About five days after our arrival at Gokarna, there was a full moon and talk of a party on Paradise Beach, just around the coast from Om. We were umming and arring about going because we would have to get the last boat therearound 6pm and our jog falls group were leaving Om at around 9pm and we wanted to say bye. In the end the group decided to go to Paradise and leave a few hours later, and so all agreed on the trip.
The beach can be reached on foot in about 40 minutes
The plan was that people staying over on the beach would use hammocks or scarves/towels to sleep on, so I packed a few for me and Ash. We also got some vodka and mixers to take with us, and Ash had decided to attempt some fishing over there, to be proper campers! He sorted out some hooks, lines and bait from some guys, and we chucked it all in our bag and set out on the boats.
The boat didn't take long at all. You can actually walk round from Om beach over a path to Half Moon beach, and then over some rocks to Paradise in about 40 minutes, and so the boat took about a quarter of this. When we got there there were already about 25 people there with hammocks up, sitting on the beach and splashing in the sea. The beach was quite small and secluded, and really nice with no roaming cows or rubbish. We said hi to everyone, grabbed a couple of people that wanted to come fishing and made our way over to some rocks to fish from. It was so quick - within ten minutes Ash had a catch! Wahey! Sadly Nirin and his dad didn't manage to get anything before they lost their hooks... So resorted to buying one from a local man that was fishing next to us - haha! We felt our way across the rocks and back to the beach, and found a nice spot to guy the fish. Thankfully, the Indian guy accompanied us and demo'd how to descale and guy one fish, before Ash did the second. It was pretty gross, and had me wincing a few times, like I did when he had to first kill the fish by hitting its head on a rock multiple times :( eventually, both fish were clean and prepared and ready to cook.
Dinner time, thanks to my fisherman
We had come prepared - some girls took the foil from their lunch and gave it to us, and we got some salt and a small lemon from Nirvana to season it a little. Ash had the idea of heating a stone slab on the fire and cooking the fish like that, which worked a treat! I don't know if it was the fact that it took so long to cook, that Ash had caught it, or that it was so fresh... But it was seriously the best fish we'd ever tasted! :D
We enjoyed the rest of the night having drinks by the fire and lying in the stand staring up at the stars (criiiiiiiinge haha, but you could see loads!) and eventually retired to a friends hammock that wasn't being used. And daaaaayum it gets COLD at night! We used my scarfs for little blankets and you would think two in a hammock would be pretty cosy anyway, but we just kept waking up so chilly! We'd had about an hour of sun when the boat came to take us back to our beach at around 7:30am, so looked forward to a few hours sleep in our bed ... Zzzz
The clear sky at Paradise beach