The trip to Mookambika/ Udupi

We left for Mookambika at 4.00 am in the morning last Satuday. While it was early to make headway down the Bangalore- Mangalore road being deserted this early, the speed slowed down to a crawl by the time we passed Sakleshpur to enter the Ghat section of the road. If you are planning such a trip, be warned....the roads are terrible. This back breaker of a section lasted around 2 hours before we rolled into Mangalore by around noon.

After picking up my parents from there, we left for Kollur, reaching there a little before 5 in the evening, having taken some long breaks for lunch and at the Udupi Srikrishna temple- a peculiarity of which is that the idol is facing towards the back of the sanctum santorum and to see the face of which one has to look through a peep hole at the back.

The temple trip was mainly for Unni's ezhuthiniruthu which happened well thanks to some help from a dude who helped us there called Shashi. He got a lot of the temple formalities done and gave some "Vip" darshans. If anyone is going there and needs some "help" with temple stuff, I recommend him. You can reach shashi at 9164946980.

On the way back we took the Hosanagara- Mandya road which was a lot better- but the travel time was practically the same as there was increased traffic.We also made a 20 minute stop-over at Nayak's fort which we chanced on the way back. The fort dates back around 400 years and is quite picturesque in its location on the hills.

Overall it was a satisfying trip, though the 12 hour drives on successive days was a little back-breaking