Gokarna India map. Gokarna state of Karnataka - how to get there, where to stay, what to do, what to see, why to go
Talking about beach holiday in India, only Goa comes to everyone's mind! The most advanced travelers remember Kerala. But there's one more thing amazing place- a town that can combine all the flavor of India and beautiful beaches.
– small town in Karnataka state. It is easy to visit for all Goa holiday lovers as it is very easy to get to. Why is it so interesting?
This city is a major religious center of Hindus, so thousands of pilgrims come here. Especially large cluster people are observed on major Hindu holidays, which occur very often. "" translated from Sanskrit means "cow's ear", according to legend, it was in this place that Shiva 
appeared from the ear of the goddess Prithivi, who turned into a cow.
is the second most popular place in Karnataka after ancient city Hampi. A few years ago it was almost impossible to find white tourist. But this is a great opportunity to break away from the hustle and bustle of Goa and get acquainted with part of the real, non-Portuguese India. Today the situation is changing and everything more people go to Gokarna to enjoy the beautiful beaches and see one of the centers of the Hindu religion.
Outside of Goa, it is worth remembering that India is a very religious and conservative country; there is no need to walk around Gokarna and other Indian cities in revealing clothes and behave provocatively. This is a completely different kind of vacation. In Gokarna you can find a yoga or Sanskrit teacher, chat with local residents and see how people live at the temples.
How to get there?
Can become a transit point for those moving to or from Hampi. From Hampi to Gokarna there is a slipper bus, a bus with lie-flat seats, like a train, it goes at night, so the road is easy and calm.
By bus. The easiest way to get to Gokarna will be for vacationers on the southern Goa beaches. From Palolem, Colva, Cavelossim or Benolim you need to get to Karwar bus station. This can be done by local bus or taxi. Karwar is closest to Palolem. From Karwar you need to take a bus to Ankola, and from Ankola to Gokarna.
Traveling by bus is not at all difficult; they all arrive at the same bus station (bus station) and you just need to change trains. Moreover, buses run frequently, so you won’t have to wait long. The ticket can be purchased either at the window at the station or on the bus itself from the conductor.
For vacationers in north Goa, the journey will be longer. First you need to get to the main thing southern city- Margao. It is he who is the starting point of everything south direction, Margao has a large bus station and a railway station, from which you can get anywhere. There is a direct bus from Margao to Karwar, so the further path is the same as in the previous option. This is what the route looks like for those traveling from the north of Goa: village in the north - Mapsa - Panjim - Margao - Karwar - Ankola - . This path is quite long and tiring; you can spend almost the whole day on it.
By train. Trains run from the station in Margao and go to the station near Gokarna, from where you will need to take a taxi to get to the town itself.
The easiest and fastest way to reach Gokarna directly is by taxi. But it will cost more than one thousand rupees. And traveling by local transport, where tickets cost from 5 rupees per trip, will be cheaper and will be remembered forever.
Where to stay
There is not as much housing in Gokarna itself as in Goa, but it is there. You need to know in advance whether there is any religious holiday on the day of arrival; if so, this will significantly complicate the search for a place to stay. Housing prices are low - from 200 rupees per night. There are several hotels, they are more expensive. Guesthouse rooms are standard - bed, shower, toilet, fan. It is better to settle closer to the city center.
There are several cafes in the city for local, familiar Goan restaurants with a huge selection of dishes cannot be found here. The food is mostly vegetarian, spicy and little known to the mass tourist.
Food prices are very low.
– a very small town! There is a bus station, the main temple (tourists are not allowed there, but you can see from the outside), a shopping street, several cafes and small houses local residents. Tourists come here for the beaches, viewing Gokarna as a transit point. Here you can pleasantly spend a couple of days, immersing yourself in the atmosphere of Indian life and spirituality. And then head to the beaches of Gokarna.
Om Beach
You can get to Om Beach by rickshaw, it's not far. Or you can walk. Most nearest beach Kudli Beach - the road to it begins immediately behind the main Gokarna temple (there are signs). Kudli Beach is a wide and long beach, but mostly locals relax on it. All tourists head to the following 3 beaches: Om Beach, Half Moon Beach and Paradise Beach.
The very first and closest is Om Beach, it was named so because of its shape, reminiscent of the “Om” sign. And all the names of cafes and guesthouses located on the beach have “Om” in their names. This is the largest and most populated of all three beaches. If you get there by rickshaw, he will drop you off at a small platform, from which, going down the stairs, you can get to the beach itself. That's why there are the most people there. There are guesthouses on the beach - the simplest ones, for unpretentious travelers. Most of them are frail bamboo huts with outdoor facilities. There is no need to ask about hot water; electricity is intermittent. Each guesthouse has its own cafe. The prices are quite reasonable, many menu items are cheaper than in Goa, and there is more choice than in the city. There are dishes familiar to Europeans here - soups, sandwiches, salads. It’s worth mentioning right away about alcohol in Gokarna. Since the city is sacred, alcohol is difficult to obtain. As you know, Goa is the only state where alcohol is not taxed. There are no such prices as in Goa anywhere else in India. And in general, you won’t find so many alcohol stores anywhere. In Karnataka you can find 1-2 bars per village. Likewise, in Gokarna, alcohol is not sold openly on the beaches, and if it is available in cafes, you must be prepared for the price to be higher than in free Goa.
The beach itself is good, there are rocks, the nature is beautiful. The sand is coarse and yellow. There are many locals on the beach who are not yet so spoiled by white-skinned bathers and are not shy about looking at them. You must be prepared for the fact that you can become the object of close attention and a photo shoot. There is no entertainment, nowhere to go, and, of course, no parties. European youth, Rastafarians, and a new generation of hippies come to these places. During the day, people lounge on the beach, sit against fishing boats, play with puppies, read, or play Frisbee. In the evenings they light fires and sing songs with a guitar. The holiday is absolutely relaxed and leisurely; people rarely stay here for long.
Half Moon Beach
The beaches following Om Beach can be reached on foot, or you can swim by fishing boat. The walking path is quite long and difficult, but very impressive and picturesque! The road passes over rocky peaks and through the jungle. There are stunning views from the heights. It is best to go early in the morning, because not everyone can withstand such a path in the heat during the day. Half Moon Beach is a small beach with several cafes and guesthouses, literally a couple of them. There you can rest, swim or drink something. Most travelers are interested in Paradise Beach.
In India, every second beach is called Paradise. The beach at Gokarna is more like this paradise. It is quite large, but smaller than Om Beach. There are cafes and bamboo huts for overnight stays on the beach. The electricity situation here is even worse. People come here only for relaxation. The atmosphere is so relaxing that you can lie in a hammock or fishing boat all day without noticing how time flies. At the peak of the heat, people gather in a few cafes (there are 2-3 of them on the beach) and chat, drink juices, and read books. In the evening you can take a fishing boat and sail back to Om Beach.
While in Gokarna, you can visit another important religious place - the city of Murudeshwar, which houses the largest statue of Shiva in the world, 37 meters high. You can get there by taxi (the ride takes about 2 hours) or by bus with transfers. A common option is to take a taxi for the whole day and see Murudeshwar and its surroundings, you can also stop by the Jog Falls.
So, upon arrival in Murudeshwar, you can take a short walk in the area of the main attraction. There is a beach nearby, and even small park attractions (very specific). On the beach you can eat ice cream and take pictures. Again, you need to be prepared for a lot of attention from the locals. There are always a lot of people in this part of Murudeshwar, everyone will want to take a photo or shake hands with a white person. There are also a lot of beggars in these places.
The main attractions of Murudeshwar are the statue of Shiva and the gopuram tower - the gateway to the main temple. The statue itself is completely new - it was built in 2002, but the temple was erected back in 1542. Before entering the gopuram, you must take off your shoes; people only walk barefoot throughout the entire temple (as in any Hindu temple). Inside the tower there is an elevator where you can go to the very top and explore all the surroundings from the observation deck, which is simply the top floor of the tower, it is completely closed, but the view is very beautiful.
Having gone downstairs, you can go into the temple itself, there are usually a lot of people there, everyone goes through traditional rituals, tourists are allowed to visit them. You can make a small monetary offering and receive the traditional blessing of a red dot on your forehead.
And finally, the statue of Shiva itself. It stands on a small hill with stairs leading up it. You will also have to walk around the statue barefoot. Below Shiva there is a cave, a closed corridor in which scenes of important religious subjects are depicted. All of them are accompanied by English comments.
Murudeshwar is a very small town, but you can find accommodation and cafes there too. There are several quite decent guesthouses on the main street, starting from 300 rupees. In restaurants wide choice dishes, prices are low.
And its surroundings are worth leaving serene Goa for a couple of days and plunging into the atmosphere of real India.
ANDinformation kindly provided
From Goa to Gokarna, a city in the neighboring state of Karnataka, we took a somewhat unusual route. With the help of the old manager of Morjim Sunset Guesthouse, we planned the next route to Gokarna: we took a taxi to the town of Margao, from where there was a direct bus to Gokarna, and by bus we had to get to the town, which was highly recommended to us by friends of friends. For a taxi we paid 400 rupees per person and drove for one hour, for a bus we paid 118 rupees and trudged along bumpy and narrow roads for another 4 hours. The choice of the bus route was dictated by issues of economy - taxi drivers charged exorbitant prices for crossing state lines.
Gokarna was the only destination where we didn't book a hotel even at the last minute. The reason for such self-confident laxity was banal - there was simply not a single hotel or guesthouse in Gokarna on booking.com.
Upon arrival, we checked into the first guesthouse we came across - not luxurious, but not exactly horror-horror, and the next day we set off to look for normal accommodation for the remaining three days in holy city state of Karnataka.
We were lucky and found accommodation close to the beach and restaurant. Unfortunately for us, the Nimmu House guesthouse is mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide, so the owner has long since doubled the prices listed there. But the restaurant next door was indecent low prices, huge menu and very funny waitresses.
Gokarna Beach deserves a separate story about it. It was here that we saw, so to speak, the classic beach of India: a large sandy beach, cows, dogs, garbage from the sea and garbage from the city, vacationing Indians and rare white tourists. To find a piece of the beach where it doesn’t stink, you have to try really hard. To swim, we walked about three hundred meters away from the main entrance to the beach. But within fifteen minutes, groups of two or three Indians were heading our way, unobtrusively walking back and forth or simply hiding behind the boat on the shore to look at the undressed white women. Indian women, like Arab women, bathe in clothes.
Of course, this can hardly be called swimming. The waves near the shore cover you completely and drag you into the sea. If you go into the water above your hip, there is a high risk of not returning to shore. The power of water is indescribable. Shy Indians generally splash only in shallow water, where the water is ankle-deep, but we went deeper to plunge into the wave, but without fanaticism, so as not to be dragged away.
Efim and I also went to the neighboring beach, Kudle Beach, to admire its even greater beauty and be horrified by the even greater amount of garbage.
It makes sense to visit Karnataka for a long time. Five national parks, twenty-five nature reserves, of which five are bird reserves, many temples, palaces and statues attract tourists both from India itself and from abroad. Unfortunately, we managed to capture all this rich diversity only from the corner of our ears and eyes. On the morning of the second day in Gokarna, we left by taxi along the waterfalls route - a large statue of Shiva. On famous waterfalls Jog Falls can also be reached by bus, but watching the next round of serpentine roads, I looked at the buses with a feeling of slight anxiety: the road is narrow, difficult to travel, and it’s easier to endure an hour in a taxi than a couple of hours on a mountain serpentine road in a cramped bus. Despite the fact that technically we arrived at the end of the monsoon season and could count on really powerful flows of water, the four branches of the Shiravati River did not really want to impress anyone. However, during the tourist season, which starts in October, pitiful streams will remain on the rock walls. Good impression produced the Indian authorities' approach to organizing the review process. This is not just some observation deck, but a whole park with stairs, fences and restaurants. But it’s true, to our regret, the staircase to the foot of the waterfall was closed.
Having taken a dizzying taxi ride to the foot of the mountain, we drove towards the largest statue of Shiva, built in the early 2000s. And they almost suffocated.
If we thought that we were already accustomed to the eternal stench of India, then we were deeply mistaken. After an hour and a half of repeated patches of unbearable rotten smell, we came to the conclusion that the problem was, after all, some kind of fertilizer plant and the trucks that transport rotten raw materials to this plant. And at the entrance to temple complex in Murudeshwar I had to stop breathing altogether and make short runs to get to the entrance. The smell of rotten fish was unbearably beautiful.
The entrance to the temple itself was closed, but in our tourist opinion this was not a big deal. The gopuram - the tower above the gate - 75 meters high, satisfied the craving for beautiful Indian architecture. True, I had to take off my slippers in order to trample the dusty floor around this very gopuram together with all the Hindus. In India, by the way, shoes are not allowed in most temples. You should have seen the torment of our friends about walking or not walking barefoot on the floor along with all the Hindus!
To get to the huge statue of Shiva, slippers were found and put on. The sun was already mercilessly hot and I remembered with longing the gloomy, but simply warm Goa.
I cannot speak for all Hindus, but the joy with which they celebrate religious holidays, I think, speaks in favor of the fact that Hindus are a religious people. They were lucky: no one canceled Shiva and Ganesha for them. These deities were always with them. And around the statue in Murdeshwar there were many local tourists who came to see their shrines. We also walked around the statue, marveled at its size, and fought off beggars and intrusive sellers.
On way back to Gokarna enjoyed the views tropical forests with palm trees and practiced again long delays breath as the taxi drove behind trucks with rotten fish.
But, as they say, there was a holiday on our street. The truck with cookies did not overturn, but due to its proximity to the beach, we were repeatedly able to observe the solemn processions of carrying Ganesha statues into the sea. We walked last days big holiday - Ganesha festival. In Goa, the hotel manager invited us to his house to celebrate the beginning of the holiday, and in Karnataka we already saw the end of the festival. Moreover, if on the penultimate day it was still somehow quiet, then on the last night of the festival we heard very loud music and Efim, unable to bear it, ran to look. On the shore, Hindus performed a fire show in a circle of drummers, and the statue of Ganesha, brought on a trailer, was the largest and most beautiful of all those that we had seen in the previous days.
And the next day we had a long journey back home. We have selected flights from Goa airport to Delhi in such a way as not to enter the bustle of the Indian capital, but after waiting 3-4 hours in the terminal, simply transfer to a plane to Moscow. From Gokarna we took a taxi to Dabolim airport in Goa. We reached Delhi without incident, but with a slight delay. There, we spent a long time translating ticket printouts from Russian to the security guard using our fingers (you can’t enter the terminal if you don’t have a ticket), stood in several queues, and barely had time to grab a bite to eat and run into a store before departure.
We flew the way I like: on a half-empty plane. After sleeping for most of the flight on empty seats in a wide row, we had breakfast with coffee and cookies and landed safely in early morning Moscow. The customs officer at passport control looked at Efim’s passport and at Efim himself for a long time. Then he looked at his passport again. Having received the answer that we were from India, he aptly noted that those who fly there are like those in the passport photo (clean-shaven), and they return like Efim now - overgrown to the very eyebrows.
And then there were meat burgers in FARSH and delicious coffee, conversations with friends and a flight to Dahab.
In Dahab we were met with heat.
Gokarna is a small town in India, but nevertheless, it is one of the sacred places. In Gokarna, the population lives its own measured life and has nothing to do with tourists. These people are not as spoiled by money as in Goa and they are not as modern. Many here consider it an honor to die with dignity, so a crematorium was built in Gokarna, not far from the temples.
Gokarna
Gokarna translates to "cow's ear". Which in principle is not surprising, given the presence of cows on every meter. There are hundreds of times more of them in Gokarna than in .
Gokarna, India, it's ok 
Gokarna street photo 
People feed cows, but I have never seen such skinny cows as in India.
Looking for food
One bull even tried to kick us playfully, and we ran away from him.
In addition to cows and praying people in Gokarna, we noticed some tall Buddhist religious thing in the middle of the street, from which parts of it periodically fell off. They didn't come close to her.
Where can I order a transfer from the airport?
We use the service - KiwiTaxi
We ordered a taxi online and paid by card. We were met at the airport with a sign with our name on it. We were taken to the hotel in a comfortable car. You've already talked about your experience in this article.
Since time immemorial, in India there was a tradition of throwing yourself under the heavy wheels of chariots, supposedly in order to immediately get out of the wheel of rebirth. In our time, this tradition has exhausted itself. It's for the better. In general, Gokarna is the place where Goa ends and real India begins.
Gokarna is inferior in cleanliness to Goa 
Graffiti
And it is better for an unprepared tourist not to venture into the depths of India. The Hindus have their own laws that cannot be understood by a person of a European mindset. In Gokarna you are already accustomed to seeing visitors, but here you can already see what is hidden from the eyes of the average person in Goa. As soon as we appeared in Gokarna, the looks of passers-by were ablaze with curiosity, many offered to take photos together. The feeling of being watched was still present.
We did not deliberately gather a crowd of people. The people themselves flew up and were not averse to taking pictures with us
Om Beach in Gokarna
There is no beach holiday in Gokarna, as the city beach is VERY dirty. But the nearest beach in Gokarna is Om Beach, so named because of the shape of the shore that resembles the Hindu sacred sign of Om. We went down and walked along the wild and dirty beach, as it was that day, and didn’t even want to swim, although we took our swimsuits with us. There is no need to go specifically to Om Beach.
I'm slowly but surely killing a huge production. I put thousands and thousands of people out of work, every day. Where new institutions could be opened, something else will be built. Where giant workshops could send out tons of products per hour, nothing will be produced. Huge fields will be abandoned and overgrown with wild bushes, centuries-old traditions, secrets and recipes will flow into oblivion. The old masters will no longer pass on their experience, because there is no point in it when they are not paid for it... ...
Destroyer
Judging by the name of the airline, flights must be made, at a minimum, between all the hero cities of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus: we must not forget about St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Odessa, Kyiv, Novorossiysk.
Ticket sales to Stalingrad have already started, and the company is preparing to make its first flight in early December. In Tula, Murmansk, Smolensk, Minsk and Brest there also live a large percentage of the population who need budget options flight to Moscow and other Russian cities.
About the first Russian low-cost airline "Pobeda"
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Until we moved from thoughts about new points to reality, everything was very naive and the process of working on the beach was not fully understood. Like kids, we learn our first steps in business. All past experiences seem like time spent in another life. As young creatures, we fall, get up again and move forward to learn, take the best from what we do and grow.
First steps
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Where to dine in Shenzhen? - buffet at the InterContinental Shenzhen
I only spent the night at Pensione Ottaviano. The location was more than good, and the price for such convenience was very low. Everything was fine there, except that they tried to fool me during check-in. While in Rome, I looked on Hostelworld to see what places there were in this hostel. When I came and asked directly about a free bed, they overcharged me, as if there was the last expensive room and the last bed left. I asked for...
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What do they eat in China and how much does it cost?
Residents of the provinces of Guangdong, Hainan, Yunnan, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, as well as Jiangxi and Fujian can contact the Russian consulate in Guangzhou. The Consulate General of Russia in Guangzhou is located at: Zhujiang Xincheng, 3 Linjiang Dadao, 26A Development Center; Phone: +86 2085185001. Address for taxi drivers: 珠江新城临江大道3号发展中心26楼A单元俄罗斯总领事馆. Nearest metro station on line 3: Zhujiang New Town, exit B1. Contact email: [email protected].
Which provinces are assigned to the Russian Consulate General in Guangzhou?
Dumplings in northeast China are good, and Qinhuangdao is no exception. The bao zi were also delicious there, almost like on the corner, not far from our house in Baoding. Small, juicy, ten pieces at a time go very well. Vinegar and lajiao complete this delicious combination. The Chinese have been eating this for many centuries, nothing extra, no experiments - delicious.
How are the dumplings and baozi in Qinhuangdao?
