I always loved road trips. But this trip was never dreamt of. At times when you look back and realize you had just zipped through six months. Just like that. For me, this trip was just that. What started as a 4-day 1,200 km trip became a 6-month 15,000 km solo trip.
It all started with me going to Hasanur, for a yearly ritual trip with my college friends. We have been doing this for the past 15 years. Ever since we finished college in 2007. Used to be a gang of 50 but now has shrunk to 20. About 12 to 18 of us meet every year in one of the hill stations in Tamil Nadu. The plan was to attend this ritual and then return home. However, the whole thing changed. Hasanur is a forest village in the Western Ghats bordering Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. It is one of the best places to spot elephants in the wild.
We usually have a movie session. The scene usually is a few of us lying down in a bed and starting to watch. Just like how we would in our hostel days. This time it was the Tamil movie 'Vaazh' meaning 'Live'. The film is about a young IT professional, who gets tempted by his sensations which leads him to an inner search, through travel and a journey to discover his true self. All of us were so engrossed in the movie and this song played. It was a love at first sight kinda song for me and even before the song finished I had told my friends I am driving to Gokarna. The song below 👇.
I ended up spending the next 15 days in Gokarna. My longest stay in a single place until that point. While in Gokarna, I knew I was going to be on the road for a while. I knew I just had to keep going. I didn't have a plan. Although the wanting to go to Kedarnath existed, considering that I trekked Kedarnath for the previous Diwali (November 2020), I wanted to hike it again for the second time in 2021. One thing led to the other and for the next 6 months, I ended up driving in my Maruti Swift from Kanyamari to Kedarnath to Varanasi for Dev Diwali, then Nagaland for the Hornbill festival, then Shillong for Christmas, then to Majuli a river island in Assam, and a few more places. But first, let's start with Gokarna - here.