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