Goa: Driving on the coastline

The Mangalore masala dosas had re-ignited my taste buds that I decided to eat indulgently whereever I was to go on the tour. Someone told me that lunch is served for free at the Udupi temple! Or well, that is what I understood from the se7en kannada words I had learned during the stay at Mangalore. But whatever be, how could I miss it for anything. I therefore began to scheme to preach the other guys about the divinity and the artistic intricacy of the Udupi temple without the littlest clue of what to expect.

But before that; we decided to go to the Malpe Beach and St. Mary's Island. It is best to pack your breakfast to Malpe. The food there reminded me of the worm infested, sour and stale idlis I was served for 10 days at an NCC camp earlier during my school days.

St. Mary's Island is an uninhabited island and is a 20 minute boat ride from the coast. It was quite exciting and scary to be standing close to the bow of the boat, with camera in one hand and the cabin's slippery door handle for support on the other as the boat tossed us up and down where the backwaters met the sea.

Serene is the word to describe St. Mary's Island. It is nearly unexploited, beautiful and takes your breath away. Be there to believe me.

St. Mary's Island

For once food took a backstep and we decided to look out for as many beaches as possible before it got dark. Malpe effect. And so we skipped Udupi.

We stopped at Maravanthe beach in the afternoon before heading for Murudeshwar. I read on the internet that there is a restaurant in the middle of the sea at Murudeshwar. Bull. The restaurant is on the shore. The main attractions here are the temple with a mammoth Shiva statue and a crowded beach.

It was close to ten when we reached Calangute; the place we are to stay in Goa for the next four days.

More bulls from the internet-
bull 2 - The highway splits the river and the Maravanthe beach
bull 3 - You drive with the sea constantly on your left as you move from Mangalore to Goa

Some G.K.: Goa is not one city as I thought before I got there.

Route: Mangalore-Udupi -(detour: Malpe, St. Mary's Island) - back to the highway - (detour: Murudeshwar) - Karwar (port; never seen so many trucks in one place) -Panaji - Calangute

Distance: ~ 350 kms

Goa: Kannada Ghothilla Guru

The last thing you want after a long and tiring drive is to have the waiter bring you something other than what you ordered because he could not understand what you were trying to convey to him. But that is exactly what happened to me. I tried to tell him to bring me a steaming boli after looking at one in a policeman's plate and instead ended up eating three fat uthapams. Nevertheless it tasted good.

Unlike Bangalore, food is usually good in Mangalore. I am downplaying to call it just good. It was great. And for someone who has been living in Chennai for a few years now, it is very cheap too. It is THE place for early morning eaters like me as you find restaurants open as early as 6 AM. But for you to eat, move around the town or talk to any of the many beautiful damsels in Mangalore, you must hone your language skills.

By the time we took another bumpy road out of Mangalore, here is what I could add to my bulging wordlist.

guru - equivalent to Chennai's Boss
baeku - want
baeda - do not want
solpa - some
seedha hogi - go straight
left/right thakho - take left/right
cha - tea

Recommended activity at Mangalore: Bird watching

Goa: Conquering the Ghats

I woke up to the splatter of a wheel cap zipping across the road like a flying saucer. By the time we could go and collect it, the vehicles behind us had made a mincemeat out of it. We continued our journey towards mangalore with colli now behind the wheel. When colli has the steering wheel, anything that is on less than four wheels is to be overlooked, trampled and forgotten. We fortunately did not have any victims that day.

Another colli surviver

Karnataka must be commended for it's undying love for it's native language. Every hoarding, every signboard, every milestone had nothing but Jelabis spewed on them. No English. It took us some intelligent guesswork to convince ourselves that we were on the right direction until we say a signboard that read in english, 'Road under construction. Take diversion'.

The diversion took us into the mountainous ghats and it was not until half an hour into the diversion that we realised that not a single vehicle from the other side had crossed us. It took us a while to realise that we were lost in the wilderness.

I always imagined estate owners in India to be old, pot-bellied, dhoti-clad and driving a mahindra jeep. Welcome to the new India. These guys were denim-clad, wore hats and sunglasses, and drove SUVs at 80 kmph in the winding ghats. It was quite a thrill to be tailing these guys as they offered to show us the real way to mangalore and it was such a disappointment to see ourselves driving into the 'Take Diversion' sign road.

Breakneck speed!

Lesson: When in karnataka, if a roadsign requests you to take diversion, drive through it.

The next four hours (we covered 30 kms) must be rated as my slowest driving experince ever. The car wouldn't go beyond the second gear as we say everything except the road. -potholes and boulders and even bigger boulders. There was a point when I thought we should turn back, but to get back to a real road we will have to go through the entire stretch again. We decided to keep all our eyes on the road and hope for smaller boulders.

By the time we managed to cross the ghats, both our front power windows had come crashing down and it was another pitstop at a roadside garage before we ambled into mangalore.

Pitstop 2: Ghat effect

Public interest message: While on the ghats, we saw a couple of guys lighting a cigarette and throwing the matchstick on the grass below. It immediately caught fire and all their efforts to stop it from spreading didn't help. All they could do was run away from that place. So if you guys are smokers, use a lighter and not a matchstick.

Route: Bangalore-Hasan-Seklashpur-Mangalore

Distance: ~ 320 kms

Goa: Day 0

It was the perfect start.

We were scheduled to start at 7 PM friday evening and the don calls up at 6 to tell us that a bug (e-bug) had swamped his work and it had to be fixed before he left for his long vacation. Once we reached nirmal's home (9 PM) where the car was, we realised we had packed much more than the car can take. With great hope that colli would carry nothing more than an underwear we lugged in all our rugsacks and prepared to leave (10 PM).

We had not crossed the city limits when we realised that something was missing. After a lot of investigation we found out that the headlight's high beam was not functioning! And so instead of driving to bangalore we drove to a mechanic shop. It took the mechanic more than 2 hours to put his hands up in despair. It was a magical problem that is not to be resolved.

midnight mechanics

While colli stretched himself to sleep in his bed in bangalore, giving up on us, I snuggled into the backseat among the bags for a dreamy night, with the comforting thought that balan's experience behind the wheel and nirmal's torchlight would carry us all safely to bangalore.

It was 12:30 AM. And day 1.

ps: The don is known by several names. don balan, balu, ballu, team leader and many more.

Route: Chennai-Kanchipuram-Vellore-Ambur-Vaniyambadi-Krishnagiri-Hosur-Bangalore

Distance: ~ 360 kms

Go-ah!: And the road becomes my bride...

We had been dreaming of a dil chahta hai style road trip for a long time and we finally managed one. - not the exact replication but only a little different. First, we didnt start from Bombay, but Chennai. Second, we didnt drive a merc but a zippy zen. And we were four. And then; Chan and The don couldnt get themselves duped by any girl inspite of all their sincere efforts.

It was our first long trip on the road -2636 kms- and we planned as naively as we all collectively could; we carried one rugsack each (2 overgrown and 2 undergrown adults with 4 rugsacks cramped in a lilliputian car), we lost our way on countless occasions and never had a contingency plan for any aberation. But our naivity was all the fun - we constructed five word sentences using five different languages, drove where the roads took us, and thrilled ourselves as the unexpected took our breaths away time and again.

2636 kms