We were a bunch of software engineers at different levels of physical fitness. There were some who had done a Himalayan expedition in the last couple of years, whereas there were some whose most physically strenuous job in the last few months involved a walk from a distant outdoor car parking lot (gasp!). My own glorious trekking past had ended a number of years back. Hence it was like putting Schumacher and a M-800 driver in the same car racing team.
We set out to Bhatkal in a bus, from where our trek was supposed to begin. It is a town approximately 500Kms from Bangalore, along the western coast of Karnataka. Our journey in a KSRTC bus lasted just about 14.5 hours at an impressive rate of 35Km per hour. By the time we reached, it was 9:30 in the morning on a hot and sunny day. By the time we were at the beach, it was what experts call the right time to walk on a sunny, hot beach for hours: 12 in the noon. Our plan was to walk till Byndoor on the first day and on the second day, walk till Maravanthe, which is probably one of the most beautiful beaches anywhere in India.
It took approximately 30 minutes for our initial euphoria to dry up and realize that the day was going to be harsh, hot and sticky. We quickly learnt a valuable lesson that walking a long distance on a surface that inclines from left to right can be bad for your left ankle. There were hardly any people on the beach, leading us to wonder if the population density of coastal Karnataka had come down drastically in the recent times. (I thought Tsunami hit the east coast of India, not the west!) We stopped at a coconut grove for our lunch, the best planned activity of our trek. After a while, we stopped for a dip at a fresh water lake right next to the beach. The vast sea seems like a powerful salt water empire, against which the little fresh water lakes seem to be trying to hold on to their own identity. Some more rigorous walk ensued and we eventually reached Byndoor. Success for day 1.
(Pic1: Sripathi, Chandra, Hariharan, Bharadwaj, Prasanna, Naren and Bharata. Pic2: Same folks + Chandru)
On day 2, after carefully considering all the factors, like the heat factor, the sweat factor, the strain factor and the i_prefer_AC_rooms_to_beach factor, some of us, specifically the M800 types, contemplated skipping the beach and catching a bus to Kundapura. After all, the road runs close to the beach, so we could still enjoy the beach from up close, without actually interacting with it's 'factors'. However, Bharata, our team lead for the trek, dangled the carrot of doing most of the walking early in the morning, before it got too hot. So we set out on day 2 and by 8AM, we were at the beach. The weather was quite pleasant and the beach was much flatter than the previous day, giving our ankles much needed support. Within the first hour, we had walked almost 5 kilometers. By noon, we had pretty much walked the entire distance.
We saw a lot more people on the beach early in the morning. It confirmed our suspicion that the area was in fact pretty well populated, but the native people had much too common sense to be walking on hot sand in the noon. Tens of children were playing on the beach and _all_ of them wanted us to take their photos. It left me wondering "These kids are not going to see these pictures _ever_ in their life again, why do they still want to get their picture taken?"We had to cross 2 river mouths in these two days. We took help from local fishermen for this. What surprised us was that on both the occasions, the boatman refused to take any money from us for his efforts. Especially on day 2, a boatman invited us to use his boat, did 2 trips across the river, but flatly refused any money. All I can say is these people have not gotten in touch with the auto-rickshaw drivers of Bangalore.
By around 1PM, we had entered Maravanthe. Bharata proposed that, since we had met the objectives of the project, we call the trek over and and travel onward to Kundapura in a bus. Not surprisingly, the proposal was approved with 100% votes by the team. We checked into a lodge in Kundapur for the rest of the day and took the night bus to Bangalore.
PS: The 'official' travelogue should appear on Bharata's blog soon.
