Oasis Holidays: beaches

beaches

Showing posts with label beaches. Show all posts

I remember humming a soft tune as I walked down the beautiful Kudle Beach at Gokarna – a town kissed by the Arabian Sea in the South Indian State of Karnataka.

The melody of the tune was completed by the sweet sounds of the crashing waves, regular chirping of the coastal birds, shouts of kids playing soccer and the whispers of lovers walking on the beach. I also remember splashing waters on to my friend’s faces as all of us joyously bathed in the cool Arabian waters. The gradually receding beach was both merciful and welcoming. In the evening, nearly forty pairs of eyes stood staring at the beautiful sunset as the sea gulped the sun, to keep it safe in its hiding for the night. Quite a love story. And quite a sight to behold.

I remember walking down the streets of the beautifully antique town of Gokarna to reach Kudle Beach. I bumped into some really interesting people and sights on the way. And as my eyes caught the glimpse of the beach through the leaves of an ancient tree, I blessed the walk that had led me to it.

But what I remember the most from those two days at Kudle Beach, is a longing – a longing to let go. A longing to delve deeper and understand. A longing to stay.

When we travel, we come across numerous beautiful roads and destinations. And very often, we spend days at these locations and then move on to other places and things. Sometimes we come back from journeys and the places we saw take deep roots in our memories, as our minds get exposed to the realms of everyday life. But at times, we visit places we just can’t get enough of. At times, we feel the strong urge to call a distant land our ‘home’. At least for a while.

Such was the case with Kudle Beach and me. Having been there several times, I still feel the longing to stay there for a longer duration. Still feel the need to stare at the Kudle sunset for days together.

And it’s very difficult to state the reason why. It is definitely not the most enchanting place I have ever been to. But there was something in the way my thoughts completely melted and mixed with the aroma of the place. It lent me a peaceful, easy feeling very difficult to replace. I felt that I completely belonged to the place, at least for the time I spent there. So much so that I’ve been planning to go and stay there for a month or two.

I don’t feel the urge to spend my life away at Kudle. But for what she gave me, I definitely owe her a month of my heart and soul. For me, it will always be my favourite escape.

Things to Do in Gokarna

When in Gokarna, do not miss out on the following:

· - Trek from Kudle Beach all the way up to Om, Half Moon and Paradise Beach. The beach trek is an amazing experience. You are bound to bump into some amazing travellers and picturesque locations.

· - See some beautiful temples and walk the old markets of Gokarna town. Gokarna is considered to be the birthplace of Lord Shiva. Delve in its history and culture.

· - If you are going to stay for long, you can also take Yoga classes near Kudle beach.

· - Go on a boat ride and if you are lucky, you can spot dolphins in the sea!

· - You can get a nice massage and spend the day out in the beach sun.

· - The bike ride around Gokarna is really beautiful. // Amarpreet Singh for Oasis Holidays

- --

For an all-India tour in 22 days, you may want to check out this video.

For Tour and Travels India as well as International packages from India, please contact us at Oasis Holidays.

Unshod Rover is a worldwide-eyed wanderer currently based in Bangalore, India. You may follow his musings and wanderings on this blog. "Unshod in India" is a series of articles based on Mr. Rover's adventures and discoveries in this very interesting and incredible subcontinent.

{About the Author}

Amarpreet Singh is 25 and lives in Bangalore, India and apart from journeying with a waste management organization called Daily Dump, likes to spend his time scribbling words wherever he can. His passion is penning down random sets of words that may seem gibberish to most people and may make perfect sense for some insane ones out there. He doesn’t seem to stop any time soon too. Poetry is what people say he is good at. Music and Football are his other hobbies.

My last day in Genoa was the simplest. No Christopher Columbus theme, no giant aquarium. I woke up and, after two days of rainy and gloomy weather, there was this sun glowing smack above the sea kissing the shores beneath the apartment where I was staying. And after two days of a malfunctioning camera, miraculously, on the third day, it started to work again. I texted my friend that it was a perfect day to take photos before leaving for Florence.

My last day in Genoa was the simplest. But it was on this day that I tasted for the first time grandma’s home cooked “cima,” classic Ligurian stuffed breast of veal. It was all of a sudden Christmas in November at lunch with my Genoese friend’s family. Grandma’s cima, which literally means “peak” in Italian, had brought my short journey in this part of the Mediterranean to its rightful culmination. I realized that all throughout my travels, I have gained enough friends and family that home is wherever I was having lunch at any moment.

Photo by Roger469 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (License)], via Wikimedia Commons

In that little weekend trip, my senses were re-opened to the real meaning of traveling, of going beyond the comforts we built around ourselves, and of discovering and re-discovering the world not only through the cities we conquer, but especially through the people we meet. On that sunny morning of my last day in Genoa, I reflected on my life as a traveler and felt the push to write about it again.

It started to get gloomy though when my friend fetched me for that Sunday lunch. But it didn’t stop him from taking a moment by the Garibaldi monument, the very same spot where the Italian national hero gathered a thousand volunteers (i Mille) on May 5 in 1860, and left Genoa to unite the north of Italy with the south. Right after, my friend told me he wanted to show me something else.

We walked through the sea wall, quite a long walk, but with the sea beside me and the silence my friend allowed me to cherish, I was in my element. Then, we entered a park, which at first glance seemed to have been misplaced in the middle of the mountain view and the seascape. This park is famous for squirrels, my friend said. Lots of them. When I told my friend that I thought he was just exaggerating when he said the park was full of squirrels, he said he too was surprised that they were that many and just as friendly that day.

Watching my friend having what we jokingly called a "dialogue" with the squirrels made me see a different side of him. There is this Genoese proud of his city's history, and yet sincere enough to share its defects. And then there is this person having a great time dialoguing with squirrels.

They say you get to see a person in yet a different light when he is with his family. On our way back, we had to hurry because lunch was waiting. We had pesto, prosciutto and some sweets. But as said earlier, what was really memorable was grandma’s cima. It reminded me of morcon and embutido back home. It also reminded me of my grandmothers, and how they kept our family intact when they were alive. Even up to this day, when they are already somewhere else, the memory of their home cooking keep us together. It's also our grandmothers that make "little boys" out of us even if we are already 30 or 60 and beyond. And my friend, no matter how proud and strong a Genoese he could be, he will always be a grandson to his grandma.

An African proverb teaches us that it takes a village to raise a child. I believe that to get to know a person deeper, it takes a country, a city, a community, a family and even a dialogue with squirrels. And so, after meeting new friends and families and squirrels, I got to know more about the world, my friend and myself. I also have learned a different way of looking at things and other people. And how we find ourselves in our relationship with the world, with others will always be home. // Unshod Rover for Oasis Holidays

For guided tours as well as other tour and travel packages in Italy and Europe, you may contact our subsidiary Volando Tours.

For Tour and Travels India as well as International packages from India, please contact us at Oasis Holidays.

Unshod Rover is a worldwide-eyed wanderer currently based in Bangalore, India. You may follow his musings and journeys on this blog. "All Rover the World" chronicles his continuing travels wandering about the world and stumbling upon strangers.

For the sculptor, there's the chisel and the block of wood or marble. For the poet, the pen and the paper. For the traveler, the wanderer, he has his footwear and the world.

Art always creates, expresses, presents and most of the time, generates a certain trace, produces a tangible “work of art”. Wandering, however, leaves only footprints. Not totally though as traveling permits the wanderer to discover cities, meet people, interact with strangers, and learn cultures. In the process, he takes notes of these experiences, the history, the stories attached to each city square or statue, a dish or a tradition, a legend or a saying.

These are notes that both the wanderer and the footwear pick up all throughout the journey, may it be through sandy or pebbled coasts, cobbled roads or dusty ruins, a puddle of water or a sheep's path. The foot directs, the footwear describes. The dialogue, the relationship between the two defines the experience. Designs.

(“Redfoot” is such dialogue, the relationship between the author and the footwear (a pair of red alpargatas bought from a street vendor in Florence). “Wandering Redfoot” documents the journey of the foot and the red alpargatas in various degrees of rest and reflection and re-creation.)

We were caught red-footed for the first time on a drizzly late April morning walking through the length of the Place Massena in Nice under the weight of the seven statues composing Jaume Plensa's Conversation a Nice. The statues represent the seven continents in dialogue, particularly at nighttime when they are lit in various, ever-changing colors. That day though, back in their original white, the statues were in deep contemplative mode as muted by the morning mist and the dark gray overcast.

On one foot, we thought that with technology, this conversation among the continents is very much possible as facilitated especially by the internet and telecommunications, and the growth and spread of social networks. On the other, traveling and migration has also been a great part in weaving dialogues among peoples and cultures, creating a web of concrete relationships and deeper connections one step, one stranger, one city at a time.

As it continued raining, we took hurried strides and took refuge by the building behind the Fontaine du Soleil, where a statue of Apollo, god of all the arts and patron of poetry, is surrounded by allegorical sculptures of the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Saturn. Apollo, principally symbolized by the sun according to mythology, must have heard our unspoken plight as the skies started to clear up as we made our way through the souvenir shops, the open market riddled with stalls of flowers and plants and the fish market, a few steps away from the sea.

And for some law that perhaps only Thales could understand and fully explain, as soon as we reached the pebbled beach, the foot took off to meet the water, and left me to rest a few feet away from the waltzing waves. The sea must have been cold and the sun yet to wake up as the foot came back and sat beside me and started to narrate a summary of our very first night in Nice:

That night, after a rainy morning of traveling from Milan to Ventimiglia to Nice, and looking for the hotel, and an afternoon of scouring for lunch that led to an evening of scouring for dinner, the foot rested its tired sole by the window of the hotel, looking over the blinking lights of the restaurants, the sporadic reunions of compatriots, the rains that have washed the city clean, all vacuumed into bins of garbage collected by the city truck. The foot watched this scene, as if already a ritual, a tradition, some sort of gathering. Everything was almost silenced though by the glass that divided the room and the street. It had been a long three to four months of organizing the foot's eclectic thoughts into a master's thesis. The foot had somehow missed the chaos of the city, the spontaneity. And it was for the first time, that the foot took me out of the plastic bag still smelling of the Florence central market, and lined me by the ledge for airing out. And as he looked at the cars lined up along the avenue like arrows all leading toward the sea, he thought of the coming summer.

We left the beach just as Apollo started to spread its arms over the city, there was a train to catch unfortunately. Passing by the cities along the northern Cote D'Azur stretch, by then all awash in sunlight, the foot had to take me off as it started to get uncomfortable. Finger slid in between the toes, as if to brush off sand, as if to send the continents, the universe some sort of communication, pulling all the remaining days of spring and re-arranging Apollo's schedule, an invitation for a midsummer walk and some good old conversation. The foot just couldn't wait to paint the northern coasts of the other side of the Mediterranean red. // Unshod Rover for Oasis Holidays

For guided tours as well as other tour and travel packages in Nice and other cities in France and Europe, you may contact our subsidiary Volando Tours.

For Tour and Travels India as well as International packages from India, please contact us at Oasis Holidays.

Looking at the Mandovi river and walking around Panjim in Goa gives me a Lisbon feel. I realize somehow that I have come another full circle. A few years ago, I was in Belem in Portugal, where boats and ships started during the Age of Discovery, and now site of the tomb of Vasco da Gama. Little did I know that just left of Thailand across the pond, I would one day find myself coming out of the Dabolim airport in Goa and off to the nearest town named after the great explorer, Vasco da Gama.

Life, especially during travel, surprises us with names and memories that invite us to somehow close a chapter, an episode of our continuing journey. Most of the time, if not always, it would signal a new beginning. Goa offers me a lot of these beginnings, but not without first drenching me with deja vus and irony that stick like sweat on a shirt.

The smell of Europe lingering in wooden cabinets or pop-opened in ideas and conversations over fish thali and kokum juice or soup. Modern buildings sticking out in a backdrop of old “foreign” structures. Casinos floating along an ancient river, flashy billboards damming perhaps the eventual erosion of hills.

I was once in Goa for the December holidays. I actually had spent New Year’s Eve waiting by the terrace of a restaurant by the beach in the north. It was at that moment, with feet on top of the balusters overlooking the sea and the sea of foreigners waiting for the countdown, that I reflected on what sort of novelty were we expecting for that New Year.

When everything is new all the time and everything gets old by the second, what’s the new new? The answer came the day after, on New Year’s day, through a family’s welcome and the sight of a woman by the portico of a more than a hundred year-old ancestral home. In a generation of control-alt-deletes and regular updates, that good-old, familiar feeling is the new new.

In a fast-paced world, you look forward to looking back, to not forget about remembering. And stories of past love and failures and laughter are as refreshing as they get. And it is only when we look back to where we come from that we are totally home, that we are new again.

The very first time I woke up in Goa, I found myself on another working day towards a world that I dream of. I saluted those in the offices and those in the greater offices of being with bigger things to work on, that need to work out. I dedicated that day to my nephew whose work on earth had just finished, and to his loved ones whose work just got a major reshuffling and restructuring.

There, by the Capela de Nossa Senhora do Monte, I could see down below Old Goa's world heritage sites sprouting like mushrooms on a canvas of green. I was staying in a building attached to one, the Church of St. Cajetan, which was designed after St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. I wondered why with this much precious history and the ever beautiful present, everybody seemed to be always in a hurry.

One time while on the bus leaving Goa, it dawned on me that I had been travelling almost a day in total in a span of almost four to meet with kids for two little hours. I was hoping those two little hours of positive energy would be enough for the kids to carry them on until the next meeting. Deep inside of me I felt some giant changes romping about my being. And the old kid who was married to his thoughts that I was, it was a real kick in my spiritual hypothalamus. And yet, while I did nurse some rebellious thoughts and beliefs that may seemingly go against some time-infested and traditional cultural norms, the wanderer in me felt my system was moving towards harmony, some sort of consolidation.

And so I laid these thoughts one by one and told them stories of the sun and the rain. How sometimes a change would do one good. That walking away might be the best favor one could do to oneself. And some circles have to closed. How more dignified it is to burn in the sun than to rot in the shadows. That there is grace in embracing failure. That there is joy in defeat. I told them these stories and then I told them, yes, there will be consequences. It won't get easier now. And I said home is not the ability to resist in one place for the longest time. I told them home is a journey.

I swear it by the tomb of Vasco da Gama, and the town named after him. // Unshod Rover for Oasis Holidays

For an all-India tour in 22 days, you may want to check out this video.

For Tour and Travels India as well as International packages from India, please contact us at Oasis Holidays.