Ending 2009 with a bang!

It had been a long while since I had travelled along western ghats and thought to make use of this vacation to plan a trip to my favourite w-ghats.

My parents were in Bangalore last month and when I was looking for tickets to Harihar which is my native, my mother asked me if I can get the tickets for Karnataka Sampark Kranti (KSK) - yeshwantpur to hazrath nizamuddin. Luckily the tickets were available for the next day 29th dec 2009. I was told the train is superfast and has a halt of 2 mins at Tumkur and thereafter would stop directly at Davangere. But unfortunately that didn't happen although the train was superfast.

When we arrived at Harihar, it's then when we planned a trip for 31st dec. The initial plan was to visit Idagunji and Murudeshwar. It came as a blessing in disguise to visit temples and to pray for a better year ahead.

We started our trip at 5.45 am in the morning. We crossed Honnali and were on the way to Shikaripur which accidently happens to be Mr.Yedyurappa's constituency. I hadn't been there before and had always assumed must be a nice place as it's afterall CM's place until I went there. Damn! What sort of development Yeddi talks about when it's shit at home?

When I asked the driver, how far is jog falls he said it's on the way. This is when trip got interesting. I had seen Jog falls when i was very young. At 9:30 am we were in Sagar and around 25 kms from Jog. Although I knew it wouldn't be a rainy season experience, i was enthusiastic.

"Maanavanagi huttid mele enen kandi? Saayo tanaka samsaaradolaga ganda-gundi.heri kondju hogodilla sattag bandi. Irodrolage omme nodu jogad gundi" -- this is a kannada song which means "what all have you seen oh dear after you were born? There's always the material life till you die. You don't carry any of this materialistic wealth when you die, watch Jog's gorge once till you are alive."

We started climbing again after watching falls only to realize it was noon and already we were sweating. Our next destination was Idagunji for which we had to complete our journey along NH 206 (tumkur-honnavara) and then head south along NH 17 for about 15 kms towards Bhatkal. The Ganapati murthi of Idagunji resembles the Ganapati of Ganapati pule (near Ratnagiri - konkan) but this one's black. We prayed for peace and headed further south for another 5 kms or so on NH 17 towards mathobar murudeshwar. This is when i saw the konkan rail track and murudeshwar railway station too something to think about the next time i plan a trip here, afterall who would miss the journey of the beautiful konkan rail.

When i reached murudeshwar i was just blown away. The temple is situated along arabian sea coast and it is awesome. Since it was a lunar eclipse on Jan 1st 2010 the temple was to open late at 3pm and we meanwhile had lunch at Kamat. Thereafter we went into temple. The vicinity is so clean and neat.

We thought of Kollur mookambika but had to give it up as it was getting late.. Said next time! We returned along the same route NH-206 from honnavara just to give a recap of whereall we had been during the day.

While returning back, saw a nice white tata sumo grande sped past us.. Nazar ko kya chahiye khwab thode zyada... :)