After spending roughly 12 hours a day in office this week, the code finally went live and one more rough week just ended for us all.
It was a long weekend and we all were sitting at our favourite juice corner in R.T. nagar randomly throwing names of the places around Bangalore where we should head to spend the coming weekend, and I suggested “Gokarna”, and within next 15 minutes we booked our ride and in two hours, 12 of us were in a tempo traveller travelling to the west coast.
The place is about 500 kms from Bangalore and it would take the entire night and even the first half of the next day to reach Gokarna.
But 50 kms from Bangalore, the driver of our tempo traveller started acting weird, he already took 3 breaks and smoked 3 cigarettes and had like 4-5 cups of tea wherever he could find a tea stall. I was sitting right next to him on the very first seat, so I could sense his condition, I asked him for like 10 times if he was feeling sleepy, but every time he replied “no sir, I am fine.” And then he dozed off, but luckily for us, our vehicle wasn’t speeding.
I jumped and grabbed the steering which was slowly drifting to right. By then he also came to his senses, but he knew what went wrong, so this time he didn’t try to convince me, he simply got up and lied down on the floor of the mini bus.
My friend sat on my seat and I took the steering, that was the first time I drove a big vehicle.
It was then I noticed how black was the night, the highway was empty and there wasn’t a single star shinning, probably because of the clouds.
The only thing which was shinning were the reflectors on the tree trunks, and to be honest, it was just because of them that I could figure out which way was the road turning, and mind you, that was the ghat region and with a dark night like that and those road curves going up and down, right and left on every turn, I am thankful that our driver slept on the straight road and not on those curves.
I drove the whole night listening to my rock songs and when everyone woke up, I was sipping my morning tea over-looking the famous jog falls experiencing the worst cramp in my left calf muscle.
It was our driver who got up first. He came running towards me saying how sorry he is for whatever happened, but to be honest I wasn’t angry over him because I just had the most memorable drive of my life.
“Next time, just tell the truth, rather than risking 12 lives” I said to him.
We reached Gokarna at 2pm, and as I could barely walk because of that severe cramp, my friends literally carried me down to the beach, after much loitering around, we got 5 rooms for us, now the question was who will get the rooms, so I along with one of my friend volunteered to sleep on the beach.
The shack we stayed in had these Nepalese guys who cooked the best continental I ever tasted in my life, we tasted almost every dish they had on their menu, and except prawns fry, everything else was stupendous. They even had beer, mocktails and cocktails.
The beach was not too clean and the water was salty, but that didn’t stop us playing in the water.
That night me and my friend slept on a mat on the beach smoking a flavoured hookah which my friend bought with him.
The night in itself was quite eventful.
At first I felt someone trying to get into my blanket, when I opened my eyes it was some drunk guy who desperately wanted to sleep, but his friends just took him away apologising to me for his behaviour.
Then second time, it guess it was early in the morning around 3:30am or may be 4:00 am when I heard few sound “hu..hu..hu!! heya.. heya.. heya!” I woke up and saw my friend sitting next to me looking at the sea. There were 4-5 people who appeared to be dancing right next to the water, it took us a while to notice that they were fishermen pulling their net.
So we slept again.
It was the third time when I felt someone’s giving me a wet kiss on my cheeks. Now imagine you open your eyes and you see a bull’s face 5 inches from you. I almost shit my pants there.
So anyways on the second day, after having our breakfast, we went for a small trek to paradise beach, passing through half-moon beach.
Paradise beach is one another beautiful beach to swim, provided if you are a good swimmer. The beach had 4-5 shacks offering fantastic food, and of course beer.
The trek took us one and half hour, but it was well worth.
We spent the afternoon there gorging on those Russian salads, calzones, pastas and what not...
At 4 pm we took a boat back to om beach, and saw a pair of dolphins swimming next to our boat.
That evening we swam for hours and then drank like crazy because we knew that next day we had to go back to that 4x4 cubicle.
But all in all that was certainly the best trip I ever had.
and somehow I have a feeling that this year will also end on that same beach... ...
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