The once in a while a trip to your favorite temple gives you an unmatched satisfaction in terms of peace and tranquility. It is hard to define and it is beyond magical skills of the words.
The temple called Kollur, Mookambika…where goddess is worshiped is located on the Sahyadri Mountain ranges. From Mangalore it is 140Kms away and the nearest city is Kundapura and Uduppi. In terms of food the kollur is not well known but it has good facilities for boarding and lodg
ing. The temple guest house provides good accomodation and there are few good private hotels as well. if you plan to travel by train the nearest station is BAINDUR and KUNDAPURA. The other alternatives are to travel till Mangalore by train and board a bus to Kollur or even break your trip to Udupi and stay there ata hotel. You can hire a cab for Rs. 1000/- to visit the temple and come back. The travelling time from Mangalore to Udupi is 1Hr45 mins and from Udupi to Kollur by taxi it takes 1hr 30 mins.
There are few unique social differences comparing Kerala, there are no special seats for women, people are so gentle and they coexist well with out teasing. All the buses are written EXPRESS in bold letters. The locals buses even have 2 TV sets with DVD playing some good hindi movies. The road we travel will be Bombay Highway and are pretty decent with out potholes.
The country side of Karnataka is really nostalgic, people looks very conservative as well as modern. Majority of the public are fair and good looking. Like Tamilnadu the flower is a must for a lady, hardly to find a women with out a flower on her hair. They are very devotional.
Being a vacation season I couldn’t get an accomodation this time at the temple town of Kollur, which used to be my regular plan of action. Reach Kollur by evening around 3.00pm and take a small nap and refresh and visit the temple for the evening pujas. Staying back at the temple complex till 10.00pm gives you an amazing feeling. As I said earlier this time I decided to get an accomodation in Udupi’s well known hotel called Kediyoor, which I am much used to stay.
Our regular temple priest also felt sorry that he couldn’t arrange the accommodation as it was too late to the date of journey. He was introduced to us by our relatives in Udupi. Evening 3 pm we reached the hotel and decided to take a nap to get refreshed, the late night journey which was really record breaking.Instead of reaching tellicherry by 10.00pm the train reached in the wee hours of 3am. Almost 11 hours of journey. The very next day morning 9.00 am we caught the train to reach Managlore and it was inevitable to skip the sleep.
After a refreshing bath we took fresh Idlis and Vada ( Udupi is famous for vegetarian food) and decided to visit our relatives and headed to their home. It was really wonderful to meet them again. came back to the hotl around 8.30 pm.Arranged the cab to come by early morning 4.30am.
As decided we got up by 3.30 am and got ready and the cab was ready. I was just praying the driver should be an expert rather than the crappy one. It is hard to sit in a car if you know driving. It was a good looking Indica the new name for Taxi in India, which replaced the vintage Rover( Amby). When I came to front lobby the cab was there and security give me a Morning wish and a big salute ( which sounded from the bottom of his heart) instead of eeling sorry for him I felt he was proud of his job and a professional. he told me the driver has gone to buy the newspaper. Instead of getting annoyed I decided to wait and to my surprise I could see a white shirt and a dark colored pant running towards me. A man in his mid 40’s with a clean shaved face and a glass and he was having unusual Jakiechan hair style.
So he nodded his head as a signal to start the journey. As ususal I was wonderring about the language to communicate, most of the Kannadigas knows Hindi and tamil and I decided to keep quiet and was curious how he take us to Kollur. he was good and the car was going in 80 kms and majority of the vehicles in the early morning were trucks and long route buses from Goa and other states. His overtakings were some what confident and I could sit with a peace of mind. There were migrant workers getting transported in vans like cattle. All looked liked from villages witha dull face and I felt sorry. The houses on teh sides of the roads were not filled with houses like in Kerala. There were cows and a huge storage of dry grass for the cattle. There were occassional temples. To my surprise I couldn’t find and political poasters or banners and came to know the reason. The election is only in May 2009.
The car was moving pretty fast lot of rivers and bridges it crossed. The towns we crossed were few in my mind and got unusual names with historical touch, Pidibidri, Surathkal…The reached Kundapura the next big town before our destination. Kundapura has some good hotels to stay and it takes only 40 minutes to reach Kollur so it obviously came to mind for a stay for my next visit.
From Kundapura ( 5.10 am) the road takes to the right and it goes through the real villages and paddy field and occassional forest area. Nearing Kollur there is a village school and the walls were painted with the images of Gandhi and Nehru. People were very less on the roads and occassionally few kerala registered were heading for the temple. The road was zig zag but well maintained. By 6.00 am we reached Kollur. From the bottom of my heart I felt it has been due for long and happy to be here at the most peacefull place on earth according to me.
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I enjoyed very much reading of this description since Iam also a devotee of Devi Mookambika. I used to visit when I was in home at Payyanur.
Thanks for your comments and it’s a great place to be..!