Along the coast...

The only sign of activity...

A late morning's start and i was headed toward the Tagore beach. Why? The low tide was early in the morning, and there's little to see once the tide closes in. Birds of the shore and sea gulls take to wing once the water comes inland.

No, i'm not oyster but i know just what you're talking about!

It wasn't all of a damper as i later found out. The sands are clean of pollution and so's the water. The shore was littered with sea shells of all shapes and sizes. In this pile, i chanced upon an oyster's shell. It looks so much like a piece of rock and ugly at the least so to say. The only other people around were fishermen netting and gutting the day's catch. What was the catch? Mackerel! A boat full of mackerel.

Oh so many fish!

Blue Tailed Bee Eaters and a lone White Bellied Sea Eagle kept me good company and offered some good photographs :)

Lunch this time was at a more traditional place, Svetha Lunch Home, apparently rated by NDTV too! The food here was awesome and the damage to the wallet was almost nothing! The Mackerel curry here was fabulously cooked in kokum and added a tinge of tang to the fish :)

Only when it was well after noon did the guy at the reception offer me a suggestion. "Saar, why didn't you go to Gokarna?"

White Bellied Sea Eagle

"Gokarna? How far is it from here?"

"1.5 - 2 hours drive saar. All buses headed to Ankola or Kumta will drop you there saar. You should have gone there saar. Nothing to see in Karwar, very small place this Karwar..."

"And why didn't this brilliant suggestion come to you in the morning my good friend? You're telling this now when i have just a few hours for my return journey...." i was getting angry!

I'd wasted an hour in the morning trying to get a bus headed toward Devbagh island. The other places around were Majali and Kodi Bagh. The bus conductors differed in opinion among themselves. One said the bus's due in a few minutes, the other quipped its gone and won't be expected for another hour, the third had no clue about it. All the while, Ankola and Kumta buses were milling around. (I have every right to procrastinate now!)

"Never mind saar, get a rickshaw and head to Kodi Bagh. You'll see something there!" the guy at the reception counter was trying to make up for my wasted time...

Kodi Bagh it is then! Forty rupees of damage and a twenty minute ride through rural Karwar found me staring at an island in the sea. Around me was a crane and a few not so good looking people who were looking at my camera kit.

Karwar's one of those places where old phased out products still live. One of the few such were Gold Spot, Dukes, Sosyo and a strange mango drink which i had. The mango drink turne d out to be synthetic orange with soda fizz. Nevertheless, the thirst was quenched and i headed out toward Sadashivgadh, a fort looming on a hill before me.

This place should not be confused with a village with the same name, and the locals did just that. They insisted there's nothing on the hill and Sadashivgadh was 2 kilometers down the road. Some walking on tarmac on a busy Goa-Karnataka highway was fun for a while and soon got boring. Climb the hill, better sport.

Standing on the side of the road, standing on one leg and shaking the other like every other eccentric someplace in India is bound to do, i was removing some stones which'd gone into my shoe. The locals are a friendly lot, and one fellow on a bike was so enthusiastic as to wildly guesture and question what was i doing??? Never mind...

The hill had a vantage point and some stone benches. A short while at the place yielded some birds of prey including yet another White Bellied Sea Eagle!

The Kali river met the sea here, and the divide was very clear between saline and freshwater. There's nothing cohesive about this collusion, and can be termed as being clubbed together forcibly more than anything else.

Kali meets the sea...

Evening cometh, and i bid adieu to Karwar. The bus conductor calls "station, station" and "Shirsur". Might be Karwar station for all you know. The ride wound its way through village first and then forest, and i was doubting Murphy yet again. Might end up at some forest station where only goods trains stopped occasionally :P

It turned out to be Karwar station! And after much trial and tribulationv minus great discomfitures and misadventures which could have beset me, a lone backpacker, my adventures were coming to an end. Friends, family and everyone else's wishes and favours yielded fruit and i headed back home safely, richer in experience and photographs of the Western ghat's wildlife.

A desire to break free from societal shackles and get in touch with the true self, that was the purpose of this adventure. In that measure, it has more than succeeded. There's more to life than try and create human relations that cannot be sustained.

Mortal fears, fear of strangers, getting robbed, mugged and killed, all of them left behind and the journey in search of the Truth began. Call it whatever you want but by the Grace of Truth itself, i came out unscathed.

Encounters with Truth leave behind subtle but permanent marks on the mind, and before long, i'll hit the road yet again, on yet another adventure!

Thanks for coming along with me on this journey, i've relived the experience all over again. Adieu, until we meet againm another place, another adventure...