Maravanthe...

This is the first sight that caught our eye as we entered Maravathe. As seen in the picture it is a clean, isolated beach framed by gray rocks. The mere sight of it was enough of an invitation for us to jump right into the water. But we had had a long journey of 12 hours and needed our refreshments, so we headed in the opposite direction instead, towards the home-stay.

The "Sagar Kinara" beach resort: Not a resort as such, but it has around 6 - 7 rooms good enough for a pleasant stay. The rooms are unsophisticated, neat, clean and small. No A/c or generator but still it is pleasant place and an affordable one with a beautiful view of the beach from the veranda. The view is good especially in the moon light. The cost of each room comes up to Rs 500/- per day. The food is great, a typical udupi brahmin home food complete with pickle and pakodas.

The view of the beach from the resort

The Home-stay owner Mr. Srinivas (Mobile - 9448724861) is a very friendly person and took care of all our needs from the word go. He also gave us suggestions on the places in and around maravanthe that we can visit. I made the mistake of calling him "Uncle" and later in the night we all had an "entertaining" lecture on why only people above 50 must be addressed as "Uncle"and how we must not generalize the term.So thus began our "vacation" and the entry to the refreshment joint could not have been better.

A stroll by the beach:
After a short while we decided to take a stroll by the beach. We crossed the rocks lining the shore and started to take in the surroundings as we walked.

The picturesque water, white foam of the waves, broken sea shells brought ashore by the dancing waves of the sea, the feel of water and the receding sand against the back of our feet, the tiny little white crabs moving on the surface of the sand, little birds sitting on the shore as though watching a brilliant performance and flying away over the sea as we neared too close to them giving a spectacular performance themselves, the fishing boats, the coconut trees and everything around seemed picture perfect.

Maravanthe has a beautiful beach on one side of the highway and sowparnika river on the other. We walked by the beach and walked by the river and in the meantime all of us started switching over to our cranky sides. Saurabh pretended to be a ghost by a broken down, blackened house. Shashi and Deepti started posing on the bark of a tree, Chetan started taking pictures of every flower in the vicinity, for Deepti offcourse. I almost stumbled twice trying to take pictures of every thing from broken sea shells to dead trees. In one way or the other all of us were trying to do a bit of 'nortangi' in our own style. I dont remember what Prithvi was doing though. Either he is a very decent boy or I was too busy doing 'nortangi' of my own to notice what he was doing.

Without any doubt the vacation mood was sinking right into us. It must have got into our stomachs first though, as all of us were hungry at this point of time and off we went to have lunch.

Boating and the sunset:
After a hearty lunch and a quick nap, we went towards the river for a bit of boating. 30 min ride in the river was good enough where most of the time was spent in taking profile pictures of the concerned individuals :P. It was almost evening by the time we finished boating and the sun was beginning to set in the sky. As though by magic the river in front of us was transformed into pure gold and left all of us mesmerized. It also made the 650 bucks we paid for boating worthwhile.
It was time now, really time for sunset. All of us ran towards the beach and lo behold what a view it was!
Sunset happens everyday at every place, but its amazing how the experience can be so special at certain places.
A small golden orb sinking low, gloriously on the horizon, so simple yet so special...

Beauty is often perceived as that what lies in the eye of the beholder.
But sometimes both the vision and perception become mere see -through glasses, see -through glasses framing a window of the soul....
and real beauty, surpasses them both and touches the soul directly.. stirring deep emotions from within..
Perhaps that's why, we like what we see and perceive it as delight......
To cap it, the spectacle took place against the backdrop of the dazzling full moon.
It was a triple treat, sunset on river, sunset on the beach and the moon rise.

rising moon

After the sunset we started to play on the beach. The waves are high on this beach and it can be pretty dangerous so we did not go deep into the water (none of us knew swimming anyways ;)) but sat very close to the shore and let the waves catch up. The waves were hitting us and going back, and sometimes taking our stuff with it too. It took my duppatta and Deepti's rubber band. But beaches dislike slippers as Shashi found out, she lost her slippers but got it back as well :)

Soon it was dark and we had no choice but to go back. But after dinner all of us felt like going back to the beach again.

It was 9.30 in the night and the tides were really high. We sat silently watching the sea. The sea was bathed in moonlight. Above us the sky was silhouetted by stars. We could hear the sea thundering as the waves rose high and low. None of us spoke a word but simply sat there for nearly half an hour. I thought i had discovered the true meaning of so many words that day, yet there was one more left.

It was here, sitting under the stars and watching the moonlit sea that i discovered the true meaning of the another word. Another word called "Tranquility".

Next Adventure: Kodachadri...Dont miss it!

Few more photos....