After trekking in mountains, Himalayan, and trekking along the railway lines in Sakleshpur, trekking along the beaches of northern Karnataka was what required for spending last weekend. We (Shantanu, Rohit, Ajit and I) started with the idea of trekking through the northern beaches of Karnataka, and drew rough preliminary plan. We planned to start from Bangalore on Friday night, continue trekking on Saturday and return back to Bangalore on Sunday. When I reached Bangalore Bus Stand, everybody else except for Ajit, who had unfortunately taken ill, Hrishikesh filling his place, had already reached before time. The bus was on time and we were to reach Gokarn by next day morning.

The weather was cloudy, with possibility of rains. After arrival at the beach, a notice board apparently put up for trekkers, promptly set us in a search mission of one police information center in Gokarn village. After wandering through the streets of Gokarn village, one police constable told us that there is no need to take any information, and we can continue our trek without any problems. By this time we were bit hungry and had our breakfast in Pai Restaurant.

Surprisingly, every alternate house in Gokarn Village claimed itself to be the house of Head-Priest.

We started trekking from the Gokarn beach towards Om beach. The view was breath-taking. Somewhere here the weather started turning dark and rain was approaching slowly. By the time we reached Om beach, it had started raining. The clear blue sky and dark black patch, supposedly of rain, in between; how often we see it.

The hotel at Om beach, where we had lunch, didn't even had water. When we asked water for washing our hands, he started collecting rain water in a big tub.

We came across small beach, supposedly Half-Moon beach. I exclaimed this looks like 1/10th moon beach. The curve was very small to be considered as half-moon.

After crossing, what looked like another small beach we wandered off from the usual rocky edges along the coast-line into thick plantations towards the center of the hill. We crossed two rocky fences and then trail became wider and finally lead us to locality. The villagers told us that those two beaches which we had dismissed earlier as being Half-Moon and Paradise beaches were actually the Half-Moon and Paradise beach respectively.

It was almost 5 p.m. around time to head back to Gokarn, that's when we bumped into this local guy. He came straight in the front and thrust his hand forward. Before I could realize anything, he started off… How are you sir? Hi I am Kittu! Then he started off again… Go this way sir for Paradise beach… Ohh you have already been to the beach, then go this way you will come across sun beach and next to it would be the bus-stand, he showed us directions and we left. The sun-beach was a disappointment. I guess they name every place which has sand along the sea as beach.

The state-bus promptly came on time and left immediately. We reached Gokarn in another half an hour, visited temple, and took the state-bus to Kumtha. What followed next is another story, will post in couple of days.

Update: You can view photos here and here.