InsideOut Travel—Quest for the Best Room on the Beach Cont.

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After I spent over a week in Palolem, I would have to agree with both reports. I loved it but I didn't accomplish much writing. The beautiful sites and all-night music kept me distracted. However, I was patient, I thought that in my travels when the time was right I would find the ideal place to do some writing.

I decided to head off for Gokarna in the state of Karnataka just to the south of Goa. The woman I had spoken with at the Madgaon Station had recommended Gokarna.

I stepped off the platform into a crowded car, benches of three blue seats across from more benches of blue seats full of Indian men in simple collared shirts and slacks and Indian women, some dressed in colorful saris and some with flowers in their hair.

Instead of rushing around to find a seat, I was happy to stand near the doorway, next to a few comic Indian men, who using their hands, motioned that another had been drinking. They spilled chai, all over the floor. A few minutes down the tracks I stopped a newly boarded man from setting his bag on the light brown translucent chai-covered floor.

The Bambu House. S. Spots.

At a stop about halfway through the trip, a few people got off the train and another Indian man showed me a vacant seat and asked me to sit down. Hot but comfortable wind rushed in from the barred windows as we zipped past landscapes of backwater marshes, coconut trees and occasional green rolling hills.

When we arrived at the Gokarn Road Railway Station, I slipped off the train behind a couple of other backpackers. From the platform, I could see a mob of travelers below.

I stepped back and took a bottle of water from the snack bar. I asked the boy who worked there about getting into town.

“You can take the Ashram bus parked below to Gokarna for 20 rupees,” he answered.

I went down and was lucky to get a seat. I found that many of these travelers were part of one large group standing around negotiating their next move. On the bus ride, I spoke with some Australian girls to my left who were on an “around-the-world-in-seven-months-trip” as they put it with a sense of urgency in their voices and a young German guy, Patrick, to my right. He had only been in India for a few days.

“My family is worried about me, I am traveling alone. I think it’s a problem, ” he said.

“I don’t think it’s such a problem, traveling alone gives you great freedom,” I replied.

When the bus stopped in Gokarna, I waited for Patrick to get his backpack and walked with him into town. At a crossroad lined with vendors selling everything from decorative textiles of every color imaginable and Hindu religious paraphernalia to children’s toys, a couple joined us, also from Germany, and we all headed off toward the beach. Walking beside several huge towering wooden chariots with wheels that dwarfed a person to half their size, we were reminded that this was one of the Hindu’s holiest places.

When we got to the next crossroad just before Gokarna beach, everyone pulled out their guidebooks.

“I read that Kudle Beach is just south of Gokarna,” I said, pointing to the road that seemed to be the obvious choice.

As we began our descent to the beach, we noticed other backpackers ahead of us. I slowed down to give them space knowing that otherwise we would reach the beach at the same time and have to compete to get a room. The German couple kept walking and caught up with the other backpackers.

When we reached the “Looksea guesthouse” the couple rushed in to get a room. They took the first little cave with a raised wood bed and a mattress pad. A boy showed us two more rooms, one had a sleeping pad and the other, a thatch hut, did not.

Although the room with the pad seemed all right for me, I decided to leave the choice to Patrick, as not to force him into the thatch hut or to continue searching. Patrick didn’t seem to find the place to his liking so we continued our search.

The next spot I found more ideal—they had two small clay huts but only one had a sleeping pad. I felt OK with roughing it some but thought I would not sleep well on a clay floor without a sleeping pad so I gave Patrick the option.

“You take the hut with the pad and I will continue the search or I will take the hut with the pad and you continue the search,” I said. Patrick opted to take the hut.

I continued on to find the next place the same, no pad, and the one after that was full. I ran into the Australian girls who told me that the next place looked good but they only had one hut and they were thinking about taking it.

I kept walking and found more “no vacancy” signs until I reached the last guesthouse at the end of the beach.

“We have a room. It’s about five minutes walk back from the beach. Do you want to see it?” a slender Indian man asked.

Enlightenment at good prices. S. Spots.

I agreed to take a look and followed him on a dirt trail to what looked like a farmhouse. The room was fine—a light, a noisy overhead fan and a mattress pad on a brown wooden frame. I took it. It turned out to be a hot night where I was bitten and woken by mosquitoes.

The next morning I was up at dawn and headed out for a run and a swim. I then went to explore Om Beach. When I got over the hill just on the north end of the beach, I found a nice looking place called the “Namaste.”

I asked about rooms and a boy showed me the only vacancy, a thatch hut. The odor of mildew was so strong I couldn't take it for more than a minute. I asked if any other rooms would be available later that day. He told me he wasn’t sure.

I went to further explore Om Beach. I decided at that point that if I didn’t find a nice place to stay, I would leave the next day for North Goa.

After a swim, I went back to the “Namaste” and checked to see if any other rooms had come available. Nothing. In fact, the hut I looked at earlier had been taken. It was only about 9 a.m. and the sign on the wall read that the check-out time was at noon.

I had a feeling that a room would become available so I ordered a chai and a “lassi,” a yogurt milkshake, and waited. A young boy sat at the table and sold a couple of colorful necklaces of beads and shells to the staff. I had another chai and at 11 a.m., I saw a woman walk out with a bag. I asked the man at the desk, “Is she checking out?”

The man smiled and said no.

A few minutes later, another girl from the same group came out with a bag and I saw the guy with a key in his hand.

The man at the desk gave the boy a key and told him to show me the room. The boy told me, “Big room, this room, has bathroom, 300 rupees. Want to see?”

I agreed to take a look. The 300 rupees was more than the going rate of one hundred for the other rooms at the Namaste but right in my average price range. We walked up a small hill to a nice little bamboo hut. Midnight blue tile steps led up to the door with a sign overhead that read, “Bambu House.”

Inside was a sitting room with two wicker chairs and a little table. Green-leafed white curtains covered open-air criss-cross bamboo windows. The next room had a double bed and an oscillating fan set atop a wicker shelve stand.

There was even a bathroom with an Indian squat toilet, a faucet, a bucket and a drain in the floor. The room was nicely set on the side of the hill just overlooking the tops of green trees where a light breeze brought in the sound of waves on the seashore.

I thought, “wow, if there is a time and a place to write, it’s here and now.”

After a long career as a road warrior in the Western United States, S. Spots is currently riding the rails, busses, rickshaws and boats of India and Southeast Asia on a quest for further understanding of himself and the world around him

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CONTINUED DESTINATION: india

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