My maternal cousin, decided to get married in Kerala… as Mom, by virtue of having served a government airline for 35 years, is able to get free air tickets for the entire family there was indeed no hesitation from any of us about traveling to the wedding… Kshitija & Samay (who was only a year & half then) were flying with Mom…
I on the other hand decided to drive down those 1400 kms by myself in my Chevy Tavera… The idea must have sounded interesting, I believe, because Pisan (Rajesh’s Chinese bro-in-law) and 2 other members of his family decided to join me from Pune… I drove down to Pune the previous night, ate at their self-owned restaurant at
We started out well before dawn the next morning… I chose to drive right upto Hubli (through Satara, Kolhapur, Belgaum & Dharwad) via the then newly constructed NH-4 expressway… in retrospect, this is indeed the best route I could have chosen as I made excellent time all through… my Tavera used to purr like a baby even when I touched speeds of 150+ on that road… I however dislike the monotony of expressways… far too much concrete and way little greenery…
The road from Hubli to Mangalore (to join the NH-17) is quite lovely… I remember one stretch of about 70 odd kms which is completely a ghat… my co-passengers however were beginning to feel the strain of the journey by now, which after about 10 hours and 600 kms on the road was none to surprising…
Back on to NH-17, we almost start traveling parallel to the shoreline… I remember stopping at one spot, opening up a Red Bull, climbing on to the bonnet of my car and watching the sun as it hastened its descent… I wanted to reach upto Mangalore, but an election rally held us up for almost 1 hour just before Udipi… I finally gave in to the demands of my compatriots, and parked for the night at a hotel in Udipi… 3 large pegs of Rum and a biryani later, I was already fast asleep…
We began early again the next day, after an authentic South Indian breakfast at Shree Krishna lodge… as we headed out of this holy town, driving through the mist and watching the sun rise over the paddy fields was transcendental enough for me…
The road from Mangalore to Kodungalur, is very typical of NH-17 and keeps winding all through, as though it had indeed be designed by an engineer who had had one bottle too many… The roads tend to get narrower as one enters further south into Kerala… I had expected to reach by mid afternoon, but a hour & half traffic jam just before
And to top it up I accidentally skipped the NH-17 beyond Ponnani and landed up in Thichur instead of Kodungalur… Rajesh’s house is about 6 kms off the main highway… but locating this was indeed the toughest part… bemused villagers would find a large Silver Tavera roll up beside them, one head pop out of each of its windows, of which 2 of us were Chinese (obviously not me!) and one of us was an Iranian (not me again!)… none of us knew their language, and they sure as hell didn’t understand our’s either… we kept asking for a white house (with a plate on its front gate) with a school teacher residing next to it… this was the only description that Pisan knew; he being the only one to have visited here before… come to think of it, it was ridiculous to expect to reach the place with something as flimsy as that for a landmark… the only other instruction we had received was to take the road heading towards ‘Mala’…
The 99% literacy of the State does not however permit any of its inhabitants to admit that they would not be able to guide us… so whether they knew the place or not, each person we asked would confidently point in some arbitrary direction and say “moonnu kilometer”… “Moonnu” being “Three”, we traversed the length & breadth of the whole bloody town in 3 kms stretches in every possible direction..! people wouldn’t tell us where the road to Mala was, but would certainly point out that we were pronouncing it incorrectly (the ‘L’ has to be pronounced with a sharp upward roll and click of the tongue!)…
I think we finally found the place, more out of accident than device… so after almost 28 hours of single-hand driving across 1500 kms (the last 100 having been covered within the periphery of a 10 km area) I eventually did arrive for the marriage…
The last 3-mile encounters are hilarious! I can imagine your predicament and the tabelau of you guys asking around, getting misguided, etc.
ReplyDeleteYes, Kerala roads are miserable to drive by day, but very benign at nights. Try that next time.