The Coastal Line Experience

After a hectic, tense & emotional week with my parents, it was time to spend my second week with my second set of parents (in-laws). I decided to take the bus route just to explore the progress made in India with regards to Public transport, punctuality, etc. These days bus tickets are all available at Make my trip.com which is a boon to internet users like us. This not only saves time but also saves you money as the ticket price varies from agent to agent depending on the demand vs supply scenario. It was a long journey of 18 hours with a stopover at my home town Bangalore which was never in my travel agenda. This was brought to my notice only when I boarded the bus by the driver. I did not waste time and messaged all my best friends, it was worth it even if the stopover was less than 30 minutes. The bus driver was immensely speedy and covered the Chennai-Bangalore distance in less than 6 hours which is quite commendable. Met my friend, business partner & confidant Madhu along with his children and Rashmi (his wife) who will always have a special place in my life. Venky my other associate could not make it on time but did come in when the bus made its move, after that we could only speak to each other over the phone for more than 30 mts catching up. Business we normally do it on a regular basis, but this was purely personal nostalgic talks. Missed out on Bafna and Preetham, but will try to meet them at some point of time in a much more planned manner. After almost 4 years, had a sumptuous dinner in one of the restaurants at Anand Rao Circle which is known for its taste and started my onward journey to Karwar.

When you live in USA, your friends and colleagues are your extended family. A lot of times, we miss their presence in our lives due to job changes, relocation or just purely winding up and going back to India. Once such family was the Karanths. The other two being the Kotians and Kapoors who unfortunately for me have also moved out of Portland, but again it’s a matter of personal choice which I totally respect and wish them the very best always. Fortunately for me Karanths live in Bangalore, hence made up a master plan of meeting them up in the Mangalore/Karwar belt. They just jumped into the idea like fish taking to water. We suggested them to come over to Karwar and from there we were supposed to lay out further plans, basically the idea was to meet and rest was supposed to like GO WITH THE TIDE types.

The day I arrived which was a Sunday, Mom had already started cooking. Welcome to the land of coconut, shrimps, crabs & sweets. I being a vegetarian and Shweta being a non-vegetarian, my MIL till date has never done any partiality on the menu. There is equal opportunity to both of us to relish the home food. My FIL happens to be a doctor and serves almost 75% of the community in that town. He also does philanthropical work by managing an eye hospital funded by his relatives in USA. I do not want to give out much detail as this is a social forum and my writing should not look like an advertisement. Having said that, if any of you want to do some charity at some point of time, please do donate a small portion of your plans to this organization, contact me at that point, I will be more than glad to help. The thrill of living in smaller towns is to have a hair cut for Rs. 15 (30 cents), an authentic Ayurvedic massage for less than $12 which is quite an experience. I was enjoying my stay with handling my India emails in real time which was a renewed experience after 4 years :- )

The hospital saga continued here as well with our pet, Leo – a Labrador falling sick and had to be consulted with a vet doctor. This dog is a gentle giant who loves kids and bullies the cows from a distance. He loves to eat and likes me a lot as I feed him with whatever I eat :- ) Middle of the week, Shweta had to visit a doctor in Hubli for which we decided to drive down. I was driving a manual geared vehicle with a right hand drive but driven on the left side. Fortunately, it was not such a paradigm shift, went smooth as most the journey, the roads were all maintained. The hot summer season could be a reason as once the monsoon starts, the roads on the coastal line gets really bad. We came back, rested and next day took a journey to Kukke Subramanya – a famous pilgrimage center down south. We wanted to experience the train this time, took a train to Mangalore where the Bangera family had made arrangements for a taxi right at the railway station and also taken care of the pooja/darshan of the deity at the center. Again, just cannot imagine my life without friends. Sincerely thank God for the same. While driving to the temple, we stopped by at a small restaurant in Kalkada named Lakshmi Nivas which is famous for GHEE DOSA & KT (a tea with a special look), relished the same. After the darshan, we were dropped off at the rail station. Wanted to verify the quality of the food available at the railway canteen, was very disappointed to find no change whatsoever in the past 4 years. This is what happens when the Railway minister gets sacked for increasing the prices only to improve the quality of the service!!! In the train, we met some interesting friends – one of them was an Infosys techie and the other was a current entrepreneur who has taken a VRS from the western railway. We narrated each other our various experiences, 4 hours never went by so fast in our lives. We came back home tired but completed a fulfilling journey without any problems.

It’s Friday - which is a big day since Karanths are visiting us. We were eagerly waiting for them as they were. My FIL had booked a resort by name Devbagh which is an island near Karwar. This is also the place where the ferocious river Kali and the Arabian sea meet as well. It’s a great place to be in and is managed by Jungle Lodges & Resorts. Please do visit their website to know more about them and suggest all my India friends to purse this holiday package depending on your proximity and feasibility of the various locations. It being a Friday, we had a pleasant surprise of having the beach and the resort to just the 4 of us ! Great time and place to catch up I should admit with Signature making its way to the campfire and beach dinner. This was clearly the winning moment of our trip. We did some adventure sports by the name of Banana ride where in you sit on a narrow canoe and pulled by a motor boat. At some point the boat driver sways and you are forced into the vast expanse of water. It’s a 3-4 second adrenaline pumping moment, before you realize you are floating due to the life jackets and will be hailed back on to the canoe by the experts. The thrill was amazing. We also did some archery where Rajaram faired pretty high and I failed miserably, lucky for me there were no passer bys as the arrows were flying all over the place except hitting the target board. We did a nature/river trek where in we saw some amazing birds. It was great way to begin the day due to the exercise factor which we badly needed after the food riot we were having. The food served in the resort was of great quality and we ate like the malnourished natives of Somalia. After a good 2 day stay, we were dropped off at the Karwar bus stop from where we took the public transport bus back home and were amazed by the savings which we did when compared to the driver drop off at the beginning of the tour. I urge all of you to use Public transport whenever you are visiting, so that you would keep yourself abreast with the progress of that particular city/country. We came back to do some more temples the next day and saw off Karanths with a heavy heart but promised each other to meet up as and when we get a chance.

Mom had some plans cut out when it came to temples; Idugunji Ganesha, Dhareshwar Temple, Koli Beerappa, Mahalsa Devi & Kamakshi temple in Goa. Parents bid adieu at the Goa airport and we arrived in Chennai, checked into a hotel which we had booked online. Alas, if only people were true in presenting themselves virtually, we had a terrible experience and had to vacate the hotel forfeiting our amount too! But no regrets, we moved to the heart of the city which was much more accessible to sweets & savories shop, restaurants. Shweta did some last minute shopping before we boarded the flight to Dubai. Emirates somehow are very confusing with their assurances on print. They had promised to take the sports goods free of cost, but when I went there with my cricket bat and badminton accessories, they came up with a US rule of not allowing more than 2 baggage but can be allowed if charged, did not understand the logic here. The cost of my sporting equipment Rs. 6,500 ($125) but I had to pay $175 to bring them along with me!!! Shweta did throw some tantrums asking me to just give away the bat to someone else and buy something in USA even though it is costly, but me being me, did not relent and ended up paying the same. Finally it was agreed that the money is coming straight out of my Scotch budget for the next two months – sometimes women(wife category) are ridiculous.

We both boarded the flight to Dubai, the flight was pretty good. We had a 3 hour layover before we boarded the 15 hr nonstop to Seattle. While walking around the duty free shops, we were in for a pleasant surprise – I saw somebody familiar - tall, dark & handsome cricketer who had made India proud with his exceptional cricketing talent and most importantly we remember him for bringing the world cup to India in 1983. He is none other than our great Kapil Paaji !!! It was a great moment when we shook hands with him and he also did not throw any tantrums, agreed to pose with us which I proudly uploaded on FB to get some instant mileage :- ) Shweta was equally thrilled to see him and pose with him for a snap.

We boarded the flight with me coughing and sneezing – what a way to move out of a vacation. Had a couple of cognac shots which has made me feel better and complete this blog. If you find any grammatical & spelling errors, please blame it on Hennessey. As I am finishing this piece of writing, we are 4 hours from Seattle. Long live inventions, long live researchers who help us travel around the globe with such ease. My wishful thinking at the end of the journey is, there should only be one class in the airplane – business class :- ) Still envy those who can afford it, the treatment is amazingly significant and evident.

Landed in Seattle, took a rental car started relishing the disciplined driving, yielding, etc and came back home just a while ago. Thank you all for reading and commenting which gave me a lot of confidence to write more of my experiences. Take care and God bless us all. Snaps to follow… please give me 24-36 hours to come out of jet lag :- )