Bekal Fort and Kasargod (Kerala)

Another of the long weekends, this time around Easter Sunday, decided to visit Manish, a friend of mine working at Bekal (Kerala) on one of the upcoming high end luxury resorts. With everyone having travels plans for long weekends and with almost all buses full, though managed to find a single seat in one of the Airavat Volvos, thanks to excellent KSRTC services.

To reach to Bekal, an overnight KSRTC Volvo from Bangalore to Kasargod seems like the best option. Comfortable night journey starting from Bangalore goes past Mysore and then through Coorg region (this place immediately took the first priority for my next long weekend gateways ;) leading Kasargod at early morning at 6... local Kerala transport buses allow you to get to Bekal in next 20mins...

...I had to take the local bus to reach Palakunnu (Manish's gaon ;) ... mere 20 mins drive past Kasargod, Pallakunnu is just one of the tiny little village lying in God’s own country. Quiet laid back lifestyle with quiet backwaters... surrounded by green landscapes of rice fields and coconut plantation all around... laterite stone hills and Mangalore tiled roofs all over adding that red tint to predominant green landscape, everything just revives the typical image of Kerala village you have in your mind. I guess I have been lucky to witness the actual non touristy parts of Kerala (thanks to Sahil and now Manish) to explore the actual Kerala in here...

... there is practically nothing touristy about this place except for proximity with Bekal Fort. After a quick breakfast with typical warm water of Kerala (...reminded me of all food times we had at of India Coffee House... though I couldn’t expect this place anywhere closer to it...), we headed ourselves at the Site where Manish is presently slogging ;) .... nice pristine plots of land under Khanna Hotels Group, along the river where this resort is shaping up was quite a sight... walk across the upcoming resort under construction was quite informative and entertaining...thanks to Manish ;)... though I clicked lot of pics, am not uploading them to save Manish’s life ;)

... till the time Manish was working on site, I decided to go ahead and visit the only ‘tourist attraction’ out here... .the ‘Bekal Fort’ ... apparently the biggest fort in Kerala, spreading over 40 acres...

...with glimpses of this fort seen years back in Maniratnam’s ‘Bombay’, I had not imagined the scale of the fort to be that huge... especially when the sun was pouring heat, immediately I realised that its absolutely not a good idea to be here in these parts at least in noon times... but I had no options... as the case with most of our monuments, you are welcomed by that protected rather caged archaeology board with no information what so ever on the fort or the history (.. or maybe they don’t want you to spoon-feed you and expect tourist to do their homework before they come... possible ;) ... essentially a defence architecture, even this fort is more like huge linear fort walls with bastions enclosing a huge empty piece of land where apparently some old structures must have been there as seen from the plinths and some of the remains... the only structure remains today visible is the striking ‘observation tower’...

... some of the views of the Bekal beach though fort bastions are quite amazing... am sure this place will be great relief for surrounding villages during evening times ... Bekal Resort Development Corporation (BRDC) is now taking up some initiatives to develop new activities and facilities for tourists...

... concluding the afternoon visit to Bekal, I headed back to Palakunnu to go to Kasargod in turn. ... YES YEM YES (SMS) travels is what I saw as I got down from bus and Manish decided to took me to one of the best places to eat in Kasargod ;) .....

... with an interesting celone paratha for lunch, we made a move from tiny village of palakunnu to relatively bigger town of Kasargod... though we didn’t get time to visit the ‘Malik Dinar Masjid’, this famous mosque is apparently worth a visit. Local transport buses from Kasargod took us to Kumbala, where we were heading to visit the ‘Sri Anantha Padmanabhswami Temple’. This 8^th century temple located in quite an isolated place and untouched by any construction activities nearby. Built with laterite stone, the temple lies in the middle of fresh water lake.

...Again our timing was not correct as the temple is closed in the afternoons and opens only after 5.30pm, so we were not fortunate enough to witness the main shrine from inside and the beautifully painted interior walls, murals and wooden carvings inside of the temple...

...as the case with most of our religious places, interesting stories that are linked with these religious structures, this temple has story links with a ‘crocodile’ residing in the temple complex. The temple people call it ‘Babia’ and there goes a long story of why it is of great importance here... apparently this Babia is a vegetarian crocodile being in the temple complex... hmm... interesting.... ;)

We could not go inside the temple so we spend time in blazing sun waiting to see if this Babia actually exist ;) ... and guess what we actually got glimpse of it ... she was enjoying cool waters while we were getting drained off in that heat ;) ... but no doubt was fun to sit around that lake and see people’s reactions and different approaches taken by then to call a crocodile out of water... sometimes you wonder how we treat and call all animals as if they are next door dogs, cats or cows... quite funny ;)

... almost completely dehydrated in that heat, we made a move back to our small village. With next day plans for Mangalore and Udipi in mind, IPL T20 Mumbai Indian’s match was the ideal end to the days play J

... Udupi - Mangalore ...

... with a bit of struggle on Manish’s part, spending the night working on site, we managed to get to local railway station near Palakunnu to catch the 9.10 am train to Mangalore to execute our travel plans. An hour long journey took us to Mangalore station. Near to town hall of Mangalore, there are plenty of bus options for Udipi. Being in Karnataka, again you can take advantage of the KSRTC Volvo bus services that drop you to Udipi in an hours time... Again we were roaming around in the middle of the day with blazing sun ;)

... Udipi essentially is famous for ‘Sri Krishna Matt’ and the ‘Udipi Cuisine’ (Apparently this is supposed to be the birth place for ‘Masala Dosa’) ... 5 mins of walk from the main bus depot of Udipi is the famous ‘Sri Krishna Matt’, founded by the Vaishnavite saint Shri Madhvacharya in the 13th century.

Even in that blazing sun, there was quite a long queue to enter the matt. Surrounding the temple were series of chariots dedicated to lord Krishna. Apart from the wooden chariots the matt has exclusive ‘Golden chariot’ and ‘Navgraha Chariot’ kept under high security and only a window left to have a look at them.

The temple has its uniqueness in its orientation of deity and administrative structure.

As with the religious stories, Lord Krishna in this temple faces towards the Kanakana Kindli (named after devotee Kanakdasa who used to see Lord Krishna from here) To this day, the deity of Lord Krishna faces its back to the temple towards the Kanakana Kindi. All Hindu temples have their Vigraha (Deity) facing the entrance of the temple, except Krishna Mutt.

As for the administrative structure, Shri Madhvacharya, the founder of this matha handed over the puja and administration of Krishna Mutt to his 8 disciples. Each of them set up their Mathas around Krishna Mutt, known as the Ashta Mathas. Since then, the daily sevas (offerings to god) and administration of the Krishna Mutt are managed by the Ashta Mathas, each of these perform temple management activities for two years in a cyclical order. During the Paryaya festival, held every two years, the temple management is handed over to the next Matha.

After the simple and special prasad at Temple Bhajanalaya, we visited two other temples in the same complex. As we came out of temple, the town of Udipi was already enjoying afternoon nap and we decided to make a move towards city life of Mangalore... journey to Mangalore through KSRTC Volvo full of young crowd from Manipal Institute was a serious change from spiritual, quite setting to the city culture and movie schedules ;)

As we landed in one of the hotspots of Mangalore city, Bharat Mall, we were back to Pantaloons and Pizza Huts... Manish finally got chance to enjoy some pizza after being trapped in the village for a month ;) ... we had no time in our hand to look at Mangalore sights so we just decided to hang around in this mall till the time we both had our buses ready to pick us up to drop to our daily destinations... Quite an exhaustive trip I must say but for sure was a good change and now I was all set for even challenging journey to Bangalore being on the last seat of KSRTC Rajahansa ;)