Mangalore Trip

Travel itinerary

Date: 20th and 21st January, 2008 Places: Around Mangalore

On 21st of January there was a function of a office colleague in Mangalore, hence some of the other colleagues wanted to go and visit Mangalore. So off we went.

Since Mangalore is also my hometown I had to plan some trip for them. Shown below was what I had planned (the actual trip turned out to be quite different):

20th January

21st January

My colleagues reached Mangalore well and early at 7:40 am, and I was conveyed that they would be having breakfast at 9:00 am at my colleagues house (the one for whose function we had arrived here), hence I was optimistic of sticking to the planned schedule. But like always things don’t happen as would like it to happen. My colleagues were finally ready for breakfast at 10:30am, then had their breakfast and we were finally on our way at 11:30 am; a full one and a half hour behind schedule.

The Thousand Pillar Temple

The first place on the list was “The Thousand Pillar Temple” in Moodabidri, which is about 38Kms from Mangalore and the journey took about one hour. A bit of details is as mentioned below (taken from some site, I donot know which):

A Holy Shrine of the Jains, the thousand pillar temple is dedicated to Shri Chandranath, a Jain Saint. Jains spread all over India travel to this place to offer worship at the several Basadi’s dedicated to different Theerthankaras The temple is intricately carved and has architecture that is peculiar to Nepal. This temple is around 569 years old and was built over a century. The history of the temple is carved on the walls and pillars of the temple. No two pillars in the temple are alike. It has got an elegantly carved wooden cieling and a wooden screen with intricate carvings. The Basadi is a treasure house of art and architecture. No where in Karnataka, a Basadi of so much grandeur and so much magnificence as this could be found.

As can be seem in this description, this is a very elegant place, it almost looked like a fort, covered by all four side by high rise walls. The carvings on the pillars were really something to look and appreciate. But alas, we spent only 10 mins here before heading to Annapoorneshwari Temple in Kodyadka which was just 8Kms from here.

Though one would not find much about this temple; it is a fairly new one and apart from the temple has some pets housed (like Elephant, Horses, Peacock, Deers etc) in it environ. Since it was on our was to the next destination, we went here to. We has a qick cup of tea and by the time we left this place it was almost 1:30pm.

Gomateshwara Temple

We reached Gomateshwara Temple, near Karkala at around 1:55pm. This is famous for the single stone 42-foot (13 m) statue Gomateshwara (Lord Bahubali). The Bahubali statue here is the second tallest in the State. This monolithic statue of Lord Bahubali was installed at Karkala on February 13, 1432 on the instructions of the pontiff of Karkala, Lalitakeerti. We could not go too near to the statue since the stones forming the floor was too hot to walk without footwear. Since the place was on a hill, the surrounding scenery was quite good and made a wonderful setting from a photo session. Since there is nothing much to see I expected to leave in around 10 mins, but contrary to that we only left at 2:40pm.

Udupi Krishna Temple

Our next target destination was Udupi Krishna Temple which was about a hours journey. We reached there quickly passing Manipal on the way. We arrived at the right time at the Temple since the crowd was less which increased quickly as the time went by. The details of the temple is as under (again a copy paste from some site):

Udupi Krishna Temple is a famous Hindu temple dedicated to Lord Krishna. The temple area resembles a living ashram, a holy place for daily devotion and living, founded by Madhvacharya founder of the Dvaita school of Vedanta. Legend has it that once Kanakadasa a worshipper who was not allowed into the temple was so piously dedicated, that one day the Krishna statue miraculously turned around to allow the disciple to gaze upon his heavenly form through a small window at the back of the mutt (matha). There are several temples here, the most ancient as basic wood and stone of 1,500 years origin.

After praying and looking around we went to have our lunch at 4:00 pm. Though again I had expected to leave this place by 4:30pm to have enough time in our hand for the beach, this didn’t go as planned and we left Udupi only at 5:00 pm.

Panambur Beach

Since we were already behind on the schedule, we had to skip a wonderful opportunity of going up a Lighthouse and seeing the beautiful view around of the Kaup locality. We decided to go to Pannambur beach where the International kite flying competition was going on. We reached there at around 6:00 pm….well amost…since such a major event was going on, it looked like the whole of Mangalore had decided to come over here….which resulted us in having to get down 2kms before the beach and walk the rest. Hence we took another 20mins to get there and we missed the sunset. The kites were still flying around. The variety , shapes and the very design of many kites amazed us. Finally after spending some time in the water we finally headed back to the Hotel.

We had to cancel the Kudroli temple visit since some of us had got wet and would have have been ideal to go to the temple in such a avatar.

Day two, most of the plans I made was throw out of the window myself, since the previous day my colleagues had mentioned they had planned to go for a film in a multiplex near their hotel. Hence I did not go ahead with the planned schedule. They went for a movie at:11:40am. And came back and got ready for the function at 2:55pm.

Tannirbhavi beach

The function got over by 5:10pm and since everyone wanted to change into something more suited for the beach, we went back to the hotel and were finally on our way to Tannirbhavi beach at 5:35pm. We took a auto convincing the auto driver that we would also engage him on the return journey if he waited for a hour. He agreed for this with a nominal waiting charge.

We reached TannirBhavi, had loads of fun on the near empty beach. Then finally at 7:00 pm headed back to the hotel and left Mangalore by a KSRTC bus at 9:15pm.

It was a good trip but for some miss judgment on my part. For example on the first day since we were already one and half hours late hence I should have skipped Moodabidri and Karkala and should have gone only to Udupi. As they say we make mistakes, and this was one of them. I am sorry for my colleagues who were made to hurry at every place and missed out on a lot of fun.

Hope the future journeys would be a lot of fun :-)