After less than 24 hours in the town I decided to hit the beaches. I got a rickshaw the short distance to Om beach, so called because it's shaped like the '3' bit in an Om.
See what they did there?
I walked up and down it in the sweltering heat, asking each restaurant/cafe if they had any rooms free. Most were booked and the ones that were free looked pretty grim. I've seen more comfortable jail cells (on TV...)
So I climbed back up the headland and got another rickshaw to Kudle beach. After more rejections, I walked into the last guesthouse on the beach who had one room left. I took it, dumped my stuff and jumped in the sea. Finally.
The rest of yesterday was spent lazing around, drinking Sprite, eating Lafa, chatting to the English family who own the guesthouse and generally not doing very much. That's what I'm here for! In the evening the guesthouse put on a movie night - Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in Knight & Day, an overblown, amusing action film. It was followed by a couple of episodes of Family Guy. I felt like I'd picked a good place to stay. Great curry too!
I'm staying in a fairly rudimentary concrete room which thankfully has a mozzie net, but also has one of those perched slatted roofs that rests on top of the walls - ie, leaving a dirty great gap where all creatures great and small can enter. At 6am this morning I was woken by something knocking my bag onto the floor from the table. I opened my eyes to see a foot-long something-or-other scrambling up my wall and into the roof. Eek!
From our brief introduction I can only describe it as a small otter... It could be some sort of marsupial perhaps:
I can confidently rule out a kangaroo, but not sure about the others.
Predictably this pathetic English city boy was a bit spooked. So I got up, had a run along the beach (amazing, as the sun was coming up on an almost-deserted curve of sand) and got some breakfast. I now have a decision to make on whether to be a man and stay there another night, or a (crest-tailed marsupial) mouse and look for something else. I think I need to probably just grow some balls and Get With The Program (as Oprah would say).
And before you say it, yes - I'm fully aware they are more scared of me than I am of them...
Aside from that little interlude, Kudle beach is a fantastic beach with a good mix of people. I think it would be sensible to chill here for another couple of days before heading inland to Hampi. So that's what I'll probably do.
See what they did there?
I walked up and down it in the sweltering heat, asking each restaurant/cafe if they had any rooms free. Most were booked and the ones that were free looked pretty grim. I've seen more comfortable jail cells (on TV...)
The rest of yesterday was spent lazing around, drinking Sprite, eating Lafa, chatting to the English family who own the guesthouse and generally not doing very much. That's what I'm here for! In the evening the guesthouse put on a movie night - Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in Knight & Day, an overblown, amusing action film. It was followed by a couple of episodes of Family Guy. I felt like I'd picked a good place to stay. Great curry too!
I'm staying in a fairly rudimentary concrete room which thankfully has a mozzie net, but also has one of those perched slatted roofs that rests on top of the walls - ie, leaving a dirty great gap where all creatures great and small can enter. At 6am this morning I was woken by something knocking my bag onto the floor from the table. I opened my eyes to see a foot-long something-or-other scrambling up my wall and into the roof. Eek!
From our brief introduction I can only describe it as a small otter... It could be some sort of marsupial perhaps:
I can confidently rule out a kangaroo, but not sure about the others.
Predictably this pathetic English city boy was a bit spooked. So I got up, had a run along the beach (amazing, as the sun was coming up on an almost-deserted curve of sand) and got some breakfast. I now have a decision to make on whether to be a man and stay there another night, or a (crest-tailed marsupial) mouse and look for something else. I think I need to probably just grow some balls and Get With The Program (as Oprah would say).
And before you say it, yes - I'm fully aware they are more scared of me than I am of them...
Aside from that little interlude, Kudle beach is a fantastic beach with a good mix of people. I think it would be sensible to chill here for another couple of days before heading inland to Hampi. So that's what I'll probably do.