Our final days by the beach are upon us, unfortunately, as we will be departing Gokarna to head to Hampi this coming Monday. Initially we were thinking today, as in Friday, but we felt that we needed a couple more days of lounging before we begin our next month or two of non-stop traveling. Gokarna has been a lot of fun, our next door neighbors are two couples from Israel, so we've been hanging out with them a lot - going to dinner, playing Uval (a card game), and playing volleyball every afternoon for the last week. The volleyball has been lively and entertaining, as there is a wide variety of non-skilled players, so some pretty crazy points and volleys happen, amongst the multitude of missed shots and net hits. Last Sunday we went to a festival for Shiva's birthday that was held in the village of Gokarna. It was really interesting to participate in, since they had two 30-40 meter tall wooden carts, decorated with flowers and flags, that everyone was throwing bananas at, trying to get them into a hole where a bunch of kids were. At the same time though, a more serious religious ceremony was occuring, with a small group of musicians, plus priests with a torch and coconut offerings, wandering around the main cart, and then occasionally climbing up the large wooden ladder, which resulted in them getting pelted by a barrage of bananas! It was considered good luck to get a banana into the center of the cart, so we bought some bananas and started chucking them in along with everyone else, and fortunately we both got one in, reasonably fast, so our luck is apparently still holding!
Gokarna is a nice beach to relax at, though almost too quiet for our tastes, since the nightly volleyball game is about as hectic as things get, but our 100 rupee/night room is nice, with an-almost ocean view, and all the people that we have met here are very nice and friendly, so all and all we have absolutely no complaints... except that we still haven't ventured further down to the other beaches yet, which we have been saying we would do all week now, but maybe today will be the day - to be decided after breakfast...!