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The 1800km Coastal Karnataka Roadtrip – Part 4 – Jog – Gokarna – Ponda – Palolem

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I’ve always wanted to go on long road trips, but with both Jo and me working, trying to find a contiguous block of holiday has been rather difficult. With me taking a break and Eid holiday coming during middle of the week, we got a chance to do our road trip. Part 4 continues..

With our trip almost at the halfway point, we were beginning to feel a bit bummed out that we were at the mid-point already. Then again, we reminded ourselves that we have few more days remaining and rather than looking at it as half-gone, we should look at it from still 4-more days to go approach. With this in mind, we checked out from our rooms, had breakfast and had one more glance at Jog before heading out.

We took the Gersoppa/Honnavar route and while driving, were so glad to have taken the Agumbe route while heading towards Jog. The roads were narrow, not well maintained, pothole ridden and in addition you had buses driving maniacally to avoid the potholes and it almost resulted in a big collision at one instance because the bus driver was just way too fast. Upside though, we did spot a bunch of what seemed like Grey Langurs.

Grey Langur

Soon we crossed the village of Gersoppa and passed through Sharavathi Hydroelectric Power Generating station. Not too far away from here, we spotted a rather large suspension bridge. Unfortunately the bridge was closed for painting the day we were passing through and were not able to climb/cross over to check further.

Despite this, we were happy with our little discovery and then moved towards Gokarna. While most would stop at Om Beach, we had a different plan - temple visits 😛

Seriously though, we stopped by couple of temples - Shri Mahalasa Siddhivinayak Temple near Madengeri, just about 5 kms before Gokarna (we visit temple often with my folks, decided to stop here for a bit) and then onwards Mahabaleshvar Temple. Post this, we stopped for lunch and then headed towards Goa. Couple of hours later, we had just crossed the Goa border. After paying ₹250 as the entrance fee, we stopped by our ‘usual’ IOCL petrol bunk for filling up(and hey with fuel being about ₹10 cheaper, why not make use of this?)

While Goa is known to many as the beach state, for us Konkanas, it’s the temple state. There are a lot of temples especially around Ponda area which are Kuldevta for us Konkanas and as such, most Goa visits are predominantly temple visits. So when we mention that we go to Goa for temple visits.. the reactions we see from people are amusing. So when we were close to Goa border, we were wondering whether to check-in to our hotel first or head over to the temples and then come back. When we saw that the temples were about 50km further from our hotel in Palolem, we decided to pay a visit to the temples and then head back and chill in Palolem area.

First stop was Shri Mahalasa Narayani temple, Kuldevi for my family side

Mahalasa Temple Main Gate
Mahalasa Temple Inside Hall
Mahalasa Temple surrounding walkway
Mahalasa Temple corridors

After a short time here, we headed for Shri Ramnath temple which is Jo’s family’s Kuldevtha.

Ramnathi Temple Main Entrance

Ramnathi Temple Main Entrance

Ramnathi Temple

Ramnathi Temple

By the time we were done with the temple visits, it was close to 6:00pm and it’d take us another hour and half to get back, so we decided to head back to Palolem. Finding out where Castle House, our hotel was a bit tricky as the road was not lit and it was off the main road but with a bit of glancing into (slight) darkness and around, we finally reached our destination

Castle House

Facts of the day #

  • Distance travelled ~320km (I didn’t record the day’s ending odometer)
  • There’s a nice Cafe Coffee Day and Kamat Upachar near Baleguli, just next to an Indian Oil Petrol Pump. If you’re feeling sleepy(as I was) this should give you a nice boost 🙂
  • The road from Honnavar to Kumta is quite bumpy due to the 4-lane construction. Don’t speed too much, else you’ll be feeling those bumps

Previously #

  • The 1800km Coastal Karnataka Roadtrip – Part 1 – Bangalore - Mangalore
  • The 1800km Coastal Karnataka Roadtrip – Part 2 – Mangalore – Kaup - Udupi - Malpe
  • The 1800km Coastal Karnataka Roadtrip – Part 3 - Malpe - Kavimane - Jog