Udupi 2024

— The Plan —

We were having lunch at the office food court when Punya suggested going on a trip during the long weekend around Jan 26. The initial suggestion was Goa, but we started searching for other options owing to frantic travel costs. As the weekend approached, the plan seemed dead on arrival. Punya had to go to her hometown in Kasaragod and I was feeling too lazy to plan anything. Anyways, Radhika was persistent and pushed us out of our lazy chairs, and the plan was re-born.
We settled on Udupi as the destination as it was reachable by train and Punya could make it from Kasaragod easily. Radhika, Radhul, and I tried for Tatkal tickets to Mangalore while Nandakrishnan tried Tatkal towards Kasaragod to join Punya. Surprisingly, all of us got the tickets without much trouble. However, booking a stay wasn’t as easy. It was a long weekend, and everything was sold out or unreasonably priced. After much effort, we finally found a homestay near Kodi Begre. A cozy little place by the lakeside, aptly called Lakeside Inn.

We took the night train from Majestic to reach Mangalore Central by morning. We reached the station just in time to see a small flag hoisting outside the station. We had time to kill before our rental car arrived, so we went to a nearby shop and got some breakfast. After a light breakfast, we headed back to the station to pick up the car, a Santro good enough for five people. Our check-in was only due by noon and we still had time to kill before heading to Udupi. We decided to go and check out the famous Pabbas Ice Cream Shop. Eating ice cream at 10 in the morning felt a bit strange, but it allowed us to experience Pabbas before the rush settled in. Pabbas was a really old ice cream shop that built a reputation over the years. It didn’t have the fancy ambiance or overloaded dishes that the new-age shops offered but they had some solid time-tested delicacies on the menu. The iconic Pabbas dish was the Gadbad, a falooda-like dish with three scoops of ice cream, some fruits, nuts, and cream. We ordered the Gadbad, a tiramisu, and some other random things. Radhika and I struggled to finish our servings. Anyways, Radhul made sure nothing went to waste.

We started off towards Udupi soon after. Our first stop was a Lenskart on the highway as Radhika and Radhul wanted to buy sunglasses. Radhika, with her reputation of breaking her specs every few months, was a valuable Lenskart customer and managed to get some discounts. The journey to Udupi was smooth and uneventful. We reached our homestay right around noon time. The place had a good vibe to it with the lake right in front of us. We settled in and roamed around for a bit as Nandakrishnan and Punya joined us. Radhul and Nandakrishanan opened their office laptops soon afterwards and started launching their weekend runs. We sat around talking for a while before realizing all of us were really hungry. It was well past noon and we were doubtful of finding a good place for lunch. We decided to head to Kodi Begre side where the maps showed half a dozen restaurants near the seaside. The first one we saw on the map, didn’t exist. The second was completely overwhelmed with a skeletal staff and was not taking fresh orders. It took us a while before we found a decent place and got to lunch.

Kodi Begre was an interesting geographical formation. A narrow stretch of land stretching out to the sea and creating beaches on both sides. The tip of this landmass is called Delta Point, where you’ll find sea on all three sides. It was evening by now and the sun would set soon. We decided to dash to the delta point and catch the sunset from the tip. Halfway through, we realized we wouldn’t reach the tip before the sunset, so we stopped and settled to watch the sunset from where we were. Sunsets have a way of easing your mind, giving some temporary peace in an otherwise chaotic mind. We went back to the homestay and rested for a while before heading out for dinner to Paradise Lagoon. Paradise Lagoon was one of the hotels we really wanted to book while searching for stays, however it was sold out. It was quite near to us so we decided to check the place out and have dinner from their in-house restaurant. We went to their restaurant and made an order skewed towards seafood. As the food got ready we roamed around the property and imagined how great it would have been had we booked this place in advance. When the food arrived we found it quite tasty as well. We spent some quality time over there and slowly finished our dinner before heading back to our own modest stay and calling it a night.

— Maple, St. Mary’s and beyond —

Day 2 started with all of us waking up before 10:00 AM to book Tatkal tickets for our return journey. We made some strategies to increase our chances of getting five tickets on the same train. After some initial fumble, we managed to get the tickets. We probably should have started the day’s activities right after this, but we kept procrastinating and took our sweet time getting ready. It was only by noon with a hard beating sun straight above us that we managed to get out. 

We headed to Malpe Beach first to catch a ferry to St. Mary’s Island. The beach was pretty crowded and there was a huge queue outside the ferry ticket counter. We took our position in the queue and slowly waited our turn. The island was this picturesque volcanic formation that you could reach with a short boat ride from the Beach. The pitch-black stones on the island contrasted well with the clear blue waters and white sand. All of us had been here before but it still felt new and exciting. We spent a couple of hours walking around the island, climbing rocks, and clicking photos before finally heading back to the Malpe on a return ferry. We were starving by the time we got back to Malpe. It took us a while to find a good seafood place without a ridiculous waiting period. It was a small shop at a walkable distance from the beach. As we tried out a few fish and prawns options each of us started sharing our childhood memories of tasty fish treats. Punya having led a vegetarian life until a few years ago couldn’t contribute much to this conversation. 

With lunch done we headed back to Malpe beach to try out some of the water sports. The water sports were poorly managed with agents walking around collecting bookings and then fighting amongst each other to decide whose clients get to go first. It took a while for our booking agent to get us on a ‘bumpy ride’, which as the name suggested was quite bumpy yet thrilling. They also had the usual assortment of parasailing, banana, and jet-ski that you’ll find in most commercial beaches these days. But we settled with the bumpy ride and decided to spend our remaining time swimming in the waters. Swimming in Malpe was a unique experience. The water was shallow for a long distance enabling us to walk deep into the sea and feel completely disassociated with the shoreline. We were all deep inside the sea quite far away from the shore as the sun descended over the horizon. We took a long walk back to the shore and dried ourselves the best we could before heading back to the car. 

We decided to get a bottle for the night and stopped at a beverage shop on our way back. It was quite crowded without any proper queue system and people were having a hard time getting their drinks. As I walked up and asked for a Black Dog Gold Reserve, I immediately got the full attention of the guy at the counter, much to the dismay of everyone else waiting. We were quite tired by the time we got back to our place and decided to get food delivered from a nearby restaurant. As we freshened up the food was ready and the caretaker had arranged us a table on the lakeside. We stayed up quite a while that night drinking and sharing old stories. Nandakrishnan for some reason seemed to be stalling and drinking extremely slowly. I couldn’t quite figure out why. As the stories dried up and the day’s fatigue got to us we called it a night and decided to head to bed. Nandakrishnan meanwhile quietly headed to his office laptop and the mystery was finally solved.

— Mangalore and return back —

All of us woke up at a leisurely pace just before noon on Day 3. It was our last day at Udupi and we had to reach Mangalore by evening to catch our train. We didn’t have any concrete plan for the day so decided to head somewhere for lunch as we figured out what to do. We packed up and checked out of our place and headed to ‘Thimappa’s’, a popular restaurant that Radhul had been suggesting for the past few days. It was a reasonably priced local restaurant popular for its fish meals. The meal by itself was quite grand with brown rice, a choice of fish, and some tasty gravy. We also had the option to choose from various preparation techniques (tawa, rava, ghee-roast). 

After the heavy lunch, we decided to head to Mangalore City and spend our remaining time there. Nandakrishnan took on driving duties as the rest of us tried hard to not fall asleep. We were in mind for some dessert and didn’t want to repeat Pabbas, so we went to the next most popular ice cream place in Mangalore – Ideal ice cream. The menu was quite similar to Pabbas and we ordered similar things again. We didn’t have much of an idea about places to see in Mangalore. After a quick research on the net, we decided to head to an offbeat sunset point known only as – Sunset Point, Bengre. Following this spot Google Maps led us to a small ferry ticketing counter. We parked our car nearby and got tickets for a ferry ride to the western side of Mangalore. As soon as we got on the ferry, we started feeling out of place. There were no tourists here, the rest of the crowd were people in the locality going about their daily work. As we landed on the other side everyone was staring at us in puzzled looks and we figured we were probably at the wrong place. We kept our faith in Google Maps and the 600-odd people who reviewed the sunset spot and moved forward. We met an auto driver who could speak Malayalam and asked him to drop us at the point. He was a kind fellow who gave us his number and asked us to call him when we wanted to return. We told him we would and continued the last 200 meters on foot walking on top of sea boulders. All through the way, we hardly met another soul and there was a small feeling of uneasiness. We were slowly walking towards the edge of a cliff with a wide sea-facing view. Once we reached the edge and saw the view the uneasiness eased and I started enjoying the place. For a while, we had the entire place to ourselves, and as afternoon gave way to evening people slowly started trickling in. I guess people only came here for the sunsets. We would have liked to stay there till sunset but we didn’t want to push the timings so we kept moving. We walked back through the boulders, called our auto Chetan, and took another ferry back to the eastern side. From there, we drove to the railway station, handed our car to the rentals, and waited for our train. 

The train journey was mostly quiet for us – me, Radhika, and Radhul who were in the same compartment. However, a lot was happening in the other compartment where Nandakrishnan had a freak accident with the side lower seat falling on his leg. A duty doctor had come to inspect him in the middle of the night. We got to know all this only when we got down at Majestic the next day. By then he seemed fine. We took a metro straight from Majestic and finally got back home. 

And that was the end of this neat little weekend trip.