat vacated for us. We interacted with the people, Sinhalese are extremely friendly and helpful people.

We reached Colombo at about 2 AM, a splash and clean city awake all night, busy with traffic. We decided to skip Colombo post discussion with the fellow passengers. We decided to go till Hikkaduwa. The road from Colombo to Hikkaduwa runs south through the shore. Surprisingly we saw, the train track running parallel between the shore and the road. We reached there at 5 AM. Walked down the road to find lines of hotels, diving schools and resorts. We had done our bit of research here as well. We settled for the Poseidon Diving Station.

The stay is luxurious at a $ 25 USD per day inclusive of breakfast. We crashed for a few hours to wake up to the beautiful blue sea of Hikkaduwa. We woke up by afternoon and went for lunch to the nearest Rotti shop, for our authentic Rotti of Sri Lanka. The place is opposite to a huge resort hidden by a jackfruit tree. The honey banana roti turned out to me my favorite there. Once done, we caught hold of a travel and tour person whose contact we still have. We went down till Bentota, enjoyed our moonstone mine trip and dined an early one in Bentota. We were back to Hikkaduwa by 10 PM.

Next day was early as we had plans for deep sea diving but the sea being not so friendly, had to stay back. We had our snorkeling and swim time there and settled for lunch in Mambo’s towards the end of Gale Road. The food here was awesome. A Sri Lankan Fish/Chicken meal was 700 LKR and we enjoyed the sea with our Lion Beer. In the evening, it was the graduation day for batch 2013 in the Poseidon Diving Station and we were invited to the party. We drank Local Arrack and danced to the local folk music on the beach.

Next day morning since the sea was not good enough to go diving, we called our tour driver and visited the Turtle Hatchery, tsunami Temple,Tsunami Memorial and drove towards Unawatuna. We had our lunch in Unawatuna, by the sea. Post lunch we drove towards Gale. We visited the Gale harbour, Gale cricket stadium, Gale Market.

Towards Sunset, we drove further south to Koggala. We were late or was it the rough sea for the last two days, we missed to see the fishermen perched up on the long bamboo sticks to catch the fish. Once done, we came se the Gale fort. Beautiful and huge is the best defined. There is a town that exists by itself inside the fort, looks colonial and was full of music and merry making. The roads had eateries, shops, bakeries, church, bank and residents. We grabbed a quick bite in the Peddler’s inn and headed back to Hikkaduwa.

Our awesome trip finally came to an end when we reached Poseidon Diving Station, said goodbye to the amazing group of Diving instructors, especially Praveen and headed back to the Colombo Airport with our Tour guy.

I promised to come back since a lot is yet to be explored in this beautiful island of Sri Lanka.

Tanjore - Kumbokonam

The quick plan worked out well to Kumbakonam as My closest friend and I chalked an overview of places to see in the temple town. Among the hundreds of temples and places we marked up good 10-15 places to cover in 2 days. This is going to be an on toe travel. Train number – 16232 Mailaduturai Exp. The train reaches Bangalore Cant at 7:15pm and we settled with our railway coffee and the notepad to do the final chalk down. No time to relax while we are there. Once done, we settled in our respective bunks to get the most required sleep. We reached the flowery little station of Kumbakonam at 5:45am.

Here we are and the weather is still at a good 22-23 degrees. We quickly made our way out and took a rickshaw to our destination, the YHAI Hostel of Kumbakonam. As mentioned in the website, the hostel is centrally located just opposite to the prime temple and lake. It is said that from any corner of the town, one can view a kumbham (the pot kept right on top of a gopuram) of a temple. Hence the name of the town is Kumbakonam. Once we dumped our bags and freshened up, we caught hold of our camera bags and started for our tour.

We had the list handy already and to start with, we clicked the early morning reflection of the tank of Kumbeswarar Temple. One done, we went out to look around the prime temple of Kumbakonam, The Kumbeswarar Temple, with the prime deity as Adhikumbeswarar swamy. It is a form of Lord Shiva and the temple is beautiful and colorful.

Once done, we moved to the nearby Someswarar Temple, once again similarly beautiful work of colorful deities sculptured on the rocks and adorn the history of the temple. We took to have breakfast at a small air-conditioned outlet opposite the Someswarar Temple. The food was amazing and hospitality needs to be mentioned. As it was getting hotter with time, we hopped into an auto-rickshaw and bargained to Rs.500 for going around the Kumbakonam town and showing us the listed temples and historic monuments.

We went around and saw Nageswarar Temple of the Lord Shiva. The main deity is a Shiva Lingam and this temple is located centrally located in the town. The Kasi Vishwanathar Temple that we visited next is the temple of the 9 river deities of Ganga, Yamuna, Narmada, Saraswati, Kaveri, Godavari, Tungabhatra, Krishna and Sarayu.

  

We then visited the Veeravathirar Temple about 2kms from the Kumbakonam Bus stop and adjacent to the Mahamagam tank. The Ramaswamy Temple is one of the most beautiful temples. It has 219 painting of Ramayana adorned on the walls and the prime deity here is Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and Anjaneyaa. This temple again is within 2 kms from the town center.

Finally we visited the Sarangapani Temple, one of the 3 major shrines of Lord Vishnu back inside the Kumbakonam town.
It was late evening by the time we finished our day temple tour. We gathered advice from our friendly auto driver about a good place to eat and he took us to the authentic Pandhiyan Hotel amidst the busy market area of the town. It is an old place with long tables and benches like the government schools, very high ceilings and old fans. The place was painted and very clean with one wall completely adorned with photographs in black n white and colors, may be of the members who hav been associated with the place. We ate amazing South Tamil Nadu dinner both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. The food tasted great but more than the food the hospitality was as if we have been invited to dine in Tamil Nadu, this place feels invited.
Post dinner, we called off an early day as an exciting day starts ahead with the sunrise.

Kovalam ~ Paradise Lost

Our close to 1875kms long Kerala trip is still continuing as we have moved from Mysore to Sultan Bathery to Wayanad to Alleppey to Varkala. Now After Cochin, we move to the calendar beach of India, Kovalam.

We reached during the late evening and I vow to say that the roads leading into Kovalam are not the ones to be praised. There are a few great looking IT Hubs and residential community as we approached Kovalam. Once into the town, the place barely looked like a seaside.Trolling with huge number of north Indian eateries, it looked like one of those busy tourist locations.
We straight headed to the beach and the first one we saw was Samudra Beach, then the Hawa beach or the Eves Beach and last was the lighthouse beach.

Samudra beach is famous for the resorts bordering the bay like Leela Kovalam. It is a beautiful picturesque with the unbearable odor of fishing net and sewage around. We decided to grab an exotic coffee and get the feel to be at Leela’s Kovalam. A beautiful fairyland it is and a definite feeling of a seven star hospitality. We enjoyed the hour we had spent there.
Once done, reality did bite the cheque we paid and we went for our budget stay hunting. Just a 2 mins walk up road from the light house beach is a beautiful Kerala style Mansion called Vijaya Varma Beach Resort, in about 3 minutes walk from the light house beach. The hotel is beautiful, a huge Kerala style mansion with room heavily wood crafted and bathrooms as beautiful as the bedrooms. Every room has a private balcony looking on to the sea. The restaurant remains closed since we went during the off seasons. But, anytime of the year, they offer you a great pocket friendly price in comparison to the pricey tourist places in kovalam which are not worth the price.

Kovalam has nothing much other than enjoying the sea from dawn to dusk. The food outlets by the decorated and paved lighthouse beach are great hang out. The German Bakery, Rock café, Malabar café all serve good seafood and look onto the sea.
Tired, as we were, we finished our first day dinner in one of the outlets on the beach. Expensive in comparison to the quality and quantity of the food served.
We retired early post a small in-house beer drinking party in the hotel balcony which we enjoyed the most. Next day was early. We aimed to see the sunrise on the light house beach. The weather being gloomy, the plan was done for. We walked down the beach, had a quick grab on appam from a street food cart and that tasted amazing. I would have given away any five-star breakfast for the fresh appam and stew.
Our excitement of getting into the water was discouraged by the dirty beach that we saw in both Samudra and Light house beach. With advice from the food cart man, we drove down to a place called Poovar, 17 kms from Kovalam. We drove through the green to find the beautiful beach of Poovar. Poovar has few of the secluded yet the best resorts of Kovalam. The beach is comparatively less crowded and cleaner. Though the pollution in the sea definitely disheartened us, this place was better to enjoy the beach.

Water was extremely oily and heavy. The current was huge and the waves brought with it fishes, dead and black in color. We also spotted huge jelly fish, weighing close to 2-3 kg being thrown onto the shore by the waves. While the state of the sea animals looked sad, it was scary enough for us. We decided not to get into the water at all. We spent some time around and came back to Kovalam.

On our way back, we asked for local Kerala meal and was guided by the locals to a small place just beside the Kovalam police station. They served us Authentic Kerala meal for Rs. 60/- each and we topped it up with more fish fry and fish curry. This was the best meal we had in our entire Kerala trip for the last 7 days. Not only did the food taste out of the world but it was as inexpensive as cannot be imagined. Anyone who visits Kovalam must and must definitely visit this outlet beside the Kovalam Police Station for authentic, clean, tasty, pocket friendly and out of the world experience.

After our sumptuous lunch, we decided to retire for a good 2-3 hours and finally hit the road for our home calling.

Varkala – Paradise in God’s Own Country

We left Alleppey around 10 am after our breakfast in Alleppey and headed through the potholed roads, southwards. The roads are extremely bad and the monsoon performed its part. During traffic hours, it gets worse. The 104 kms stretch approximately took us 4 hours to reach, because of the road condition. Finally, with a number of tea/coffee breaks, we reached varkala at 3pm. The moment we reached, the view and the sound of the wild sea  from the cliff brought back all our energies. We walked past the cliff lined with all the cafe, eateries and stay places.

   

Varkala is very similar to any other seabeach in India, the shops with dokra, cheap clothes, small artifacts and traditional Indian shops. There are huge number of Kerala Ayurvedic Massage centres which offers a good range of massages in a very good price. The places to stay on the cliff overlooking the sea are expensive one, but as we take the by lane, there are a large number of places to stay, comfortable and affordable.

As I always go by the Tripadvisor and Lonely Planet, I kept looking at the ones that are recommended. in one of the by lanes, we found Mummy’s Bamboo House, a small yet sparkling clean place. We got our rooms in the ground floor at a price as low as Rs.400/- per day. The room is spacious and a big washroom. The building looks as good as new. The Best part are the hammocks outside the rooms. When I spoke to the host, Rani, she said that it was 9 years old. Wow!! What a beautifully maintained place. Rani had been by far, the best host we have come across. Warm and smiling. She gave us amazing tea/coffee and great Kerala lunch and coconut pancake in the later day. The surprisingly best part of Varkala is that every place is Wi-fi enabled.

Once we got the place to stay, we headed out for lunch. The Little Tibet caught our sight among all the Casa Del Sol, German Bakery, Buddha Cafe and the others. We ordered Thupka, Mutton Momo, pancake and Sizzlers. The food tastes amazing here. The prices are relatively low. The a little time the took to serve us was because the food is fresh and steaming.We hanged around in cliff that day for sometimes and went back to our den. We rested the early evening in the hammocks and finally decided to retire fast that day after our dinner in another hangout called Caffe Italiano. A good looking attractive place that looks like a library and is filled with artificially woven cobwebs. The ambiance is beautiful. The Food was not upto the mark. The cocktails served were good, but the pasta was sauce less and dry, food had no taste at all and the seafood was extremely expensive for a sea side.

The next day was the day to look around the varkala town after our English breakfast and pancake time at Casa Del Mar, We visited a Vishnu temple, a Sivagiri Maath and the Kappil Beach outlined with the backwaters. The Kappil Beach is the flat beach with a tremendously rough sea and beautiful backwaters. Its and experience. We spent about 2-3 hours there and got back to Cliff. After freshening up for the evening, we spent time, shopping and walking by the cliff. Post that, we went for the most recommended Kerala Ayurveda Massage. A good 60 minutes relaxation was really good.

We had our dinner in a place called Sky Lounge. The food was great there and extremely inexpensive. The pepper chicken, Thukpa and the Pancake was amazing and the cocktails again were the best. We also ordered steak in pepper sauce and that too tasted great.

 

The next day was our day to depart from Varkala. We limited our breakfast to our B&B menu of appam and curry from a place round the corner from Mummy’s Bamboo house. Our Lunch was the definitely no to miss Kerala meal and coconut Pancake.

As we packed up, we saw the Anchuthengu Fort,the Varkala Lighthouse and the Varkala Tunnel.

Drive to Alleppey – Venice of the East !!

10/08 we started from: BANGALORE for our most awaited Kerala Tour.

Our first destination is the Venice of the East, ALLEPPEY.

We started late at 6pm from Bangalore and hit the Mysore road to stop for a fishy dinner at Pujari-Fishland around 10 pm. As always, it is my dream fish place to hog and hog and start for the journey. We crossed our planned 37 kms to Nanjangudu and then to Gundlupet. We halted, took a coffee break and fooled around for sometimes to wail off time as much as possible.

Around 1 am, we reached before the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary at Sultan Bathery, the forest remains closed from 9pm to 6am. There were about 150-200 cars waiting for the check post get to open. We waited for about 3-4 hours and greeted daybreak and sunrise in the forest. A pitch dark night by the forest is definitely an experience to enjoy. We had read a lot of reviews of the different routes to Alleppey from Bangalore, we avoided the coimbatore road to ignore the forever bad 80 kms from Palakkad to thrissur. This route had nowhere been mentioned and hence we took the road not taken and ended up spending a night by the forest, an experience to be cherished.

We took the Kozhikode-Mysore-Kollegal Hwy/NH 212 and headed in Kerala. The road remained green and winding all throughout with a stretch of 20kms downhill that was bad due to rain and thick vegetation. The natural beauty left us awestruck and we photographed our way to our destination.

At about 12pm, we reached SH 71/State Highway 71 at Manjeri and stopped for a long break of lunch and relaxation.  Our lunch consisted of Kerala paratha and curry with biryani and kerala style chicken kabab. Once done, we walked around for a while and then started our drive.

Post 12 kms, we took the Palakkad Ponnani Rd/Shornur – Perinthalmanna Road, saw the beautiful OttuPara Juma Masjid and got into the Salem-Kanyakumari Hwy with an entry toll of Rs. 3/-. Funny it was for all of us. As we kept going further  we passed Thrissur and the Cochin- Ernakulam through a beautiful stretch of urban kerala that looked more like one of the Middle-East towns.

Post this stretch started the horribly potholed 30 kms road to Alleppey. This was the unavoidable stretch of the last few lapse of the journey and was extremely frustrating. Finally around 7 pm, we reached the backwaters of Alleppey.

Tired as we were, we were warmly greeted by the houseboat owner. Our car was parked in a safe household for an amount of Rs.100 for the next 2 days. Coffee and Banana pakora was served to us as a welcome drink and snacks.

As we settled to freshen up in the splashy and swanky air-conditioned bedrooms, the boat started to take us into the darkness of the backwater. After an hour, it stopped by a small island rowed with other houseboat like a queue. We had a quick dinner of Kerala food and enjoyed the ripple of the water till we went back into the cosy blankets.

At 7am, it was the knock for the morning tea/coffee. I woke up at daybreak with the sound of rain. I slided the window and moved the curtains to see the dark sky and rain lashing on the water. What a beauty, I told myself. We sat in the common area for breakfast around 9am for the hot steaming dosa, idli and appam. The houseboat kept rowing it way through the vicinity of small villages where the daily mode of transport are the small boats.

People ferried their way to work in passenger boats, students went to school in school boats, milkman rowed his boat to stop by every household to deliver milk, the vegetable seller stopped by every house to sell the vegetables. What a wonderful like Alleppey had. Every household had a boat shed to garage their personal boats, like we have our car parks in the cities.                                                         

The cook and the helper caught fishes from the back water and fried it for us.

At 1 pm, the houseboat stationed by a stretch of land. We were served our lunch and post lunch, we got down to take a walk around, had tender coconut water and stopped for some banana chips and soft drinks.

The boat started to row again and as we passed other houseboats, we clicked photographs and waved out to them. The rain kept showering on and off. We had our share of sunshine as well. At 5 pm, we were served with snack and tea and coffee post which, we settled for some beer and the hot fried fishes. The rain lashed again on the houseboat and it was amazing.  We continued to enjoy the scenic sunset on the water and enjoy the evening. The houseboat was again stationed by a small island for the night with the others. At about 9pm, dinner was served. Post dinner, we played some card, sang some songs, talked for awhile and finally it was a birthday party on the houseboat. After wishing Vinay a very memorable birthday on the houseboat and raising a toast, we retired for the day at about 2am.

Next morning, at around 8am, we were served with our breakfast as we headed to the shore where we started from. Our Houseboat experience finally came to an end. The feeling was lovely, will be cherished for sometimes other than the time bound routine that we were tied up into after a very long time. Convent life flashed back into my memories in the houseboat and all my hostel matrons revisited me in Alleppey.

On the whole, it was a good memory.

Gokarna

Finally the long awaited holiday time.

We left for Gokarna in Bus this time. The State transport bus picked us up at about 9:10PM from Anand Rao Circle and we soon were into the traffic through Yashwantpur, Jalahalli,Peenya till we touched Tunkur road.

The road was clearing up and the weather was cooling down. the bus stopped at a Dhaba for dinner. We had finger licking Butter roti, paalak paneer and dal fry with deep fried chilli.

post dinner, the bus left and I fell into a happy sleep.

At about 5am, we were hitting the roads through Yana, Kumta and finally to gokarna.

Fresh from the beautiful foggy weather, we planned to walk through the town first. Early morning scene in the town would remind you of the tele serials of malgudi days and lokmanya Tilak, old houses, men in dhoti, women in saree and most activities revolve around temples. We saw tribes selling flowers and sound of the conch shell and bell from the temples around along with chanting. As we took a left lane, we reached the “Kotitheertha”. Huge lake, silent, people praying and bathing…it looked beautiful.

There was a picture of a crocodile on the gate, did not understand what it means since the script was local.

Once done, we walked around and took the other way, saw a library on the way and finally started climbing. We trekked up to watch the coastline and then climbed down to the Kudle Beach. The Beach is desolate at this time of the year except for a couple of places to stay. The gokarna International is one that is open all year round. this place on the whole is just not a great place to stay. just beside this place is the Umamaheshwari Guest house. That is where we checked in. Pocket friendly and cosy place to stay. We spent the day in Kudle, walked around the beach, bathed in the sun, enjoyed the rain and finally sat through the evening counting stars and listening to the waves.

Next day was the day for the beaches. We hired a fishing boat and sailed up to the midsea and go around the coasts. We went to the almost desolate paradise beach and the beautiful half moon beach. Monsoon and off season is the prime reason for the beaches being comparatively empty. There are no shacks as well in huge numbers. Gokarna Beach and Kudle Beach has a couple of places open on the whole.

Once done with all the beaches, we said goodbye to the fishing boat in Om Beach.

At Om beach, we checked-in to the only abode “Namaste Cafe”. This place is open all year round and has accommodation from Rs.2000/- to Rs.300/- per day. Since it was already evening, we did not do much other than enjoying the sea breeze sitting at the restaurant along with awesome seafood.

Next day was very early. I watched the sun rise sitting at the restaurant rim of Namaste Cafe. I watched the day break, the fishermen go to deep sea, tourist start coming to the sea, cloudy sky darken the horizon and the start of the rain. It rained all day and I enjoyed my Novel with amazing Lemon n ginger tea and more seafood. Late afternoon, the rain subsided when we packed our bags and walked up to take an auto and go around the town again to see the Mahabaleshwar- Mahadeva temple, the Ganapathy Temple and the Mahabaleshwar Beach.

In the late evening, we had a good sumptious North Karnataka meal and took our bus back to Bangalore through the rainy roads.

We were back to Bangalore at 7am.

Mahabalipuram - Mystic Mahaabs !!