Belur, Halebid and Kervashe

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Road trips are fun. Especially in  the monsoon and immediately after. What better place to experience post-monsoon than South Canara?  Four of us set off in my car just to do that. We left Bangalore early one Friday in November, planning to reach our destination by evening. The destination  being a village called Kervashe near Karkala.

Belur and Halebid

Our first halt was for breakfast at Kamat Yatri Nivas near Channarayapatna. We feasted on idlies and dosas, finishing of the tasty meal with some really nice coffee. Tummies full, we headed towards Belur and Halebid, trusting my Mio C520 GPS for the right directions. It had helped us to stay on track right from when we left home,  without which we would have probably been heading towards Tumkur instead of Hassan.

Just before Halebid, we saw a bunch of guys using a noisy machine to remove the husk from corn ears in the courtyard of a typical country side house.They’d throw a  bucket full of corn ears into the back of the machine, and from the side it would pour freshly de-husked corn.  It was a very interesting sight for us, just as we, with our cameras, were to them   After spending 10-15 mins playing the perfect city slickers by standing and watching these guys at work, we thanked the supervisor and carried on.

Halebid was surprisingly not so crowded when we arrived. Just as we got off the car, there was this guy trying to sell me photos of Kama Sutra poses for rupees 2. He had somehow picked me from our group of four, and he kept repeating the “only rupees 2″ part. Why would I pay him that money when I can see the poses carved in stone for real? Once inside the premises, the girls insisted on hiring the services of a guide, which frankly I wasn’t interested in. The guide was repeatedly stopping for me to catch up with his narration, which I was not because my camera (and the aforementioned poses) held my attention better. Only after Sandeep told him a bunch of times to not wait for me did he realize I am not going to lend my ear. Anyway, I don’t remember what he said and I am sure none of the others do. I do distinctly remember that he had mugged up his lines pretty well and was dropping funny one-liners in broken English at regular intervals. Good fun it was.

After Halebid, we headed out to Belur. The roads were starting to get nasty as would be the case through most of the journey. At one junction we had a choice of either following a confusing sign on the road, or the GPS. And guess what? Our GPS was right, which we learnt after driving 5 km into the wrong direction (which btw was an awesome stretch of road and hence more inviting). We backtracked and took the correct route, which was slowly changing to more of lush, green countryside and less of barren highway. We even managed to stop by a sunflower farm where I did some memorable shooting.

Belur is not too far away from Halebid, but it was lunch time when we got there. So we first stopped at a  restaurant (the only one that looked decent enough). After lunch, we explored the temple premises of Belur. Once again, we hired a guide but this time around we got more than what we paid for. The guide was a very nice chap (so was the first guy actually), and overloaded us with trivia. This combined with the carvings on stone held us spellbound. Belur, unlike Halebid, has a functional temple and so had a lot of Indians doing what most Indians do at temples.  After some customary photos and failed bargaining with a chap selling tiny bronze idols, we headed out to our actual destination – Kervashe. We included a temple halt at Dharmastala for good measure enroute.

Kervashe

The saddest part of most road trips in India are the roads itself. Especially once you get off the National Highways and onto State Highways. The journey from Belur till Charmadi was back breaking and shock-absorber damaging. The roads were very, very bad. But the scenery around was really beautiful, as it is during post-monsoons. We stopped wherever we could, and soaked in everything. There is something about the damp air during the rains which leaves a lingering memory. At the Charmadi ghat, which btw was a decent stretch, we passed by little streams, waterfalls, leaves laden with rain drops and everything you’d expect to see in this season. The experience was really wonderful until we crossed the ghats and hit bad roads again. Now that part, I’d like to forget. The roads only got worse, all the way to Kervashe. And we were terribly behind schedule. One of the tyres gave in, and we had our first flat. The lucky part is that we were already at Kervashe when it happened.

So where or what is Kervashe? You’ll probably not even find it on Google maps (although my GPS did locate the main road). Kervashe is the ancestral village of my sibling friends Sandeep and Aishwarya. They have a huge century old house there and lots of farm land. The place is around 20 km from Karkala, the nearest town. And 20 km in the opposite direction, near Karkala is Nitte, where I did my engineering. So lots of old memories and places to revisit.

It was 10 pm when we reached Kervashe, and we had effectively covered only around 350 km since we left Bangalore at 5 am. We were exhausted, but in great spirits. We had a sumptuous dinner and hit the sack.  Only that I didn’t sleep too well because I knew I had to wake up early to catch the sunrise.

Sunrise the next morning was a little unexciting. I was up and outside shooting by 6 am, much to the surprise of Sandeep’s uncle and aunt. Staying in a house as old and as big as the one in Kervashe and owning farmland means that you need to have a daily routine just like in a factory. So the inhabitants of the house are up by 4 or 5 am, and start their daily activities which includes picking flowers for pooja, milking the cows, soaking rice for ganji (staple breakfast) and of course feeding the dogs. Workers who tend to the farm start coming in after sunrise, so the second part of the routine starts then. In spite of being busy, our hosts were extremely hospitable to us. Of course, only after they could find me. Cos I was away, somewhere deep inside the surrounding woods photographing bugs and insects

By 8 am my lazy companions were up and we finally got started on the walk to a nearby river we had planned the previous night. Prithvi, Sandeep’s 6 year old cousin was our guide.  Prithvi is one happy child. His backyard has more trees than you can count, his best friends are two eccentric dogs and his playground is paddy and rubber plantation farms. Nice no?

Now one thing about the monsoon season in coastal places is that in spite of all the charm rainfall brings, when it isn’t raining, the humidity levels are generally high. So by the time we reached the river, we were sweating quite a bit. We also caught a brief shower on the way, which only added to the fun. It was 9 am when we got to the river, and it was not as charming as it would have been had we got there at 6 or 7 am. Nevertheless, I got my off-camera lighting kit outside the bag and did some portraits with the strobes.

Hunger calling, we reached home after spending an hour or so by the river. Mid-day showers followed breakfast. Mid-day showers are awesome and dramatic. We hung around indoors and watched the rain. Reminded me so much of my summer holidays   Lunch and an afternoon siesta later, we  headed out to Karkala to relive some old memories. We also had to fix our flat tyre, and catch up with a common friend. Sandeep met some old buddies while the girls and I feasted on some local chat once we got there. It was 6 pm, and the skies turned threatening once again which I found totally exciting. I was planning to click thunderbolts after climbing up to the hill where the Gomata statue stands. But all three girls freaked out at the idea because they thought I’d be struck by lightening. I was reprimanded for my crazy notions and made to shut up and eat my chaat So much for planning your award winning Nat Geo shot.

If daylight gave us visual treats, evening time set us on a nostalgic journey as we drove back to our college to drop the common friend. It was dark, but that only meant we had to visualize a lot from old memories. Nothing much had changed in Nitte, and yet everything seemed new. It has been 10 years now, but it felt like just yesterday I was cycling back to my room, 4 km away from college, near this tiny village called Kemmanu where three of us stayed. Or it was only last week that I was walking back on the same road at night, with only starlight and the eeriness of glow worms on one particular tree to show me the way. Sandeep and I were college mates, so this time we were the guides and dropping trivia all along the way.  Those four years of college were the most significant in my life (as in any one’s life), and so many times in the recent past I have wondered how different things would have been if I had a DSLR in my hands back then. We had so much time on our hands and nothing to do. We had so many beautiful places around and only conversations to make memories with. But that is how life goes.

It was 8:30 pm when we reached the hostel gates where we bid goodbye to our companion of short duration and headed back to Kervashe. Post dinner, the girls and I headed a little away from the house into the courtyard where I set up my gear for photographing star trails. Spooky stories filled the air as I was doing my thing, and I shared my bit of ghost tales to keep the spirits high (pun intended).  Shots of star trails weren’t happening as expected because of cloudy skies, so we headed back in for some good sleep.

Back to Bangalore

The next morning was when we were to leave Kervashe back to Bangalore. We kept procrastinating our start time, and honestly none of us wanted to leave. I didn’t waste the opportunity of the extra time the delay gave me, and I was back in the woods shooting. But all good things must come to an end, and so it was soon time to say good bye to simple living, clean air and the mischievous Prithvi. We had planned two more appointments en route – breakfast at Sandeep’s uncle’s house in Karkala, and lunch in my cousin’s house in Ujire. Everything went as per schedule, with the only hitch being the parathas for breakfast didn’t permit me to do justice to lunch.  Or maybe it did, because 10 km away from Ujire we hit a flat again. This time it was a little worrying. Being a Sunday we couldn’t find a vulcanization shop, we were behind schedule and we’d soon be in the ghat section with no spare tyre. After throwing some ideas back and forward (which included an extended vacation in Ujire) we decided to say our prayers and continue our journey. Luckily we covered the ghat section with no further problems, and had the flat fixed near Chickmaglur when we reached there around 5. Thanks to the delay and bad roads, we had reached only Belur by dinner time. After food, Sandeep (who did most of the driving on this trip) wore his F1 hat and got us to Bangalore in 4 hours. It was around 3 am when I dropped off my travel companions at their respective houses and reached home for some well deserved R&R after 3 fun filled days.

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