These photos are from my first visit to Jaipur, which also happened to be my first big trip within India. The journey was actually for the marriage of one of our favourite office colleagues at the time. A bunch of us made it for the wedding, most of them by train — but I chose to fly.
This was 2005, Air Deccan (India’s first budget carrier) was still in operation. I got a return ticket from Bangalore to New Delhi for around Rs. 5,000. From New Delhi, we (I was joined by another colleague and his wife) boarded a state bus from Rajasthan House and headed for Jaipur. The journey took us around 3 hours and we were in Jaipur city by evening.
Our friend had put us up at the Best Western in Jaipur and since there was a ‘sangeet‘ that evening, all our sightseeing was kept for the next day.
The next morning, 3 of us set out to see the sights Jaipur city had to offer. The wedding was that evening so we had time until late afternoon. The hotel suggested we hire a taxi and for Rs. 500, the driver offered to take us around to all the popular sights.
First up, a quick stop at the Hawa Mahal or “Hall of the Winds”.
The Hawa Mahal was en route to our main destination, Amer Fort — or Amber Fort as it’s popularly known.
There was an entrance fee… but I don’t remember how much it was. (Sorry, five years ago.)
Elephant rides were popular with the white folks. Not me.
5 years ago, that was me. (Not much has changed since then really)
I don’t exactly remember if we hired a guide or not, but we still just followed the path all the guided tours were taking and listened in whenever we heard English explanations.
The Sheesh Mahal (Mirror Palace)
We spent nearly an hour at Amer Fort before heading out.
Elephants cooling off at Maotha lake in front of Amer Fort
Our next stop was the Jantar Mantar, a collection of astronomical instruments, built by Maharaja Jai Singh II a very long time ago.
A lot of these massive structures were used to tell time and predict the weather believe it or not
The City Palace with Amer Fort in the background
After half-an-hour spent at the Jantar Mantar, we had our lunch.
The restaurant was on the road facing the Jal Mahal.
Jal Mahal (Water Palace)
After that, we were back in the city.
Albert Hall Museum
Final stop on our taxi tour was the Birla Mandir in Jaipur.
And with that, we were done. By 5pm we were back at the hotel, freshened up, and then made our way to the wedding venue — which was a palace-turned-5-star hotel.
'Indian wedding' not guaranteed in the hotel package. But these tourists got lucky.
The wedding venue was impressive to say the least. It’s fairly obvious why Rajasthan plays host to a lot of extravagant North Indian weddings. The whole state offers palatial grandeur with many such palaces been taken over, and turned into luxury hotels. Of course, none of this comes cheap.
The entire group from office who made it to Vivek's wedding
Anyway, after the wedding, it was back to the hotel for the entire group. Some of us were heading back to Bangalore via Mumbai the next day, while I (& two others) decided to go to Agra instead (& then to New Delhi).
Sorry for not going into too much detail about all the places I went to but I’ve linked out to sources where you can find out more information and read up on their history.
Agra and New Delhi will be another post.
Camera used: Canon Powershot A95; post processing done in Photoshop CS3
P.S: Here’s a small video I took while at Amer Fort
Since this was my last day in Gokarna, and since I was all by myself, I decided to do things at my own pace.
Woke up at around 10am, did my business in the common restrooms, paid for my room/hut and then checked out. Stocked up on water and said my goodbyes to the staff at Sunset Cafe.
My second post has photos of Sunset Cafe but if you want to call for reservations, the numbers mentioned on the card they gave me are: (0) 94485 26270 & (0) 93410 79315. They have huts and rooms with prices starting from Rs. 250 onwards.
I thought I’d be of service to my readers and friends by checking out a few other hotel options that looked like decent places to stay on Kudle beach.
By far the most expensive hotel on Kudle Beach is Hotel Gokarna International.
Hotel Gokarna International, Kudle Beach
And by ‘expensive,’ I mean this is the only proper hotel on Kudle beach. Just about everything else offers simple huts and small bricked rooms. Rates here range from Rs. 1200 ($26/€19) to Rs. 1500 ($33/€24) for double rooms. Not all rooms face the sea — so you can imagine which ones cost more. Hotel Gokarna International has a bar and a restaurant serving both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. And don’t worry, no shared bathrooms here.
Next up is a funky little place called Jazzmin Cafe & German Bakery. They were fairly accommodating and asked me to take as many photos as I wanted. So I did.
The two huts right in front have attached toilets
When I questioned them on prices, they told me it’s best I e-mail them with my “requirements” (e-mail: jazzmincafe@yahoo.com).
This is right next to Jazzmin and the first ‘hotel’ you’ll come across on Kudle
At the other extreme end of Kudle beach is Ganga Cafe, which looked like a pretty decent place too but I couldn’t have been bothered to walk all the way there with all my bags in the hot sun. Sorry.
UPDATE: A reader who visited in December 2017 was kind enough to share some numbers of places to stay on Kudle beach:
So with all my bags in tow, I made my way up the rabbit hole for the last time.
I took it slow as with a laptop on my back, a camera bag on the left shoulder and a tripod on the other — it was literally back-breaking.
I then took the same path over the hill to Om Beach, which is where I decided I’d spend the day before heading back to town. The reason I opted to stay back one more day was to take a lot of videos on my camera (Canon 7D). Of course, I did take photos in between.
A panorama comprised of 5 shots
It was already past noon by the time I reached Om Beach so I decided to have an early lunch. I walked into Namaste Cafe, by far the most popular joint on Om Beach and a preferred stay for many who tend to book rooms in advance.
Their restaurant was quite busy as well.
Seafood tandoor platter, Rs. 200. Very good!And wherever Mithun eats seafood, comes thy kitten…. and sleeping pups.
Namaste Cafe has a variety of rooms from basic huts to air-conditioned rooms and prices start from Rs. 200 upwards. For more information, call (08386) 257141/ (0) 94481 53643.
Om Beach attracted bus loads of people that day, guessing because some people got holidays for the festival of Holi.
After a long & lazy lunch, I decided to walk up Om Beach and climb up the path to Half-Moon beach. So I asked my waiter if I could leave my laptop bag at a safe location at the restaurant itself. After doing so, with my tripod and camera bag, I set off once again.
I had to wear socks this time as my feet were getting blisters and scratches from my floaters and from walking barefoot on the sand.
I stopped at the point from where if you were to take a left turn, you would be on the path to Half-Moon beach.
I decided to walk up all the way to that tree point…… and just sit there for some time
Lucky eagle
As it was nearing 5pm, I decided to head back to Om beach.
Om beach
The large one is a woman by the way
Back at Namaste Cafe, I collected my laptop bag, washed up, cooled off with a lime soda and then made my way up to the auto stand.
Got into one, and saw the beautiful coastlines of Gokarna one last time while I made my way back into town.
Since I had some time to kill before my boarding the bus, I went to the Gokarna beach area for some photographs.
“Appu Tattoo: You won’t BELIEVE where all we can give you a tattoo!”
Shree Venkataraman temple: Sending your messages to god — and parcels for your uncle too!Hotel Gokarna International in town
By this point, my camera battery was dying from all the video I recorded during the day. But I couldn’t help but click these posters.
I don’t know what the play was about but I would’ve loved to have found out. Going by their faces I’m guessing it involves killing the make-up artist.
After this, I switched off my camera and made my way to bus. The VRL buses begin at the same spot they drop you in the morning coming from Bangalore. By 6:45pm, it makes it’s way to the town office where it picks up the remaining passengers.
I took this opportunity to go out and grab some grub. I had a sudden yearning to have some ice cream but some stores ran out. Others pointed me to an old rustic coffee shop up the road.
As I patiently waited for the old man at the counter to finish tabulating his bills, I asked for “ice cream”. And then he ran down the list of flavours he had. Going by what he listed, I realized this was home-made ice cream and not the usual mass-produced artificially-flavoured stuff.
I opted for a scoop of mango and he packed one up in a generic ice cream cup with a lid and spoon. All this for how much? Rs. 6 ($0.13).
It was yum!
In many ways, Gokarna feels like it’s stuck in time. A time and a place where you can get a cup of ice cream for just Rs. 6, where ATMs aren’t available in every nook & corner and amenities are basic at best.
The very same reasons I seemed to love Gokarna. It may not remain like this forever, that’s for sure, but I’m sure about one thing — I’m definitely coming back!
The next day, we woke up and checked out of our rooms as we were going to be out & about until lunch. We took another small hut at Sea Rock cafe (but slightly better than the Rs. 100 one) to dump our bags — & I needed one for myself as I was going to be spending one more night here. This one cost Rs. 200 ($4). We paid the lady and then headed to town.
We took an auto (cost us Rs. 150) but we couldn’t call the guy who took us yesterday as there is no mobile network coverage on Kudle beach (Airtel and Vodafone — don’t know about the rest).
Gokarna town is a stark contrast from the popular beaches of Gokarna. Conservative, religious, predominantly-Brahmin, laid back. And lots of cows.
We got dropped near the main temple and since it didn’t look like anything we hadn’t seen before, we didn’t bother going in.
So we just walked around it and headed to the beach.
Just tried black & white on this one
You’ll find small stores selling jewelry, beads, fashion accessories and godly merchandise among a few restaurants en route to the beach.
Gokarna beach: Panorama comprised of 8 shots
This is the main beach in Gokarna and it’s quite a big stretch. It’s where the locals throng and visiting pilgrims frequent the most.
And because of that, it’s also the most trashed and crowded beach in Gokarna. We didn’t bother checking it out or walking down the stretch as it really didn’t offer anything special. So we headed back.
We had plans to rent bikes and head for Murudeshwar, which was 80kms from Gokarna but we dropped it in case we were late in getting back. All except I were returning to Bangalore that day and the bus was at 7:15pm. In case you wanted to know, the bikes cost Rs. 300 and above, depending on the kind of bike you want (or at least that’s what the renters told me.)
We roamed around town in search of ATMs.
After withdrawing money from the State Bank of India (there was also a Karnataka Bank ATM), we headed back to Kudle beach for lunch. You won’t find restaurants selling the kind of food you get at Om, Kudle, etc. in Gokarna town. Most eateries are strictly vegetarian.
Gokarna beach in the distance
Kudle beach from high above
Once we got back to our room, we checked out again. Why?
Well, there’s an old guy at Sea Rock Cafe who is always drunk and high. The previous night he was chasing a young couple and hurling abuses at them in Kannada. He chased them walking but when they stopped, the old man stopped. Basically he was drunk and was causing a ruckus. But fell short of actually hurting anyone.
Well, he did it again in the afternoon. First joking and then again hurling abuses at everyone. Then he turned his attention to us. He never touched us but we were getting very annoyed. Finally our Kannadiga friend had enough and went to complain to the lady who basically runs the place.
Instead of doing something about their old man, she instead gave our money back and told us if we wanted to leave, we could. So we did.
And then we went next door. We asked Sunset Cafe if they had a room for just me and they showed me a Rs. 250 hut. It was sooooo much better that we didn’t hesitate. We took it, dumped our bags in there and then sat at the cafe for lunch.
Sunset Cafe on Kudle beach
It was 4pm and we had plenty of time until my friends had to leave to catch their bus. So we began our long (and lazy) lunch.
Chicken sandwich, Rs. 85 (very good for the price)
As the sun moved towards us, we moved a table away from it.
Ramesh lazing while waiting for food to arriveThat’s not a grey t-shirt he’s wearing. Just sayin’.Seafood pizza, Rs. 120 (really good!)Sharing seafood pizza with hungry kitten. Hmm…
Come 6 ‘o’ clock, it was time for my friends to collect their bags and head for their buses. So I walked with them until the end of the stretch.
I guess what I liked about Gokarna best were the beaches but also, the kind of people who thronged this place. Take for example these Swiss hippies. One of them was playing a instrument called Hang. It was a unique sound produced on a steel vessel-like instrument. Check it out:
I liked it so much, I even bought the guy’s CD.
After we said our goodbyes and I walked back.
Hippies watching the sun set listening to the Hang
After sun set, I took bath in the common washrooms (as most huts don’t have an attached toilet) and watched the movie ‘City of God‘ on my laptop. (Very good movie by the way)
After that, I attempted night photography.
It was another full moon night
The hut on the right was mine. Now this is proper ‘ocean view’.
Inside my hut. So much better than Sea Rock’s huts.
Sunset Cafe is a much better deal than Sea Rock Cafe and I’m glad we shifted. I can recommend this place over Sea Rock any day!
I enjoyed my sleep a tad better than last night‘s.
The Hawa Mahal was en route to our main destination, Amer Fort — or Amber Fort as it’s popularly known.
There was an entrance fee… but I don’t remember how much it was. (Sorry, five years ago.)
We spent nearly an hour at Amer Fort before heading out.
And with that, we were done. By 5pm we were back at the hotel, freshened up, and then made our way to the wedding venue — which was a palace-turned-5-star hotel.
The wedding venue was impressive to say the least. It’s fairly obvious why Rajasthan plays host to a lot of extravagant North Indian weddings. The whole state offers palatial grandeur with many such palaces been taken over, and turned into luxury hotels. Of course, none of this comes cheap.
