I planned this trip in the last minute. When the idea of spending the 4 days long weekend in Goa occured to me, I had barely 4 days to plan out everything. But as its said, the trip without a plan comes out the best memorable ones, it proved to be so true! I had an excellent weekend getaway this time with 4 days vacation in hand. Driving all the way to Goa from Mysore hopping on different tourist spots on the way, was what the final plan after days long exploratory research. Many friends were invited, many routes were contemplated but we zeroed in on an interesting itinerary after only one friend confirmed his participation. The route was Mysore-Mangalore-Murudeshwar-Gokarna-Goa and coming back to Mysore via Jog falls and Shimoga totalling 1200+ km and stopping over in Mangalore & Gokarna for overnight rest. My wife Madhurima, playing the role of a DJ, my friend Chiranjib from my IIT days playing the role of a navigator with laptop, smartphone gadgets, we were all set to embark upon a challenging, daredevil road trip in my 1.6 months old Hyundai i10.
Day 1, 31st Oct: Mysore to Mangalore (via Madikeri) ( 280 km)
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| Madikeri |
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| Mangalore city |
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| Ginger hotel, Mangalore |
I & my wife Madhurima started from Mysore on 31st Oct'13 evening, at around 6.30 pm towards Mangalore via Madikeri road. We had kept almost everything packed during the lunch hour coming out of office. So when we came back after office hour it didnt take us long to turn on the 1.2 litre Kuppa engine of my i10. We were familiar with the road till Madikeri as we had had a number of weekend trips to Madikeri before, but the road after till Mangalore would be new to us. Our target was to reach Madikeri by 8.30 pm so that we could take the unknown road to Mangalore by 9 pm after a quick bite for dinner. The evening traffic rush, which I guess was mainly due to the beginning of a long weekend, got us delayed by half an hour. After we reached Madikeri, we grabbed some chicken burger at PFC (Paradise Fried Chicken) with less than 20% quality of KFC. Our journey began again (with a stomach warning though), but, on an unknown, unexplored road after a 45 min dinner break. Though the same State Highway 88 continues till Mangalore, the darkness right at the entry when we took a left turn, signified what would lie ahead. I didnt have any idea whether it would turn out to be a Wrong Turn! The road goes to Mangalore. We were sure of that after cross checking with google map and highway hoarding and arrow signs. But how it goes to Mangalore was pretty unexpected. The 1st 40-50 km was in good condition! Really nice roads, punctuated with irregular streams of traffic from the opposite direction and with the only light source from our car headlights in 5 km radius distance in a hilly tarrain at around 10 in the night , inaugurated our trip on a promising note. The romantic feeling of a long night drive on a hilly tarrain with my wife on the verge of completing 1 year of marriage was punctured soon after it had just begun to blossom by a long stretch of muddy, rough patch with innumerable pot holes. With the romantic feeling vanished quickly, a feeling of irritation, frustration set in with one peg of tension, anxiety and apprehension mixed with it when the patch seemed to be really long and un-ending. The hangover from that weird coctail had its full effect when our friend Google Map stopped working in the middle of the jungle terrain. We didnt know whether it would be prudent enough in that dark night to stop the car to ask someone in a local town, which we were crossing at 20-30 kmph speed. We thanked Karnataka Govt atleast for putting up the road direction properly, even though they have left the state highway in a state of village road which barely can keep the bullock cart going. It continued till Puttur, a town close to Mangalore skrewing up our speed, but what it couldnt dampen was our spirit! The thrill and excitement of exploring something new, how ever challenging it was, kept us going with the spirit alive. Finally we reached Mangalore at around 1 o' clock. Karnataka's 2nd biggest city was almost calling it a day when we entered its territory and kept asking every person we found on the road for the direction towards our hotel Ginger where we had booked a room for a overnight stay and rest. Finally we found a group of party people, a bunch of young people coming out of a disc in the dead of a night and asked for the direction. I didnt know what effect the party had had on one of them, may be his girl finally had said "yes" to him, a guy took extra effort in explaining the direction towards the hotel and it really helped us. We found our hotel finally and I felt a sense of joy in crossing the 1st milestone in our trip quite successfully! The 5-6 hours journey on the bumpy road was tiring and we crashed out in no time. I closed my eyes looking forward to the next day's driving to explore another destination: Murudeshwar & Gokarna! Yaah life is good! :)
Day 2, 1st Nov'13: Mangalore to Gokarna
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We woke up to our friend Chiranjib's call, who was supposed to reach Mangalore from Bangalore in the early morning by Volvo bus service. After a quick bath and treating ourselves to a good buffe of standard Indian breakfast at Ginger hotel we started off again. The Ginger hotel was on the NH17 so we hit the road right away checking out of the hotel. Mangalore weather was humid and hot even in the early morning at around 9 am. We turn the AC and ingnition on and in half an hour time we were out of the city traffic. As we were warned about the road condition, we didnt get surprised when we were confronted with a long stretch of the road, full of deadly potholes, one way blockades and likes, enough to strip it off its "National Highway" status! "Once upon a time it used to be a driving pleasure" that's what we got to know. Heavy rainfall had left the road in its present condition. Though we saw patch work was under progress, we had mentally prepared ourselves for a disappointing and fruastrating journey till our destination point.
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123 ft tall statue of Lord Shiva,
3rd tallest in the world |
It took us 3 and half hours to reach
Murudeswara, a sea beach with a pilgrimage attraction.
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| 240 ft tall Shiva temple |
Till this point the journey was not worth mentioning. To our disappointment, the sea view to our left hadn't appeared so far. The overall look of the Murudeshwar area looked promising with a 123 ft tall statue of Lord Shiva and an adjoining 20 storied (approx 240 ft tall) Shiva temple overlooking the arabian sea on its 3 sides. The look and feel of the pilgrimage was grand, accentuated by the presence of the deep blue arabian sea. Surprisingly a lot of tourists had come other than the usual pilgrims mainly for the various water sports on offer by local clubs and bodies. Deep sea diving, snorkeling, speed boat and likes drew quite a number of tourists. After a "photo session" we looked for a restaurant for our lunch in the scorching mid day sun. There was only one desent hotel for stay and a restaurant for food and snacks overlooking the beach side. As our luck would have it, we were late for lunch and nothing was available in that restaurant which was only a decent place to grab some bites. So we decided to pack off from Murudeshwar and head off to Gokarna with the hope of getting some food after checking in to a hotel.
The journey from Murudeshwara to Gokarna didnt disappoint us. The road was good, if not excellent and the scenic beauty on either side of the road was refreshing. After a while we suddenly hit a stretch which was right along the sea beach and the view got us so overwhelmed that we ended up spending half an hour over there in posing and clicking. Thanks to that surprise view for I could get some of the bests of shots in my DSLR ever! The rest of the journey till Gokarna wasnt dull and continued in the same spirit after the sudden spurt in scenic views. It was only after few more breaks and photo sessions we could reach Gokarna in the late afternoon. A few packs of potato chips and biscuits had somehow managed our rebeling hunger till then.
Gokarna seemed overhyped from the outside. As we entered the Gokarna taking a left turn from the highway, things didn't look that promising. The disappointment loomed over when we reached the Gokarna beach painstakingly maneuvering our car through a crowded temple town road. It was full of local tourists thronging the beach side shacks for some cheap snacks. The beach was a small one without the sheen and glomaour of famous beaches. But the demographics of the tourists included some foreigners who started coming in in groups as the sun was all set to call it a day.
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| Om beach, Gokarna |
The place looked weird compared to other beaches in India. The stark contrast between the local and the foreign tourists was so prominent that we forgot to notice when the sun had bid good bye and darkness had set in. We tried to find out a good hotel nearby to stay overnight but it was clear to us it'd be stupid of us to expect a nice and budget hotels in that damn place. The hotels were either very expensive or too cheap to be decent enough. We headed towards another beach in Gokarna for finding some good hotels. The beach was famously known as Om beach as its shape was like the "Om" sign. After 1 hour of search and hopping a couple of hotels, we decided on a not-so-bad "hotel Sea bird" which seemed to had been built in a resort style but had lost the momentum in the mid way. We got enough confidence in the hotel when we saw other tourists also thronging the hotel and the care takers running pillar to post to satisfy their guests! We ordered snacks and dinner right away after check in. After a quick shower in cold water helped wash away all the physical fatigue day long drive. We three hogged onto whatever snacks and foods were served as we enjoyed rounds of card games in our air conditioned hotel room. But it was not too late when all of us were engulfed by the waves of deep sleep slowly lapping up on our eyes and we retired to the bed keeping the excitement for next day's journey alive!
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