Charlie

Drive to Dharmasthala - Part I

Note: Blog would be split cause of the images and write up

"My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph."

Richard Avedon

May 25^th 2010

After a well marinated plan of visiting the vintage car museum at Dharmasthala I finally made it. Thanks to my coworker Emmanuel Maben who drove down to Mangalore for a purpose. 

Itinerary:


·    Check out the  vintage cars at Manjusha Museum
·    Visit the Dharmasthala Sri Manjunatheshwara Temple
·     Get a glimpse of one of the 5 statues of Bahubali
·    Visit the Nethravathi River.

With the help of the GPRS  we tried to locate the shortest route to Dharmasthala from the Karnataka Polytechnic in Mangalore. I was visiting this place after a good decade and I noticed a lot of development in the infrastructure.  Well maintained and easy to get to the destination thanks to Google.

The distance was approximately 74 km and it took us over 2 hours to get to the place. Post Melkar we stopped to get some water since we were not carrying enough. It turns out to be quite beneficial for people who run small shacks at such locations as they are not held responsible for charging us above the MRP for the products they sell. Action perhaps could be taken, but it is a different moot point and not relevant to this blog.

River Nethravathi

This river is located in Bantwal and is considered to be a Holy river. It is one of the major water sources for the city. It apparently unites with another river in Uppinangadi called Kumaradhara. Surely not the right time to be visiting this place because of the summer  and not to forget that we spotted a few locals trying to bathe in a patch of water a little away from where we stood.

What I would really like to mention is the poor construction of the bridge over the river. I’m not sure if it is a good idea to allow HTV’s to pass through, else it would just collapse like a pack of cards. Perhaps it could be a feedback for The Person with authority. While I was capturing images of the river standing on the bridge I could feel the ground shake as these vehicles passed by which is quite bizarre.

Because of frequent halts it took us a little longer than required to get to Dharmasthala. We reached during the lunch hours and the Museum was closed, so we walked towards the temple.

Part II to follow..

Written and edited by 

Laveena Dsouza

El Padron de Santa Maria

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time”

St. Mary’s Island is a part of 4 other small islands in the Arabian Sea. I had visited this island 6 years ago, and again in 2011 and surprisingly it is still so chaste.  These islands are known for its intrusive rocks formation from the igneous volcano. It is said that Vasco Da Gama named it St.Mary’s in dedication to Mother Mary.

4 of us set out, on another humid weekend in Mangalore, to visit this island. It would not take you more than an hour by public transport to get to the dock from Mangalore City (Lalbagh). The express bus is what you want to choose to get there at the estimated time. Having read that the island is a famous picnic spot, to our surprise there was not a soul at the Ferry ticket counter. The minimum a ferry can carry are 30 heads, and we had to wait for an hour to even get close to the count. I guess that is one of the reasons why the island still remains spotless.

While waiting to be ferried we couldn’t stop staring at this huge ship called Nassau. It was either being run through routine check up or being built at the dock. No information on where it came from or where it was headed. The company is called Tebma Shipyards ltd that caters to designing and building vessels for offshore support and has the capacity to repair upto 4 vessels at a time. 

Note: If picnic is the reason you are there, ensure you carry your own food basket as you have nothing edible that’s available there, unless you can get creative with coconuts.

5 kms away from the shore, this island is covered with seashells of various kinds like on the picture to the right. Beautiful basaltic rocks and clean blue water, something you would really want to see from the regular murky waters at the beaches in Mangalore. You can also feel the change in the winds when on the island, compared to Udupi which is 5 kms away by sea.

Bus fare: Rs.50 one way

Ferry: Rs 85 (return inclusive)

Food: hmm…depends on what u got in your basket :) 

Again..a trip worth each penny.

Written and edited by

Laveena Dsouza

Where? ...Its called Eppanadu.

Hmm….never heard of that place before…

Located at the coasts of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka Eppanadu is not a renowned tourist place.

2nd company I worked in and probably one of the most memorable ones. I was glad to meet a few acquaintances who liked engaging themselves in adventure and exploring like me. Of course I may not as enthusiastic as some people are, but I try to fit these kinds of activities between my schedule.

Sylvester and Mahesh had already visited this place with a couple of guys before and suggested we head there. Of course I was excited after Sylvester told me that it is one of the places in India listed as a Tiger Habitat. ‘Did you say Tiger?? The big cat?’ yea….that’s what he meant. Without much ado, I planned my leave with my boss and off we left with our backpacks to Eppanadu. 

We had to board on a BTS bus (Run by the Indian Govt)as it’s the only bus that would take us to the place. Sylvester had already coordinated with the owner of the estate letting him know the entire plan of our trip. So we had a guide who escorted us to his house in the middle of the wild. It was a great trekking away from the cities greenhouse gasses. If you love your walk, and love a little weight on your back then this is one the places you should visit in India.  You would not spot anybody residing even at the closest vicinity.  Even if you do spot somebody they would be tribes busy with cultivating or looking for logs to burn.  

The area is occupied by Adivasis (Tribes) who speak Malayalam, Tamil or Kannada and you cannot spot anyone staying there as it’s covered with dense cultivation of cash crops such as tea, coffee, ginger, pepper, and cardamom. The guide gave us clear instructions to stay in a group and not to split as the Big Cat or a Bison may just drop by to say Hello. Of course since it was just the 3 of us, I’m not sure if it was an encouraging thing to say.  After walking for about 4-5 kms we reached the stay home. Got some rest and some food and set out to spot the animals in the wild. 

Animals we spotted   :

Bison: The guide used his senses to judge how close the bison was grazing. He said the foot prints were quite fresh. And there he was. He came charging at us.. :) (The image to the left). 

Rock Python:  It just fed on some reptile, it seemed like, and was hiding in a bush. So we were lucky to spot that fellow. 

Tusker: The guide tried using the same tactics to spot an elephant but with no luck, although it was spotted on a hill at a distant.

Vine Snake:  It was a first for me.  A harmless snake and yet very beautiful.

Of course we were not lucky to spot the Tiger but for most of you who are interested here is an image captured by Sylvester during his previous visits to this place. 

 Trips like these you insatiable for more wild life but we had to pull the plug due to lack of time. Indeed a place worth exploring. 

Few images courtesy Sylvester Dsouza

Written and edited by 

Laveena Dsouza

Sultan Battery or Sultan Bathery 

Once again the three of us (Clinton, Nikita and me) headed to another place in Mangalore called the Sultan Battery, which was one of the places to visit on my list.

Note: It’s advisable to set out to such places post 3:00 pm at this point of the year, in Mangalore, because the humidity would kill you.

A little history about this place:

Sultan Bathery was previously known as Sultans’ Battery constructed by Tipu sultan.  Sultan Battery is situated in Boloor, 6kms away from Mangalore City Bus Stand. It was built in black stones by Tippu Sultan to prevent warships from entering Gurpur River. Although it is a watch tower, it gives the impression of a miniature fortress, with its arrangements for mounting canons all around. It is quite an inexplicable structure.

Why the name Battery?

15 years before Tipu Sultan’s death in 1784A.D, he built the present Sultan Battery, which was known as Sultan’s Battery (English word ‘Battery’) in those days. Firing of canons was known as ‘battery’ (English word battery, again) then. 

At the bottom of the fort was a small path that was sealed from the outside and had a board inside it as shown in the picture. There is an underground chamber found at Sultan Battery, which was constructed to store gun powder, since storing gun powder required a dry place. According to archival records, there was a grinding stone too, which was used to grind and prepare the gun powder. But the grinding stone is not found now. Over a period of time Sultan’s Battery became Sultan Battery for the localities and has continued to be so, in the process losing the very purpose it denoted in its name. The most interesting part is the myth that the path leads to SriRangapattana, Tippu Sultan’s capital city. It was locked so we could not explore further.

Further down you have a fishing dock, and there are boats that would ferry you to the other side of the lake.  The cost is Rs.3 per trip. On reaching there you would find a small church built for the localites as shown in the image.

 Further ahead, approximately a km away is the beach called Taneerbavi. There was a  ship wreck located not too far away from the shore. The ship named Den Den sunk on June 23 2007.  It was confirmed that the ship had come to New Mangalore port on Friday June 22 2007 in the evening to fetch slag from KISKO. Later in the night owing to heavy rains and thunderstorm ship moved towards Tannir Bavi and soon began sinking.

There is a restaurant near the dock with a huge menu painted on their wall. I could not get most of what was painted on it so did not want to risk it. 

Although a lot of people are seen visiting such places not a lot of officials or authorities take the pain in maintaining this spot. For a tourist or an outsider this would probably be a turn off. Blackish water and a lot of garbage are to be found in and around the spot.

 Nevertheless it was indeed good evening for the 3 of us and definitely worth the time and the money spent :)

St. Aloysius college museum

St. Aloysius College Museum

Not sure who this man is

How to get there?

 Ask anybody…An auto driver or a conductor in a bus if they’d get you to St. Aloysius College, and they’ll surely help or at least give u directions. Everybody knows where it is in the city of Mangalore.

Entry fee to the Museum:  Rs.5 (Beat that!) 

Mounted animal heads

Isolated in a corner of the campus, if you ask anybody who belongs to Aloysius directions to get there they’d help you out. But how many Aloysians have actually visited the museum and checked it out? I won’t be surprised if I was the only 1, in a million years, to be there along with my friends in school.

Unknown

To my surprise, there is a substantial collection of things inside right from antiques, to vessels used by the locals dated centuries ago, fossils, skeletons’ and skins of various animals, and stuffed animal heads mounted on walls, the first 4 wheel drive in town, statues of a few warriors, wide collection of really old written books, the first cloak and the bible used by the priest centuries ago, a mimic of a balcony used by the priests to preach sermons back then, preserved reptiles and human organs etc.

Shell of a tortoise

The piano

What caught my attention was this really old Piano placed in the corner. I’m sure it was used somewhere between the year 1400-1500, tentatively when the Portuguese landed in town giving rise to Christianity in Mangalore.

Hardware or a computer

  

Gran pa's clock

This maybe nitpicking but,

1. A lot of the stuff at the museum is shoddily dumped with no depicts or write-up of where it came from or who it belonged to or how it was discovered or brought into being.

Turtle

De Dion Bouton - 1906

2.  Its a huge area considering they have a basement to it and yet it is overcrowded. Some things that are placed there are as clear as mud.

For most of you who would be interested, the car to the right is 104 years old, made by a French automobile manufacturer De Dion Bouton. The car belong to P.F Saldanha was sparingly used in those days due to shortage of petrol. It was the largest manufacturer of cars in 1900. The 1903  De Dion Bouton 8 CV is now at Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile

Antiques

3. Maintenance to that place should be given top priority.

Crocodile

4. If faculties are planning on getting their students there, please ensure you do your homework as they would shoot a lot of questions considering they get very inquisitive at their age. Else history would take a back seat, as some idols of rulers or warriors do not have any identification.

If you happen to visit the St. Aloysius College in Mangalore and want to know what is in the entire 36 acre land, then this is one place you surely don’t want to miss. I visited this place twice and it was still not enough to learn J.

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Written and edited by,

Laveena Dsouza