Chasing the South West Monsoon with some bangda 🦈 & pandhikari 🐖 for thought!

It’s been 4 long years since a wrote. I wanted my blogger(WYSIWYG) editor on my own & wanted to get away from medium.

It took years but eventually i found Jekyll, time & my mind to setup this blog. It feels good to write atleast blogs with markdown in an IDE, should begin with code soon.

Times have changed a lot, I got married, a new job, new roles & responsibilities, rise of AI, copilots & the best time to build products. We are getting back to text based social media from youtube to reels, even Mark wants to capture this market with Threads, oh boy! we have come a full circle. So why not I resume my writing!?

Still finding it difficult to get back on my cycle, this time I thought why not bike? It’s also been a long time I did a long ride on bike - last one was Bangalore to Goa. I had a 3days of leave & was searching for places around 700kms up&down from Bangalore. I desperately wanted to hit the western ghats & the monsoon. Inital plans were to visit Mangalore - Shivmoga - Bangalore, but monsoon being here I had an open plan as some companies have open roadmap. One Plus 5T was still maintaining its camera despite closing 6years in service, what a beast!

After initial few kilometers on NH75, I took a left turn at Nagasandra to the NH48 which eventually ends at Mangalore😅. This was the route, Nagasandra - Hassan - Sakleshpur - Kansale - Mangalore. NH48 was a breeze, I really regretted my visorless helmet & lack of jacket, my entire gizmo of bike + me needed a wind cheater, really enjoyed the first 180kms or 52% of the ride. The highway was neat, with barely 5kms of road under construction. It was complete uphill & downhill with no ghats.

Oh, man!Nearly 50% of the cars on the highway’s were Nexon, I’m not sure what’s up with that car!

The roads after Hassan were bad, like really bad, it was 2 lane, 80% of the roads were under construction till I reached MLR. Given the SW monsoon, there were waterlogging & full of wet mud. But one thing that rejoiced me was Hassan kickstarted the western ghats. All throught the ghats section was an elephant crossing zone, it was fun to drive amongst these roads. There were inconsistent rains here and there, but fortunately I didn’t get caught in any heavy spell. It was complete downhill & both sides were lush forest, the route went via Shakleshpur

There was no boiler tea even 200+KMs away from Bangalore.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Mileage increased by 5 to 38KMPL, it was 2PM & I was very much hungry. I could see a lot of muslim community enroute, also the places beings nearer to Kerala, everyone spoke both malayalam & kannada. The kannada dialect did change. As I was only 80KMs away from seashore, I decided to go full on with Fish meals I braked my bike at a local hotel which had some crowd - all they had for lunch was Meals.

Wow, this was the best. The meals had fish curry, pickle, coconut thuvayal & unlimited rice. Along with it I also ordered a Bangda(Mackerel) coated with Mangalore masala dusted on top. The masala was really the icing on the cake, but tasted spicy 😅 I think it is a blend of coconut & dry red chilli powder.

The hotel was called “Athithi” & I will link all the places below in mapbook. Bike was already drenched in mud.

After an hefty meal, I resumed my final leg of the ride towards Camp21 where rested for the night with an amazing view of the sunset, but sun played some hide & seek in the evening.

You should never wear a white cloth during the monsoons, I learn’t the hard way. My white shirt became brown.

Attaching some of the roads under construction, below.

Roads under construction, reason for brown shirt

I had a friend who stayed at Mangalore & was my local guide from suggesting places to eat to places for sunset. I refreshed myself, ditched sunset & went ahead to Gajalee for dinner. Had some ghee roasted prawns & Anjal fry for dinner & gave my body some rest.

Traffic at Mangalore was relaxed, everyone was driving at leisure in 50’s, there was no hustle & bustle.

Before entering Gajalee, I went through an area, it was different, with paved roads, parks, benches for people to sit & relax. This is where Gajalee was located. Later, I learnt that this was - Mangaluru Smart City. Also try out that a famous ice cream shop is famous in MLR, will link it here soon.

The plan for next day was to visit my friend’s house, have some breakfast & ride the 2nd leg towards Coorg. The languages kept branching in their house, they spoke Kannada, Hindi, Tulu, Konkani in addition to English. It was amazing, hyped by the Boothakolam from Kantara. They told me that each of them have their own house(Clan) god and the ritual happend once every year in month of April.

I really loved how houses were built. Let me try to phrase it, the terrain was hilly, lush green, each house had a well, a garden with banana & jackfruit. With the arrival of monsoon, the scene was serene. I promised them I will return with my family next year for a proper vaccay.

After homemade breakfast I resume my ride towards Coorg via Sulia, it was a very short ride of only 120KMs. Only the last 40KMs were ghat sections. The entire journey was an hilly terrain with twists & turns. I could see even the cars get diversified, Nexon’s from NH48 became Punto’s & Alto’s. They were just roaring through the roads. I went via Sulia & reached Madikeri for Lunch where I crased at Coorg Cusine, referred by a friend.

Coorg / Madikeri / Kodagu via Sulia, Sampaje. There were a lot of Toddy shops enroute, KA govt. doesn't exploit the alocohol industry here

Kodava people are the native inhabitants of Coorg district & pork is a major part of their diet & eventually pork is the main cusine here at Coorg Cusine.

Menu is limited, it is a simple 30pax seater hotel, I tried pandhikari, puttu, neer dosai, coconut dessert. Even their vegetarian items were good. Do try the pork chops, gravy or semi gravy - it’s all upto you to customize. This lunch was fulfilling, the best pork I had ever eaten, even better than the pork knuckle I had in Munich at Haffbrauhouse.

I stayed there for the rest of the day, walking through the terrain, having some coffee at Big cup cafe, met an software engineer on a workaction

A real VFM & easily the gravy serves two

French press, a method to distill coffee

I resumed my ride the next day via Kushalnagar towards Mysore, seeing the frequent accidents on the Mysore-Bangalore expressway, I took a detour to meet NH48 at Channarayapatna. The roads were complete state highway & I could enjoy some local Karnataka for the next 80KMs, it was vivid agrarian land where farmers were selling their produces on roadside - a lot of vegetables & fruits, tractors beefing up the loads to XL, I forgot to capture them. There were no cinema posters all throughtout the way towards the state highway. Once at CRPTNA it was the 6lane NH48 all ahead.

So when navigating to my house, it was hilarious to see the bangalore traffic at work. Out of the toal 80KMs, the 60KMs on highway took 1hr & the rest 20KMs in the city took another 1hr, Bangalore infra & traffic is such a mess.

It was all straight once I hit the ORR, the last 20KMs towards my home.

I found a great way to book-keep places on google maps, click below map to explore further.

If you have come all this way, thanks for reading. It’s been 4 years since I wrote any long piece of a document be it code or blog, If I want to rate my writing - it would be a death blow, but I want to get things started, get my own blogger up, write, travel & click pics. The upcoming one’s would be great, I promise! & eventually would be on bike without motors.

I learnt a lot on starting this blog, will share all of those in the next blog - from setting up your digital ocean account to renaming your PC to make jekyll work which ruined my PC & all the aftermath on how to restore it.

Thanks again for coming here & as Sam Altman says,

We’re so back!