So this time it's Gokarna, a small beach town in Karnaraka which has many beautiful and clean beaches with very less crowd. I may even consider it better than "Goa" if you are not much into party culture and just want to chill out in silence and peace. There are many ways to reach Gokarna but I will describe the route and plan that I took for this trip.
Day 1
We took a train from Mumbai to Kumta ( Mangalore Express -12133 ) which departs at 10 pm from CSMT and will reach Kumta by 9 am. I suggest taking this train beacuse it runs daily and the Matsyagandha express which has a stop at Gokarna arrives there at 3 am. So it is better to reach Kumta which is around 30 Kms ahead of Gokarna. Please book your tickets before hand or else you will have to adjust in the general coach which is not at all fun. I will attach some pitucres to show how difficult it was to travel without reservation.
Kumta Railway Station..
Once you reach Kumta just search Sara Bike Rental which is just a kilometer from the railway station. Usually the scootys are a bit expensive here and it will cost you Rs 500 per day on non weekends and Rs 700 per day on weekends. We had already booked our stay at the Trippr hostel which is located rigt on the Gokarna beach and it costed us just Rs 400 a night. The view from the hostel was so good.
By evening the beach looked more mesmerizing, here is a short time lapse of the sunset and some more shots captures on the same night.
Day 2
We started our day early since we planned to visit the Murdeshwar Temple which is located at around 80 kms from our hostel. Also the summer heat was very intense and we decided to complete this journey before the sun hits us in the afternoon. We reached there in 2 hours since the route is very good it benig a national highway.
On reaching Murdeshwar you can visit the temple and the beach, it will take you around 1 and half hour to completely visit this vast temple area. Then we sat there inside the temple for a few minutes before leaving for our next destination
These are some videos and pitcures of the temple. You can take a ticket for just 20 Rs and watch the beach and the Shiva moorti from the 17th floor of the temple.
Below is the video of us leaving the temple area.
After this we went to the Honnavar mangrove forest which was on the way back to our hostel. It took us around 30 minutes to reach Honnavar from Murdeshwar. It is one of the places where you won't find much people and also enjoy the well maintained mangroves vegetation.
After visiting the Honnavar Mangroves forest we went to the Mirjan fort which was also on the way back to our hostel so no detour was required. This fort does not require any trekking and you can actually find the fortification of the fort still intact.
We reached the hostel by sunset and captured some more awesome pitcures.
Day 3
So this was our final day in Gokarna and we had our return train from Kumta at 6 pm. We went ahead and visited the Om beach, Half moon beach and the Paradise beach in the morning. There is also a small half hour trek to these beaches and if you are not interested in that then there are ferries or small boats which can take you to these beaches. One should really come and visit these beaches in between September to January on new moon nights when you can view the bioluminescence effect which is just mind blowing. There are also many more beaches such as Nirvana Beach, Kudle Beach, Kumta beach, etc which you can cover but the Om beach is one of the major attractions and is also very good for swimming as the currents here are not stronger due to the topopgraphy of the beach.
We boarded the general section again but it was not crowded at all this time. The train got late and we reached Mumbai by 8 in the morning and were back to our offices from the long weekend break. Do visit this place with your friends or family or even Solo backpacking but do take a reservation ticket that is my only tip...
Safe travels !!!!
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