karwar tour

How often do you get to go on a trip and start it with a fight, more fight and then end it with a fight? How often you go on a trip and mess up the plan but still enjoy the adventure involved in it? Well this trip to Karwar was one such roller coaster ride.

The adventure started earlier than expected on Thursday afternoon (Jan-25th), when a guy from the agent’s office, from whom we had booked our bus tickets appears at our office saying that there has been an accident with the bus we were supposed to travel in and thus he would arrange for a qualis. My very first thought at this was- “bogus”. We quickly did our background work by calling the head office and Karwar office to only find out that the guess was right. That was it, the next thing; five of us take off to the main seabird travels office to confirm our tickets. The person at the main office says that he has stopped offering tickets to this agent and our onward journey ticket is fraud. So we go to the agent (At Anand Rao Circle) from whom we bought the tickets and try to resolve the issue. He manages to throw some fake story by seeing our anger. We deny traveling in a Qualis and ask for a Swaraj Mazda. Finally after a long debate and argument we settle down to a Tempo traveler. Thinking that everything is solved, we happily walk out and pack our bags to be ready by 7:30 PM. I along with four other friends wait near South end circle, Jayanagar for almost an hour and a half and finally our driver; Mr Hero arrives. Stout guy with a big tummy, curly hair, bulging eyes; I reminded me of a Yakshagan Bannadavesha artist. (Yakshagana artist who normally dress up as demons; often hugely built.)So are the issues resolved? Well, not if your driver does not know where to go. He asks – “Where do we go?” Answer – “Kaiga”. Hero – “Which way to take?” We look at each others face and then say, “Ok let’s drive to Malleshwaram first to pick up the rest of the group.” And the next question shocks us again- “How do I go to Malleshwaram?” So finally we manage to reach Malleshwaram at around 10:30 PM due to heavy traffic. The rest of the guys board and we take off. Fun and laughter follows. At around midnight we all were terribly hungry and thus start looking out for a decent dabha on the way, one of us spots a dabha and shouts for halt. Even before the rest of us could turn to look at the place, Mr. Hero comes to an abrupt stop by screaming the vehicle almost into the dabha. Well we were not the only one’s hungry. Mr. Hero grabs on to a big stack of roti’s and curry and has a good satisfactory meal. Few hours gone, he complains about intolerable sleep and we recommend him to rest for a while. He nicely manages to lie down on a seat by asking one of our friends to move back. So there he is sleeping peacefully while we sit awake unable to stop laughing at this pathetic situation. We spend an hour cracking jokes, laughing at every comment and then realizing that we would be late try to wake him up. He manages to extend it for another 10 minutes after which we force him to resume driving.

Next morning when we wake up we find us still near Hubli. As if all this delay was not enough, we again take a wrong route to further make the situation worse. We drive to Sirsi on a not so good road. In spite of pathetic road condition, longer route and slow, in experienced driving from our Hero we manage to catch some spectacular sights on the way which tries to relax our growing frustration. Finally we reach Kaiga at 6:30 PM. We say Bye to Mr. Hero as he continues cribbing about journey back alone and duty next morning. At Kaiga, M’s uncle had made all the arrangements for us there. He had arranged for an apartment in the township which made things much easy for us there. That night, tired by sitting in the tempo traveler for more than 18 hours, we went to bed soon after dinner.

Next morning we were on our way to Yana at about 7:00 AM. We stop for some Mangalore buns and tea for breakfast on the way. Thanks to the driver, we reach there ahead of time. You could trek all the way till the rocks which are about 8 Km’s from the main road on a mud trail or instead you can drive till last 1.5 Km’s and then walk. We choose the later and find it to be the best. The walk to the rocks was fun, as the trail unleashed some beautiful views of the forest which waits there to be explored.