long absence etc.

5th dec 2006

hi folks,

i have been traveling and sick for a week, hence no posts here. besides, i have some mail problems as well.

i thought i'd do something different, and went to goa to see the Intl Film Festival of India. well, i did get to goa, but the a/c in the train on the long journey seemed to do me in: i was sick and down with a cold and fever for a few days, and i didn't get to see much of goa or any of the film festival.

i did spend a little time on calangute beach and thereabouts, and i was reminded once again why i don't go hang around beaches in india: they are hot, dusty and not all that pleasant. close to my hometown are two of india's supposedly best beaches -- kovalam and varkala -- but they dont attract me that much. although deserted beaches are quite nice at sunset.

then i took the konkan rail down towards mangalore. i had great expectations about the journey and its wonders based on what i had heard about the landscape. alas, i was underwhelmed. maybe the big viaducts and stuff are north of goa. but on the stretch from goa (madgaon) to mangalore, the scenery was nice enough, with a bunch of hills and waterways, and there were a whole lot of long, and undoubtedly daunting to excavate, tunnels. but i felt a little like my dad did when we went to see stonehenge in limey-land: "this is it?", he asked, incredulous. i knew what he meant. i have seen bigger stones, arranged more cleverly, all over the place :-) or when i first saw the white house in washington dc. "this is it?" i had thought to myself, staggered by how tiny and insignificant it looked.

thus with the konkan. i have seen bigger and more spectacular scenery on the ghat-crossing old meter gauge line from kollam in kerala to chenkotta in tamil nadu. superb viaducts and mountain territory.

anyway, i liked the konkan railroad. lots of interesting little stations like murudeswar, udipi, shiroor, and karwar and so forth. although i think it's more fun to drive down national highway 14 and stop at all these places, such as suratkal (the only engineering college in the world that has its own beach :-)

i stopped in mangalore and stayed at the rather nice taj manjarun. and made a trip back up the coast to the kollur mookambika temple, which is one of my favorite temples. i stopped at the udipi krishna temple as well (the abode of sri madhva and his dvaita). this was a reprise of a trip i made last year. the temple part is enjoyable, but the sun is particularly fierce in those parts. i dont know why, whenever i go to mangalore i am amazed by how hot it is.

one of these days i'll take the other rail route: mangalore to bangalore via hassan over the western ghats, which i assume is quite spectacular.

i have to get new guidebooks. my rough guide and DK guide are a few years old and dont have much about the konkan railroad. and i also find the DK guide in particular somewhat white-person-centric.