South Karnataka II

Continued ...

This was a surprise !!! Din't expect I will write this one today. By the way, my colleague pointed out that the places we visitted were not North Karnataka but South. I would change the topic as North Canara I and II.... Sorry !! Thanks to him ..

So, after the heroics that we did on the previous day, we got a good night's sleep. We were supposed to wake up at 05:45 AM. Psyche had set an alarm. The next day when I woke up it was 06:30 AM. We realized that the mobile was in silent mode and the alarm was set. Obviously no way we could have expected it to buzz. Good strategy by Psyche !!!

All said and done, we started to the temple. Udupi Krishna was looking simply superb. Small and cute. Had a nice breakfast in Udupi. The sambar was really good. SOmehow it was Tamil style. Reached back to the hotel and packed. Bye to Udupi and started for Dharmasthala.

When we reached the bus stand we had a minor shock. There is only one bus which has to come from Pune to Dharmasthala at that time. We had to take a private bus and go one some place first (Sorry forgot the name of that intermediate transit location :)) and take another bus to Dharmasthala. That was cool though.. We reached Dharmasthala by aound 2 in the afternoon. Enquired for buses to Bangalore from there and came to know that there is a KSRTC Rajahamsa bus at 10 in the night. So we were left with 8 hrs and we had to cover two more places.

Had a major shock now. A huge crowd in the temple for Darshan and we had only 2 more hrs coz the temple will be closed for 30 minutes from 4 !!! Joined the queue. Took us around 2 hrs. Very well managed. Manjunathaswamy was really cool indeed :-). Then came the best part of the day. We had the lunch at the temple. Traditional Karnataka style of Rasam first and then Sambar. No vegetable. In spite of that relished that first coz we were starving and secondly coz that was from the temple. So 80 % of what we wanted to accomplish was done at that time.

Planned to take a taxi to Subrahmanya.The driver was a nice guy. The route between Dharmasthala and Subrahmanya was totally forest and scenic. Reached there by 6. Absolutely no crowd. Had a peaceful darshan of the main deity and Adi Subramanya too. DONE !!! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED !!!! We congatulated each other. Had a bajji there which was not all that great. On the way back the driver stopped in a pillayar temple. Bonus !!! Reached back Dharmasthala... Karnataka tiffin and bus at 10. That brings us to the end of a memorable trip that none of us will forget :-)) (senti !!)

I had a day off on monday(Mahavir Jayanthi), the day we reached Bangalore. Others had to go to office. Just slept the day off.

Hope we plan and execute many more trips like this in the future. :-)