Between Two Worlds

Now that we've been back home a week, I think I'm finally ready to crawl out of my hole and admit to being alive. Yesterday was the first day I haven't "taken a nap", which is code for "slept all day." It's taken some time to adjust to the daylight hours at home instead of the ones half way around the world and I'm pretty sure the cold I came down with the day we got back isn't helping. By the way, I think my quota of colds has been filled.

Anyway, back to the real fun: India. We arrived at the train station in Gokarna at about 9:00 p.m. armed with the name of a hotel and a lot of optimism. The plan was to find a hotel for the night, then walk down the beach to a place we had heard of that was only accessible by foot or boat. Only one other group had gotten off the train with us, so there was little competition for the waiting cabs and one of the rickshaw drivers assured us he knew where the guesthouse we were looking for, the Flower Garden Cottages, was.

After a bumpy 20 minute drive through the dark we arrived at the head of a unlit path leading away from the road. Tom decided to go with the driver to have a look at the accommodations while I waited with our bags. Soon after they walked away a man approached the rickshaw and tried to take my pack, telling me he would carry my luggage. "No, no. No luggage," I told him while I got a good grip on the other end of my pack. He stood outside the rickshaw for several minutes before finally clutching the top of his head and wandering off down the road.

When Tom and the driver returned we asked the driver to walk back down to the guesthouse with us as Tom wasn't sure he could find it again in the dark. Fortunately we had bought a flashlight the day before. Without it and the driver's help we probably would have wandered all night looking for the right place. When we walked down that path in the daylight, it turned out to lead through an enormous garden and private living areas; we ended up passing the turnoff even then and had to enter from the beach.

The barbeque fire was going strong when we got settled in and went to the restaurant, so I took up the owner's offer of grilled fish for dinner. It. Was. DELICIOUS. The restaurant is an open air structure with a palm frond roof and a tiny kitchen. As soon as I saw the four hammocks set up along the beach end I knew I was going to like this place. The cottages are run by Anand, but owned by someone else. The restaurant, however, is owned by Anand and run by himself and his wife, Bonita. They have two adorable little girls named Livia and Nikita. The place is frequented by long-term visitors, many of them Italian, so the menu had several wonderful pasta choices and I would have liked to stay long enough to try them all. After stuffing ourselves (which is still happening far more quickly than at home), we waddled off to bed.

The next morning we got up and went for a walk on the beach. Even though it wasn't incredibly early, the beach was nearly deserted. The only other occupant was a small black cow who was doing an excellent imitation of a statue while staring out to sea. It took at least five minutes to reach her and she didn't move once the entire time. As we passed in front of her I looked back. Her head very slowly swiveled to follow us, then swung back to her contemplation of the ocean. I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to see her wade into the water and turn into a mermaid.

The sand on Gokarna Beach is very fine, almost powdery, and the ocean is warm. The beach is shallow for quite a distance, so wading is easy and no serious commitment to swimming has to be made in order to get wet and cool off. The cottages had boogie boards available to borrow and once Tom discovered them, he spent hours in the water. I was less active and was content to lay in a hammock and read or solve crossword puzzles. We decided fairly quickly that we were happy exactly where we were and rather than pack up our things yet again, we settled for hiking to the next beaches. Our motivation levels were such that it took us three days to get around to actually going anywhere, though.

There are headlands between Gokarna, Kudle, Om and Half Moon beaches that can be hiked over with some effort. It's a little strange going from beach and jungle to the semi-barren volcanic landscape on top of the headlands, but they do offer excellent views. By the time we got to Om Beach, I was fed up with hiking in the heat and humidity, so we took a boat to Half Moon Beach. While Om Beach was nice, it was the most crowded and they were also in the process of building an enormous resort on it that will open in a few months. We heard that they plan to offer water sports like jet skiing, which is a shame.

Half Moon Beach was tiny and the most underdeveloped. It's where the people go who are looking for a place with no electricity where they can meditate and play their instruments around the campfire. As there was no shade and and we quickly ran out of things to do, we caught the first boat that came along back to Gokarna Beach, happy that we were staying on the beach we liked best. That evening, as the sun went down, about a dozen dolphins swam by just off shore and we stood on the beach watching them leap and twirl until it was too dark to see them anymore.

The big entertainment at night was watching Anand's older daughter, Livia, learn to jump rope and counting the revolutions for her. After four weeks of almost constant travel it was all the entertainment we needed. There was a brief side show when Nikita got hold of a bottle of coconut oil and doused her legs in it while sitting in the middle of the sandy floor. Bonita put a quick stop to it when she found out and from the sobs coming from the kitchen, you'd have thought the dinner special would be fried Nikita. She recovered nicely, though; I got the feeling that sort of thing happened frequently with her.

We were very reluctant to leave Sunday morning for our train to Mangalore where we spent one night before catching the connecting train to Mumbai. In Mangalore we wandered near our hotel and ended up in an indoor shopping area that was a maze of narrow passages through tiny stalls. Being a Sunday, most stalls were closed, but we were able to find what we needed. On the way out we heard an outraged shout and and came upon a lone English women who had just witnessed what must have been her first public urination episode. I flapped my hand at her and said "Eh, it's like that everywhere," which probably wasn't the most sympathetic thing I could have said. Poor woman, I hope she wasn't scarred for life.

On the train to Mumbai, we met two English men who were also on their way north to fly home. Toward the end of the train trip they, and their bag of cashews, attracted two college instructors traveling on some sort of agricultural field trip with 40 students. The men insisted that the train wasn't going to Victoria Terminus (CST) as we had originally thought and that we needed to get off at the same stop they were, about an hour by taxi from Colaba, the part of Mumbai the four of us were staying in. I thought this advice was very strange, so as everyone was getting off, I asked one of the car attendants if CST was the last stop. He confirmed that it was, so we called for the English guys and they managed to get back on the train. We learned early on that it's best to double and triple check directions in India because everyone seems to have a different opinion and no one says "I don't know."

In Colaba we managed to find a good hotel with with a minimum of searching that had the added bonus of being next to the restaurant that Tom liked so well the first time we were there. It was the only room we stayed in the entire trip that had air-conditioning and by 3 a.m. it was like a deep freeze in the room. Poor Tom was so cold he went looking for a thermostat and finally said he was going to turn it off. I thought he meant to go to the front desk and have them do it, but a minute after he left the room, I heard a click and then the slapping of his shoes on the marble floor as he ran back to the room. I starting laughing when I realized he had turning off the master switch for the entire floor and was running back to the room before he could get caught.

The next morning we met our Swiss friends from Ooty for breakfast. Afterwards, we checked out, left our bags with the desk clerks on our floor and went shopping with the last of our spare rupees. After wandering the city for several hours, we went back to cool off and watch TV with the desk clerks. One of the clerks was very interested in America, so we chatted for a few hours, answering as many of his questions as we could. One of the burning questions on his mind was whether professional wrestling (WWE) was real. He was very amused to find out that it's not and was delighted to let a co-worker know who happened to come up and mention it. It was fun talking to him because it would have never occurred to me that anyone would think so much of what they see on American TV or movies is real, but of course, how would they know? American movies and shows are made so seriously, as if every bit of it happens every day.

Eventually it was time to go to the airport and we got there so early, there was almost no line and getting on the plane couldn't have gone more smoothly. We managed to sleep a few hours on the first flight and then had a five hour layover in Amsterdam. Thanks to the time zones we crossed flying west, we landed in Seattle only 45 minutes after leaving Amsterdam. Neat trick, huh?


India is an amazing country, filled with both chaos and calm, often side-by-side. We met some wonderful people and, of course, the advice, information and support given to us by fellow bloggers Mridula and Emma was incredibly valuable. I hope I can repay the favor some day. I never got tired of seeing monkeys, elephants and camels, and actually missed the camels after we went south. I was charmed by the fruit and vegetable markets with their narrow paths, sacks of grains and artfully arranged stacks of produce. I loved the color everywhere; nearly every surface was lavishly decorated and even houses in the country became handpainted billboards advertising everything you can imagine.

India is far more rural that I ever would have thought. The cities don't sprawl endlessly, they just end. I saw so many things I wanted to take pictures of that we'd still only be a few miles from Delhi if I'd had the driver stop every time I wanted to. I took as many pictures as I could from the car, but most of them will have to live in my memory. So many things there were so foreign to us, but looking around, we saw similarities. The teenage Tibetan monks snapping each other with their scarves could have been teenage American boys with towels.

There's not much I'd change about the trip, other than spending more time in certain places. I can understand why people go for months at a time. We're already talking about our next trip to India. It may take years, but I'm sure we'll be back.