A car trip to the west karnataka coast

The intention was to write about my motorcycle trips. The intention was to write regularly. The intention was to improve my writing. Bah! Am I lazy or what! Instead of a moto trip this one is about a car trip. However, what was lost in independence was gained in some good company.

 

 

The plan was ambitious! We had a four day weekend coming up. Grand plans were laid out. We were to go everywhere. Of course the trip was in many ways different than what was planned. We were to first go visit Belur-Halebidu which according many is one of the finest examples of Indian architecture from medieval times. Then carry on south of Chickmanglur where Baba Budhan first smuggled coffee into India in the late 17^th century from Arabia where it was strictly controlled (God bless his soul). The first night’s halt was to be in Manipal. The next day we were supposed to visit and stay the night at Turtle Bay beach resort about 60 Km north of Manipal. The third day was to be spent travelling about 150 Km north towards Goa to a place called Gokarna which is famous for a beach the shape of “OM” . The final day was to return to Bangalore.

 

 

We started late from Bangalore. A good hour and a half after 0500 which was agreed to the previous night. Not a good thing. The traffic on the highways would start becoming shitty. And getting out of the crowded city was going to sap a huge amount of energy. Since we’d started late everyone got hungry and wanted breakfast. So we stopped at a breakfast place inside the city. Quaint little place where Padmini came to eat breakfast with her Grand-dad when she was a kid. Then I had to take a call from office for a half hour (Don’t ask! >.<). This was really not starting well. There was more to come however. Somewhere near Hassan, a pebble hit the windscreen starting a crack that kept expanding. We found a dealer for the brand of car we were in and they had a workshop in Hassan who would replace the windscreen. While they were replacing the windscreen at the workshop, I calculated that if we stuck to the plan for the first day, it’d take a good 10 hours. It was already 1230 and driving a car through the hills at night was not very appealing. So I proposed we skip the Belur-Halebidu leg of the journey and take a shorter route to Manipal. Oh was I sadly mistaken about the “shorter” bit. Yes, distance-wise and quality of road wise it would have been faster, but there were factors I had not considered. It had been a long time since I’d done a trip in a car.

 

We crossed a small town called Sakleshpur and hit a diversion. We did debate about whether this diversion would hit the highway again as soon as we took it but carried on that minor road regardless. I played this event over and over in my mind later on and realised it was just the impatience of being in a car and too many opinions. The many opinions aspect was something that I had experienced as a map reader of my outfit when I was a cadet in the military academy and had to cope with a bunch of tired, irritated and impatient mates who were at the end of their tethers on route marches through thick jungles near Dehradun. I did not realise that we were facing similar group dynamics in the car till later.

 

It was not too bad though, and something that I’d probably have done intentionally if I were on a bike. But we were not on a bike. We were in a car and were mercilessly thrown around as the poor little thing tried to cope up with the “road”. But what a beautiful place it was! Thick jungles, birds I’d not see before, sounds of nature (the “moojik” was thankfully switched off) et al. The best positive was that there was hardly another vehicle on the road! We went through some spectacular scenery before reaching a place called Subramanya famous for the Adi and Kukke Subramanya temples. We were nearly famished by then and the food we found in the cafés next to the temple was fantastic. I had two of almost everything they had on offer!

 

 

 

Flushing Meadows near Sakleshpur

 

 

Emerald Dove

Marching Scouts against the Kukke Subramanya temple

 

It was time for some more choices. We were to carry on next to the city on Mangalore about 70 odd km south of Manipal where we eventually spent the night. We come to a junction not long after we leave Subramanya at around 1730. One side said Mangalore, the other mentioned Dharmasthala . One look at the map told me that Dharmasthala was north of the highway we had been stuck to the south of for the last 4 hours. It would have been a smooth ride to Mangalore once we hit the highway. The map also told me that the other side would have taken us to Mangalore using a state highway with dubious quality of roads. When I tried suggesting this, all I heard was “you have been seeing that goddam map all day!” All I could do was to light up and sit back. This was not going to be another serendipitous discovery of forest and hills. The sun had almost set and this was going to be just a long and painful few hours through the most horrible roads. I had hit rock bottom and was cursing myself for having agreed to go in a tin box. We did eventually hit Mangalore and later Manipal at around 2330. We had been on the road almost 17 hours. I was tired and I was in the worst of moods.

 

In a car the end is almost always more important than the drive. After the initial euphoria of starting out on a trip, one settles to a mundane routine. Everything one sees through the extended TV in a car acquires a boring sameness. Restrictive seats and fights with fellow passengers over the “music” just pile on the misery. I know why people look so sad or so frustrated even when passing through beautiful country. They just have had enough being thrown around from side to side on hilly bumpy roads. And the driver’s kicks seem to come from rash overtaking and trying to take risks to make things more “interesting”. On a bike the road and being on the road is itself one of the ends. It is so much easier to maneuver a bike over rough roads and hilly roads are the best terrain for any motorcyclist. No greater pleasure than banking into lovely hairpin bends and twisties. That is until you meet one of the mad-caps in the boxes.

 

Sowparnika River

 

Enough ranting. Day 2 was far better than day 1. The worst was over! No great distances to be covered today. Easy morning, big brunch, hit the beach. The turtle bay resort is near a place called Kundapura. The river Sowparnika flows nearby and not far from the resort, the road separates the river and the sea. It was quite a sight. The rest of the day was spent quite pleasantly sipping beers and bumming at the beach with a short visit to some places nearby.

 

Sowparnika River the left of the road and the Arabian Sea on the right

 

Brahminy Kite

 

Day 3 and everyone woke up l-a-a-a-t-e. Over breakfast (at 1200!), we came to the conclusion that it might not be worth spending 4 hours in the car just to go to another beach (Gokarna) and drive back to Bangalore the next. Much better to spend the rest of the day lazing on the beach. All the bad memories of getting to this place were forgotten and I spent a whole day doing nothing but relaxing in a hammock (trips to the bar to get booze and munchies excluded).

 

Turtle Bay Beach

 

Sunset at Turtle Bay Beach

 

 

The last day and everyone remarkably got ready to leave at 0500! The drive back was uneventful in complete contrast to the drive going to Manipal on the first day. In fact it was even peaceful getting back into crowded Bangalore! Hardly any traffic.

 

 

Overall it was a lovely trip with friends I cherish, but it reinforced my prejudices against cars. They are just no fun!

 

More photos here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chatts/sets/72157604569104647/detail/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chatts/sets/72157604442262029/detail/

The First Post

Wanted to write a blog for a long time. To preserve for my own sake (and for the goodfellas who tolerate the snaps I keep uploading on Flickr) the stories of these rides and the places that I try to visit is I guess one of the objectives.

According to Orwell, there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Not sure which category I fall in, but I guess time will tell.