Gokarna to South Goa

I woke and quickly checked the train times from Gokarna. For some reason, the train was actually an hour earlier than we thought it was so it wasn’t quite the chilled wake-up, pack-up and leave we had planned but we packed our stuff up and checked-out the place, paying the 800 rupees we owed for the accommodation...they didn’t realise we forgot to pay for lunch yesterday so we got away with that one! We walked over to Gokarna town and haggled a TukTuk to the train station for 180. We got to the train station bought our tickets for 35rupees and waited for the train to come...it was obviously an hour late but it eventually turned up. We each bought samosas on the train and watched the world go by as we entered the state of Goa.

After the 2 hour train journey we arrive at Cancona station where we would be getting off to go to Patnem, South Goa. We decided to walk to the hostel as it was only a 3km walk, but it was boiling hot and we regretted it by the time we got to our hostel, Base hostel. It was a small hostel, but very nice, hidden away from the main road with hammocks and a chill out area outside. We got into our room, used the shower (unfortunately it was cold) and chilled on the extremely comfortable beds for a little while where I sent my dad a happy birthday text.

After a little while we decided to go and check out Patnem beach. We had decided to stay in Patnem, instead of its busier neighbour Palolem as we had heard that Palolem was quite busy and developed, whereas Patnem was more quiet and less commercial. When we got to the beach, we were both surprised at actually how it was still quite resorty. There were quite a lot of people, overpriced restaurants and resorts but the beach was beautiful nonetheless and the water was perfect after our morning on the sweaty train. We had a nice short walk along the beach, and tried to get to another beach, but the tide was too high. We chilled out for a while with the occasional swim in the sea to cool ourselves down (it was very hot today) before we decided it we’d had enough sun for the day.

We went back to the room for showers and got dressed to go out and get some dinner. We both actually made an effort tonight, both wearing deodorant, aftershave and a shirt! We actually felt clean and western again, which was quite nice. We watched the sunset at Patnem beach, watching people playing around with their frisbees and then we went to Woodo cafe, a Nepalese restaurant that we had checked out earlier on, for some dinner. We ordered a Thali each which was amazing, I even upgraded to the “special Thali” where you got a paneer curry included. My favourite curry was the carrot curry they had included, it was amazing and it’s safe to say there wasn’t any waste on our plates...in fact after food we ordered veg and cheese momos... this was going to decide if we went to Nepal or not, if these momos were good we would go, if not we would keep our flights to Myanmar. The momos came and they were amazing! We are going to Nepal!!

After food, we made our way back to the hostel, chilled out and then got into our comfy beds to get some sleep!Read more