Chennai to Goa

After a long time, my quest for travel, came true, me along with my colleagues and with their friends, planned a trip to Goa, a beach paradise in north western part of India, we called day off early on Thursday and headed to Goa. We had our first pit stop in less than a kilometer, yeah! You got it correct, as we forgot to take our alcoholic goodies. We called one of our friend back in office, asked him to bring our goodies safely to the pit stop, with the goodies in the cab, we continued our journey, we picked three more on the way and headed towards the National highways, and before we could take a nap I just learned that the driver is getting ready too for the nap, best part is with wheels, it got the shit out of me, thanks to Ravi V one of our travel mate who started a conversation to keep the driver awake and us safe, just like 1001 nights tale 

Roads are pretty good it was like a slide after a bumpy ride, however toll stops are sickest things, I’m exactly not sure for how many kilometers we had such toll stops, but it seems to be more often then the highway motels, after several toll stops we reached Bangalore. By then it started drizzling we started enjoying pleasantness of the weather and headed towards our next destination Tumkur, by this time it started raining, but it was not our concern at this time, as the roads are becoming little bumpy now, for the ongoing highways project, roads are digged every where, suddenly we halted on high way traffic, it’s an accident, I don’t think it is fatal, but sandwiched with huge iron rods.

We started snailing from there, with haunting accident scene, really bad roads ahead, that was roller-coaster ride for next 10 hrs or so, heading towards Mangalore with the hope that the roads will get better soon after, but things are not getting better at all, after couple of pit stops for lunch and dinner, it is still a bumpy ride, and it was raining cats and dogs, with the hopes that things wont get more worse, I took a small nap, in couple of hours van halted, and we learned from the driver, that there was a landslide ahead, and things wont get better until tomorrow, things are getting worse now, its raining cats and dogs, and the language barrier(no one knows Kannda in our van) worsening the situation more.

We quickly had a informal meeting within ourselves, and decided to figure out if there is any alternate route to Goa from there, and if not we will go to Hubli wait till dawn and ahead to Kollore, Udipi, Dharamasala and Saravana, a jolly trip now almost become a pilgrimage if we don’t find the alternate route, “lets see” I said to myself. We figured out there is an alternate route in about 70 kms on the way to Hubli, which is good news, because if that alternative route fails, our second plan is still executable, in few minutes we reached the alternate route junction, and we enquired about the route details with the truck driver near by, he said earlier this route too was blocked the bridge overflowed with water about 10 feet, and two vehicles returned, and few hours back two other vehicle went the same way and it didn’t came back, so assumed the route was clear, it some how sounded sarcastic to us, to be on the safer side, we decided to ahead towards Hubli, driver was feeling sleepy by this time, we decided to halt for few hours, facilitating him for a nap, and we reached Hubli by dawn next day.

We lodged, for few hours to refresh our self, post lunch we vacated and headed towards udipi, roads are still bumpy I think except Bangalore and out skirts of the same, rest of the state yet to be infrastructured, we reached Udipi next day 2 AM, we lodged in a hotel and had a quick nap for few hours, got refreshed headed to Shri Krishna Temple, as many temples in Kerala, in this temple too, shirts are need to be removed, with shirt tucked into my pants exposing my torso, I’m standing in the queue to get the glimpse of Lord Krishna, I thought this is barbaric and uncivilized I mean removing shirts and all, as I was nearing the Karbagraha, I felt so light my so called commonsense started disappearing, I started feeling commonsense itself a burden to man, I started feeling I was nothing, and I owe nothing, and that very feeling was so good, with that emptiness in my soul I had the first glimpse of Lord Krishna, I forgot myself for that moment, I was completely lost, until someone dragged me away, that moment I regained myself, my commonsense recaptured me, I realized I didn’t wished anything to lord, I went back into the queue to wish few things, this time I was not light, this time I was fully occupied, just planning what to ask the Lord, just preparing the list mentally, but the early one was extempore, that feeling was really good, I felt the enjoyment in myself, but this time it was mechanical, conditional, I was not happy with this darshan, I revisited the queue again, and again and again for few more times, to resurrect my first experience, all in vain, with that unknown feeling of pleasure, and wanted to know what the pleasure is I left the premises with astonishment and we reached hotel for a break.

We actually planned to visit Kollur Mookambika temple, same day after that break, but the plan again changed after reaching the hotel, making it true that there is nothing constant except change, and decided to go to Malpu beach near Udipi and to Manipal. As decided we went to beach, had couple of ice creams and headed to Manipal, there is nothing much in there except the university, it is rightly called as university town, we spent few hours discussing what to do there, we didn’t come up with any fruitful ideas, we headed back to hotel, on the way we brought few bottles of beers, to chill out that night, we came to know that we need to vacate the hotel by 2:30 AM tomorrow, to avoid another day rent, as planned we vacated by 3:30 AM next day, and ready to reach Dharmasala, I bought a Dhoti this time, in the process of getting myself prepared to revisit the enjoyment I felt in Udipi, but in vain, I was little bit depressed, the emptiness with I felt in Udipi, which I thought is spiritual and trying to recreate in Dharmasala, but I failed, as I read in many books, it is true, if you are preoccupied, when you are already filled with your opinions/thoughts, this gives no accommodation for the new thoughts, In Dharamasala and in Udipi (except the first time) I was experimenting with my preoccupied theories, however if I would have experimented by true conscious which I did accidently in Udipi, I probably would have reached that stage of emptiness, I read this in many books written by great scholars like Osho, K.V Kamath and all which I failed to recollect. With that amount of satisfaction in myself, I rejoined the team and headed to Bangalore, on a bumpy ghat road, our tire got flat, it took 30 mins or so for the driver to change the tire, and another couple of hours in a near by town to fix the tire. Which delayed our progress, it’s the fifth day of our trip and we reached Bangalore by 9 PM or so, pit stopped for tea and snacks, and then in Hosur for dinner, and started our journey to Chennai, our destination, I was awake for couple of hours, and requested Krishna Das to give company to driver, and I stepped back to have a nap as I need to reach office next day and I slept off, Rajeev woke me up, it was already 5:30 AM and we are in Koyembedu bus stop, greeted everyone and I got down near the bus stop, hired a auto reached home, and I slept like dead for hours.