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...!

Just a quick post due to pricey internet, but since we are right next to the beach, can't really complain too much about 40 rupees/hour...
We left Mysore last night, and made it to Gokarna with relative ease. Saying goodbye to all of our Indian friends was tough, and more than a bit sad, but we had a fun last night dinner, cooked by Somu, on Tuesday evening - and Somu even got real crazy and gave Luke a surprise phone call back in the States! We ate a delicious spicey veg rice, a taboo-at-Dhvanyaloka chicken dish, and drank enough Kingfisher's to get the Indians all riled up (it really doesn't take much :-). Saying goodbye to Somu was probably the hardest, since he has been so kind to us, bringing us breakfast in bed (and not just when we were sick), and always coming to see us even though he was supposed to be working... plus he rocks the most killer Geraldo hair that you've ever seen! Our friend Kumar gave us a ride to the train station, which was completely unexpected, since we weren't in the dire straits that Luke was, and he cruised up in his Ambassador car a mere 10 minutes before we were to depart.
For transit we rode an overnight, sleeper-car train from Mysore to Hubli, and then from Hubli we took 2 buses, first to Ankola, and then a short second one to Gokarna. The biggest problem was that part of the road to Ankola was under heavy construction, so for a while we were at a standstill, completely surrounded by large trucks, but since we caught an amazing amount of sleep on the train, it was really no nevermind.
Gokarna itself has one beach, and then four more to the south. Currently we are on the second beach, Kudle, which was about a 2 km walk over a headland from the main beach. Tomorrow we plan on exploring the other three beaches, Om, Half-Moon, and Paradise, and if any (or all) live up to their names, we may migrate further south, with Om sounding the most tempting since it is actually shaped like the Om symbol...
More news when it happens, thanks to ever-increasing global internet access...

The official bandh (strike) day for Karnataka state is tomorrow, so we are finishing up our marathon internet session today, but after several days of 4-5 hours uploading photos and videos, the multimedia components of our digital travelogues are mostly up-to-date. So next time you have a few hours to spare, we know a great way to spend them :-)
We are still in Mysore, we decided it was easier to remain here, with friends, than try to travel elsewhere in Karnataka to finish our uploading, plus the internet would only be slower and more expensive outside of a (relatively) major city like Mysore. We are probably completely grounded by the strike tomorrow, as in Monday, but assuming that everything is back on track for Tuesday, we will, ideally, swing by the post office quickly to unload a few kgs of America-bound boxes, before taking either a train or bus to the northwestern beach side town of Gokarna.
We have heard from a fellow American traveler that it is possible to extend your stay in India beyond the restricted maximum of 180 days consecutive (regardless of actual visa length) bu registering at a SSP (some sort of Police Superintendent), so we plan on looking into that, since it would free up our schedule somewhat considerably, if we didn't have the mandatory May 11 departure date (6 months after we arrived, back on November 11), but instead could stay as late as August 28, when our 1-year visa officially expires. We don't know how easy this actually is to accomplish, but we're going to look into it on Tuesday, though either way is fine by us, it's just nicer not to have a deadline when possible!
Tomorrow will most likely be spent reading, since even auto-rickshaw drivers and taxis will be involved in the strike, and every business we have been in/talked to is planning on being closed, so we just hope that finding food isn't too difficult, but we may stock up at dinner tonight just in case, especially since once we leave Dhvanyaloka it may be quite a while until we can take advantage of the luxury of a refrigerator and microwave! Once we mail these packages we will be down to only 2 bags, one large internal-frame pack, and one backpack, so every book we read is just that much less weight we have to lug around, so there is definitely a dual incentive to tear through our books; Anderson's parents sent us several (requested) books via Luke, so Anderson has been cruising through the Wheel Of Time series, and now that Liz is done with one of our once-many Ruskin Bond books, she is diving back into David Eddings' Belgariad series, which makes us both "high fantasy" nerds, but swords-and-sorcery worlds do make India seem just a little bit more "normal!"
Peace from Mysore - A&E