The darkest hour is just before dawn

India is a dark, dark country. At night I mean. Even in the cities you often get large stretches of road that have no lighting at all save the odd small fire that people huddle around. If the cities are dark imagine what the top of a hill would look like in the middle of nowhere at 10pm. And that was our first experience of Gokarna. We got off the train at a station called Gokarna Road. They couldn’t bring themselves to call it Gokarna station because it is nine kilometers from the town. And our destination wasn’t even the town but a beach further away. This meant that the rickshaw driver brought us through the darkest roads known to man. To call them roads is to be extraordinarily generous as we bounced and hammered our way over rocks and ditches. Our backpacks were on the roof of the rickshaw loosely hanging on with some knots and a lot of good will. The excited conversation between my newfie and myself got quieter and quieter the further into the darkness we drove. I had visions of our bodies being found months later at the bottom of a cliff somewhere. We had an idea that the place was sort of remote and perhaps not a sprawling metropolis but we hadn’t seen a single house or car for a good twenty minutes.

We came to a stop in front of a sign for our guesthouse just before I reached for my pocket knife in pure terror. Full of the joys that only someone who has survived a scare can feel we bounded into the reception and announced our triumphant arrival. Unfortunately the enthusiasm was one sided and the manager claimed not to have heard of us or our booking that we had confirmed a week before. After a lot of heated discussion, disbelief and desperation they said they had only one last-resort room left and it was all they could offer. They showed us to it and the heated discussion, disbelief and desperation grew to new levels. It was a tiny room consisting of a dirty bed and a mosquito net. And nothing else. There was hardly room for our bags let alone their two tired and emotional owners. We sat down in their restaurant with our moods at rock bottom and ordered two beers to soften the blow. We had come all this way to spend some time relaxing on the beach and here we were in mosquito net hell!

After about half a bottle of beer had been consumed the manager came back and informed us that inexplicably a luxury room was now available. Well that’s wonderful we gushed and smiled at him instantly forgetting that mere minutes ago he was our least favourite person in the world. By the time we had finished the second half of the beer we had an ensuite room with balcony. The balcony alone was bigger than the other room.

Full of relief we wandered off to walk the beach in the dark and spotted a brightly lit hut further up. We sat down with renewed love of India, ordered another beer and eased ourselves into the relaxed pace that’s required at the beach. Four lovely days of exotic beach life ahead is just what’s needed.