Of late, travel has become a choice between spontaneous, unplanned trips or none at all. Managing a toddler and two start ups is not a good situation for travel. It is in fact, the opposite of good. It is the death of travel. But we take what we get. One of those rips in the work-work continuum occurred during our wedding anniversary. We had a weekend to get away. 2 days can be a lot or nothing at all, and we wanted to make it count. We always do a toss between a few options – go to a cool resort close by, save on driving time and do nothing; or go to a nearby tourist place which is a 3-4 hour drive away and do nothing; or take a flight some place, do nothing and get back. It is fairly obvious what the common theme is. More on the art of doing nothing later. This time though, we wanted to do something different. Given the limited time, we ruled out many places and were on the verge of giving up when we hit upon the most brilliant idea ever. One of those ideas that in hindsight seem so obvious that they make you wonder what took you so long. We were going to go on a road trip, with no particular place to go. Just be on the road and do nothing. Conforming to my status as a lazy researcher, I messaged a fellow traveler and asked him for some suggestions on scenic routes. He rattled off a host of choices and we decided on the most straight forward option. We would drive from Bangalore to Udupi and drive back. This was the route we were going to follow: Bangalore to Udupi via Shravanabelagola and Mangalore; Udupi to Bangalore via Agumbe and Chickmagaluru. Saturday started early at 7am. As soon as we crossed Bangalore, I wanted to make a pit stop to load up on the munchies and grab some breakfast. But the husband suggested we don't eat until we got really hungry. Like all his ideas, it sounded awesome at first. We decided to stop only at Shravanabelagola for breakfast. We had a long drive before us. He drove. I sat in silent contemplation, about this trip. The concept of traveling sure has come a long way. From our parents’ generation, where the aim was to cover as much ground as possible in a day, we now try to ‘experience’ more than just ‘see’. And yet, most of us hold the Lonely Planet closer to us than our passports. There’s an unspoken pressure of doing all sorts of things because you know YOLO, and FOMO, not to mention FOBTWMO (Fear of being told we missed out). We are always so caught up in trying to get the best out of the place we are in, that we forget to just soak it in. So what really did I want from travel? After much staring at the grey road ahead of me, I concluded, to me, traveling is about letting things happen to you. It’s about letting go and wading in to the unknown. It’s trying not to have a purpose. Traveling to a place different from yours has to mean that at the end of it, you look at things differently, at least a little bit. It has to have evoked some feelings, some emotions, some thoughts in you that give you a different perspective, however small. Else, you could have chosen the resort next door. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just not traveling. It’s merely holidaying. So that’s what we decided to do. Do nothing, let things unfold and see what happens. One of the quickest side effects when you decide to do nothing, is that you get terribly hungry and suddenly all the eateries on your way look unappealing. Luckily, I could blame the husband for this one. We reached Shravanabelagola around 10am. We could see the giant Mahavir statue from afar. We went to the parking lot and figured it’s quite a walk up the hill, and for all practical purposes, breakfast would leave us happier. We were pointed to a South Indian breakfast joint that was crowded with all the devotees from the temple. Standing next to the parking lot entrance was an old man asking people if they wanted to have Jain breakfast. We said yes to him, the least we could do is go to a Jain eatery if not the Jain temple. The shopkeeper who showed us the South Indian joint asked us not to go. We disregarded him and went anyway. Turned out it wasn’t even a hotel. It was a room in a house with a few steel benches and stools sprinkled about. He had a white sheet of paper on which he had printed the menu and stuck it next to the Bhagawan-wala calendar on the stained wall. We decided to order one masala parantha. When he finally brought it to our table, it turned out to be sattu ka parantha and the best one we had ever had. We ordered one more and then one more. Quite satisfied with our choices that morning, we set out for Sakhleshpur. After a short coffee break at Sakhleshpur, we drove all the way to Mangalore. The national highway was a beauty. There wasn’t a single stretch of bad road. It was the perfect day to look out the window and day dream. We reached Mangalore around 3pm. We had long ago made up our minds to eat crab and only crab. Roasted in ghee. So we went to the much recommended Gajili and polished off their crab collection for the day. We then headed to Pabbas, the insanely famous ice cream parlour. After stuffing our faces with the goodies, we set out for Udupi. There are many towns in the Udupi district where you can camp for the night. We passed by the Kapu town and decided to drive through the interior roads. We parked in someone’s drive way and walked over to the beach from their house. It was a beach front house which was unoccupied for the day. We took our cheesy beach photographs against the sunset. It was close to getting dark, but we decided to sit there for sometime anyway. Holding hands with someone and looking at the clear waters of the Arabian sea is quite the way to spend an evening. Here, there was the added excitement of a possible trespassing charge. We tried convincing the security guard to rent the place to us for the night and failed miserably. An hour later, with our hearts full of love and shorts full of sand, we walked back to our car and set off towards Malpe beach. We checked into the Paradise Isle resort, facing the Malpe beach. It was 7.30 in the evening already. We unpacked, hit the shower and then went out to grab some dinner at the food stalls by the beach. We ate Gobi Manchurian and watched a group of 50 guys dance in an open dancing area until we were asked to leave. The next morning, we took a leisurely walk by the Malpe beach and discovered how perfect it was. The beach wasn’t a favourite among the tourists yet, there were only the local couples and their dogs going on their morning walks. It was quite clear that this unassuming town by the beach is not going to be this peaceful in a couple of years. The resorts, the beach houses owned by Bangaloreans and the students from Manipal were all indications that the beaches here will be the next tourist destination! We started late the next morning and hit the road. We drove via Agumbe this time, a small hilly village in the Shimoga district. It’s a charming little place close to Shringeri and Kudremukh, where a lot of the Malgudi Days episodes were shot. A visit to the Kudremukh national park would have been nice, but this trip was only about being on the road. So, we drove past the beautiful, wet views and continued on to Chickmagalur. The smell of coffee is what marks your entry into the Chickmagalur district. It makes you stop involuntarily at all the small, cute coffee shops set up along the way and have a coffee. Being surrounded by greenery on all sides and sipping on coffee with not a thing to do, our lives suddenly seemed very rich. For what is wealth, if not the means to afford you leisure! After the fifth coffee, we agreed to quit the place and started driving towards Bangalore. We were back in town by 8pm. After two days on the road, we thought we would be exhausted. But something about the monotony of the long winding roads calmed us down, helped us be alone with our thoughts and think up random stuff to write about in blogs. More road trips are definitely in the offing. PS: At the beginning of this post, I promised to talk about the art of doing nothing later. I have nothing. I only said that because I had learnt early on at B School that it’s a good way to stop people from asking questions while I am talking.
3 Comments
|
Aishwarya KalakataThe loss of and search for individualism has never been felt more acutely. Everything changed after I had a kid. But this blog is not about me being a mom. It’s about the things I do when I want to stop being a mom. It’s about telling myself that it is possible and that it is ok. It’s about my little escapades. Mostly travel - sometimes physical, sometimes mental. A desperate bid to stop my identity from being rolled into a single word. CategoriesArchives
March 2021
|