Portals of Discovery: April 2013

KONKAN........ the rugged western coastline from Thane to Mangalore. A region lined by the mighty Western Ghats on the east and the Arabian Sea on the west. A region famous for its beaches, cuisine and culture. This is a small travelogue of a roadtrip I did along with my friends, Arun, Vishnu & Jeevan, during 28 to 31st March, 2013.

DAY1: Bangalore to Mangalore

Bangalore is baking hot in the afternoons... The plan was to leave early morning to beat the heat and reach Mangalore by afternoon. I pushed my bike out of the parking lot and went to pick my friend Arun from his residence. It was dark and pleasantly cool as we rode towards Hassan. The early morning mist was hanging in the air, reluctant to let go off the tree tops. Tanked up the bike before we hit the ghat section towards Sakleshpur.

At Sakleshpur Ghats

The roads started winding up the western ghats. Well laid roads, wide but infested by big tanker lorries carrying oil from the refineries in Mangalore.

Watch out for those tankers

Sakleshpur Ghats

Arundas taking in the views

Pulsy was at her element, cornering and trail braking through the wide hairpins.

We passed through Kukke Subramanya and with cool forest stream lined with bamboos, hugging the road as we rode along.

A cool forest stream

Boards written in Malayalam started showing up once we reached Nelyadi.

Smooth roads, with crests and dips in the middle, made riding a pleasurable experience.

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Mangalore... 104kms to go

We passed through Uppanangadi, a place which came recently in the news due to an oil tanker disaster which claimed 8 lives.

We reached Mangalore by 2pm and had a nice lunch with Pomfret fry at a Kerala Hotel.

We called up our friends, Jeevan and my longtime travel partner Vishnu, who had already arrived at Mangalore from Kerala, and checked in to a hotel.

Lunch at Mangalore

We met up and planned to visit Sultan Bathery. To know the directions, I called up my friend, Akshatha and with her timely help we reached there.

Sultan Bathery, Mangalore

The watch tower built by Tippu Sultan is said to be made from stones obtained from demolished churches.

So much for Tippu being secular, eh? :)

Romance was in the air as we spotted many couples spending some time together... Vishnu and Jeevan checked out from the hotel and off we made our way towards Udupi...

NITK, Surathkal

We saw NIT Surathkal by the side of NH-17, stopped and asked for directions to the Surathkal Beach.


Parking on the beach!

A serene beach awaited us... I spun up the rear tyre on the sand and parked my Pusly! :)

Surathkal Beach

Lighthouse at Surathkal Beach

Surathkal Beach

The beach was clean and calm with a red lighthouse seen at the distance.

We made our way out of Surathkal towards Udupi.

NH17 widening work was going on which meant frequent bad patches... A board told go left for Kapu Beach.

Sunset at Kapu Beach

I waved my friends riding behind to pull over and they did and came up to me surprised. I told anyway we'll reach Udupi by nightfall only, why not see the sunset at Kapu beach? It turned out to be a good idea.

Mr Crab

Lighthouse at Kapu Beach

Kapu Beach

Jeevan got to work with his Nikon DSLR while Arun me and Vishnu started out chit-chat, lying on the rocks, cooling off with the evening sea breeze on our face.

It was dark when we decided to leave and had trouble finding where we had parked our bikes.

We reached Udupi, checked into a small hotel, took a bath and had tasty biryani, which was washed down with some chilled beer.

DAY2: Udupi to Panaji, Goa

Day 2 started early. We heard a commotion down at the hotel reception. Apparently the receptionist got so drunk, there was no way to wake him up. People were queuing up to collect advance and their patience wearing thin.