My Road Trip to Kudremukh - Part 1

Like all good trips, this too began late. But early enough to ensure that getting out of Bangalore would not be a pain. And also early enough to feel the cool morning air soothe our much worked souls. It was in the pipeline for quite some time, this trip. Road trippin' has always been my favorite form of "getaway", and when DK (batchmate from PU) suggested this to me, I jumped at the idea. Together with Keshava (classmate from RVCE), we set out on our trip to Kudremukh via Mangalore. My dad's trusty old Maruti 800 was to be our steed for this journey. And boy, some journey this was!

Saturday April 1st :
We (me and DK) set out from my house at 5 am. Picking up Keshava, and more importantly, some cash en route, we proceeded out of Bangalore. Hough i did not intend to earlier, bowing to public demand, i stopped for some tea at one of the obscure villages (which means one temple, five houses and one tea stall) on NH48 for some, you guessed it, tea. It was the first time, as far as I can remember, that i knowledgably had buffalo milk. And it tasted pretty good i must say. But looking at all the flies surrounding the buffalo make me feel pukish. But i figured thats what added the zing to the milk. I guess the tea got me a little heady, coz then I let Keshava drive. I have nothing against him personally, but his track record in college often deters me from trusting him with my life by putting him in the drivers seat. Anyways, I was pleasantly surprised with the way he drove. Also, NH48 Nirvana for guys like us, used to chok-a-blok traffic in Bangalore, so i guess it wasn't too difficult for Keshava to drive straight. Next stop was at Kamath Upachara for breakfast. This place is an Indian world class rest stop, with good food and decent toilets. From there on it was a straight drive upto Shiradi Ghat, when we stopped at a neat little tea stall next to a tiny waterfall. After refreshing ourselves with some coffee (aha...gotcha!!! You were thinking tea, weren't you?)

, we moved on. We reached Mangalore finally at 2 pm and headed straight to Vivekananda's (Please forgive him for the way he looks...It's just that I have a bad camera) house, where we greeted warmly by him and his parents. We had the decency to wish them back before we dug into the awesome food prepared for us. Chicken Sukka, Kori Rotti, Chicken Biryani..mmmmmm. Good start, I could already feel the positive vibes. The evening saw us in Tannirbhaavi beach. Now, I was hitting the beach after quite a long time, and I could not contain my excitement as I bounded like an excited little girl (which I'm not....usually) into the sea. Boy, that was fun. Devender also joined us by then, and soon we had quite an animated conversation going on about all things absolutely worthless and of no consequence. Dinner saw us heading to Vivek's house again to polish off whatever was left from the afternoon, plush some fresh dalitoy. After this it was off to DK's house for a nightcap.

Much more to come about the trip, watch this space for updates.