Mangalore - Karnataka - India

We went to Mangalore (or Mangaluru). The city itself is like any other city, just that it was showing off too many Mercedes, medical colleges, Mangalorean mind blowing beauties. Oh and Mangalore beaches have jellyfish too! You know what to do when a jelly fish stings, right?

Jelly Fish washed ashore at Tannirbhavi Beach

We reached Mangalore in the afternoon and it was almost 6 in the evening when we went to Tannirbhavi beach. We took the ferry from Sultan Bathery. The ferry ride itself was very brief but very beautiful. I think you are going to hear a lot this adjective "beautiful" on this trip that you are taking with me.

Click here to enjoy the ride: Ferry to Tannirbhavi Beach

Tannirbhavi beach was beautiful. The sand was clean, water was clean, the crowd was well behaved, maybe a little too well behaved! I guess in the evening everybody calms down to a state of serenity.

While on the beach I continuously kept saying, "We're gonna miss the last ferry, we're gonna miss the last ferry.". Loved saying that, never thought it was a sentence I would ever say!

Last ferry at 7:20 PM

After coming to this side we ate at the cafe by the river. Fried prawns, fried mackerel. By the way mackerel is locally known as Bangra or Aila fish. There met a doppelganger of my cat I left at home, if you are interested, her name is Inmin. And now I am gonna bother you with her photo.

Burdwan's Inmin's doppelganger in Mangalore. Spooky!! (bottom left in cozy bed is Inmin)

Next day we checked out of our hotel and went to Panambur beach. There we tried to conquer the sea, I mean I went on screaming in the waist length water. Everyone fought bravely with the waves while I was just scolding the sea for its unpredictability!

Cafe's on the beach are only available during the season

At the beach sack had crab masala, prawn masala, egg fried rice and realized with regret my gut dislikes crab. But the disciple of Andrew Zimmern digested everything while making me supremely jealous.

Panambur Beach

Best time to visit: November - February

How to reach Mangalore: Mangalore is well connected by Train, Road and Air

                                                     -----  Leave your queries in the comments below  -----

Bekal Fort, Kerala, India

Our plan was to visit these 3 places in one long weekend - Bekal Fort, Mangalore and Udupi (St. Mary's Island). It was going to be hectic, we knew it, but as arthritis has not made its valuable presence felt, we told each other, let's go and kick the butt of monotony.

Bekal fort is in Kasaragod District, Kerala. It is 65 km away from Mangalore, a very important city in Karnataka. We reached Kasaragod at 8 O'clock in the morning on Friday. My travel buddy is a train freak like Sheldon Cooper. He thinks trains make everything better. So from the station we went to Bekal Fort. It was made in 17th century with Laterite stone. The fort looked black to me, a gorgeous shiny black creation.

The Windows they used to have to keep an eye on the periphery and on the approaching enemy gives beautiful view of the ocean. I'm sure some soldiers became hardcore poets while living in the fort and sometimes put their weapons down to write about the nature, ocean, sky, beauty, love. Or maybe realized violence exists in spite of nature, ocean, sky, beauty, love.

The boundary wall is encompassing a huge green field. There my travel partner almost saw a soldier on horseback galloping around the premises.

There are some ruins that could have been the soldier's quarters, ammunition cells.

Nowadays authority is trying to make it a family destination so there are flower beds too. I have a problem with man made gardens that look too organized and disciplined. A garden should be created but after planting the trees, let them have their way. Do not prune so much. But that's a different topic we would talk about some other day.

There are entrances into the underground. They looked mysterious and promised many stories.

Okay now my favorite part. From the fort one can go the Bekal beach. The path from the fort to beach took my breath away. I always imagined places like this. I stood at a point from where I could see the ocean and a part of the citadel just little bit above the the beach. There are trees on both sides of that path. It is just beautiful.

We reached the circular spot that is the part of the citadel. There were stones that were making the invincible sea very angry and the Arabian sea went on thrashing herself on those arrogant stones, saying I'm this vast sea everybody fear and you are just standing there dare to stop my free spirit! Some day I will grind you down.

But now a fun fact of Bekal fort. A very famous romantic song "tuhi re" from a very famous and successful movie "Bombay" was shot in Bekal fort. So the moment I entered the fort I started singing the song, other tourists were looking at me, but I have this tendency to totally poohpoohed onlookers, and I do not easily get embarrassed. Sometimes what happens is that I'm doing the most embarrassing thing, my fellow companions getting uneasy, and then what I see is others has also started doing the same embarrassing thing! The male protagonist of the movie was Arvind Swamy, female protagonist was Manisha Koirala. I can name one or two people who got married to Arvind Swamy lookalikes after watching Bombay. So I was singing "tuhi re", and I heard an odd sound, my buddy was licking ice cream ... salarrrap...salarrrap!

So the intense, passionate, tragic feeling of "tuhi re" was gone. Gave him the angry look, he said he was giving the background music and continued salarrap... salarrap!

Unfiltered Thoughts on Filters

                             
Instead of using 25 filters will it not be easier to take care of yourself?! Take care of your skin, your body, your health, and above all take care of your mind. If you do that then you can actually look like the way you want to look even without a camera, even in reality. Obviously if one is set on his or her ways my words going to die at the threshold of their ears. Also one's family and friends can see the actual person constantly. Who are they trying to fool! The problem is I don't like anything that is fake. But when I'm taking photographs with people, the celebrated "groupie" they use filters, an unthinkable amount of it. Not only that, they are now clicking pics with the filters, through apps, so now you do not have to use filter after taking the pic, your photo would come out with a better version of you. In one of these groupies I saw that all of us were looking the same, same complexion, same straight hair, no blemish, no personal faults, no personal idiosyncrasies of our own skin, no individual way ours eyes wrinkle when we smile that makes us a "me". We were looking so much alike that it was on the verge of being creepy. 

Sometimes in photographs I look fat, okay most of the times, and sometimes I look very tired and aged, but I still feel like showing it to people because maybe the background is phenomenal, maybe the moment is beautiful, maybe my face looks beautiful but my belly looks like I'm 6 months pregnant. Sometimes what happens is my pic-partner is looking good or there is a never before seen love in his eyes or an eagle is flying just behind my ear with fully expanded wings but I simply look bloated. What to do in this scenario? I sometimes post the photo anyway, sometimes I don't. 

The problem with me is, when I would decide to be fake, I would be one like nobody is, it would be unbelievably new. It's a joke. But you get the idea, right! Did I tell you in that above mentioned groupie all of us were looking the same ? 

So fakism and copism or imitationism all are in the file of my file cabinet under the letter "D", titled "Disgusted".

So what does it mean? They think they did not come out of their mothers' womb beautiful, so they decide to come out of their smart phones beautiful, but definitely not smarter though. 

I do not want to think about it anymore, gave this silly subject more of my time than it deserves. I'm now going back to my Jo Nesbo thriller Redbreast where Ellen Gjelten just got killed, and of course some nice warm tea!