Day 2

June 19, 2010

Bisen & Saxena along Tunga

All of us got up in the morning with Ayush's  arrival from Bangalore. As was pre-decided, he was supposed to join us in Shringeri and Santosh was supposed to leave us for Hassan. We decided to quickly show him all the temples, Ashrams, etc and move ahead with our plans.

After talking to several locals, we realized that it wasn’t possible to trek into Kudremukh national park in such persistent rain. AS an alternative, I suggested that we move to Mangalore and subsequently Coorg district. Ever since the leech accident in Kemmangundi, Bisen was wary about the blood sucking leeches in the forests of Western Ghats and so he vehemently supported the Mangalore idea.

 After bidding farewell to Santosh and having a quick breakfast at the shabby Shringeri bus stand, we left for Mangalore. Luckily, the bus followed a route that took us through the Kudremukh national park. The forest definitely looked alluring and at several points we resisted ourselves from jumping off the bus.

We reached Managlore at around 2 PM but here again we were welcomed by torrential relentless downpour.

Raavan

The rain had spoiled all our plans. Even the beaches were closed due to stormy sea. So the only option left was to catch up with the latest releases in a multiplex. True Indians at heart, Bisen and I wanted to go for some bollywood movie, whereas the more educated lot (Patade, Ayush and Gujar) wanted some Hollywood flick. Our 1-stop solution was PVR multiplex just near the Mangalore Govt bus stand.

Being a Mani Ratnam fan, I was hell-bent for Raavan, so I and Bisen went for it. Though the movie was dubbed as flop(probably because of Bachchan Jr’s irritating acting skills), but I immensely liked the efforts of director(I am anyways biased towards Mani sir). The shooting locations, the detailing, the presentation, the background music by Rahman, the supporting actors(Govinda, Ravi Kishan) and the overall narration was worth applauding. I m pretty sure, Bisen was already snoring by interval and he kept nagging me for several days for taking him to such an awful movie. But the movie helped me in strengthening my resolution to visit all the places in Kerala where it was shot and which finally resulted in our Kerala trip.

Madhyanshis at the Bharat Mall in Mangalore

After the movie, we explored the mall, though we didn’t buy anything. We also went to a nearby restaurant serving North Indian cuisines and thoroughly enjoyed the food.

Frm L to R, Aayush, myself and Bisen at Mangalore bus stand

After the food, we went to bus stand & boarded the bus at around 11 PM  which would take us to Coorg. I had planned an overnight bus journey from Mangalore to Kushalnagar (in Coorg district) to optimize traveling and staying expenses.

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