Places to Visit in Gokarna

Four gateways, round bastions and a double moat rise out of the wet laterite country north of Kumta. Mirjan is compact enough to read slowly and substantial enough to explain the coast around it.

A commission-free guide to Gokarna: a Shaivite pilgrimage town wrapped around the Mahabaleshwara Atmalinga temple, and a walkable string of beaches from the town shore south past Kudle and Om to the secluded Half Moon and Paradise coves.

A north-to-south drive down the Karavali coast on NH-66, linking Gokarna's beaches, the giant Shiva of Murudeshwara, the Udupi temple-and-island coast and the port city of Mangaluru.

Banavasi is not a ruin with a village beside it. The old Kadamba capital survives as a lived-in town centred on a Shiva temple whose additions record many centuries at once.

At Magod the Bedti does not make one clean plunge: it turns through two great drops into a forested ravine. The safe visit is from the built viewpoint, with Jenukallu Gudda as a separate nearby stop.

A commission-free weekend plan for Gokarna: day one for the Mahabaleshwara Atmalinga temple and the near beaches at Kudle and Om, day two for the cliff trek to Half Moon and Paradise or a day trip south to the giant Shiva at Murudeshwara.

Two days is the right length for Karwar: one for the town, the beach and the warship, one for the fort across the river and whatever the sea allows — an island, a spit, or the calm beach up towards the Goa border.

Karwar has the district hospital, the banks and the trains, which makes it the practical base for a district that has almost none of those things. Here is what a day out of it actually reaches.

In 1882 a twenty-two-year-old Rabindranath Tagore came to stay with his brother, the district judge at Karwar, and looked at the Arabian Sea for four months. The chapter he wrote about it is the reason the town beach carries his name.