Mangalore, you're awesome!!

Mangalore is well known for it's scenic beaches, the exquisite cuisine and of-course for it's humid weather. I've always enjoyed all the three, but apart from this, Mangalore has one amazing asset, the people. The people here are very warm, helpful and sweet.

I am not a Mangalorean, but I am blessed to be the son of a Mangalorean (my mother is a mangalorean). Thanks to her I've had the privilege to visit the city numerous times.

As a kid, I always wanted to drive to Mangalore. Driving through the scenic route with mighty Sahyadri surrounding you along with the ravening sharavthi showing a flew glimspes of itself along the way. I was always in awe of this scenic highway and I would always be glued to the window seat in the bus, gazing at the outside world all along the way, whenever we took the day bus.

After I'd reach Mangalore, I would trouble my uncles so much to take me to the beach and finally when they did take me to the beach, I just couldn't come back, a whole day  was not enough for me.

Now, none of my relatives live there and hence I don't get many opportunities to visit the place and needles to say, I miss that place.

Recently, for deepavali, I'd a lucky break from work, a string of four back to back holidays and without a second's hesitation I headed to Mangalore with my parents.

This time around, there was a surprise, my long standing dream was fulfilled, with my parents and me driving to Mangalore along the serene western ghats. Dad let me on the wheel and I didn't let go of it for the rest of the journey.

Life is full of all kinds of surprises, luckily the journey wasn't on, everything was smooth and easy.

We reached mangalore in about six hours.

We'd to go to a particular place to reach our place of stay, but since we were not that acquainted with Mangalore, we had to do some interrogation.

To our luck we found a gem, an auto driver, who came about a hundred pace towards me, just to guide me to my destination. He explained the route to me with utmost patience and enthusiasm, realising we were guests to his wonderful city, he left no stone unturned to ease our quest of reaching the destination. To our luck, he found a customer who wanted to go to the same place we'd to go and so, he directed us to follow him. Throughout the way, he was always watching closely if were were following him or not, his eyes constanly monitoring our movement.

After a brief drive, we arrived at our destination, the autodriver signalled to us, that we'd arrived at our destination. He did this with a wide smile on his face. I stared at him for a couple of seconds with a same wide smile, I shouted 'thank you' and then reached the place where we'd to stay. 

After settling down, I just laid back and rewinded the whole incident in my mind and I felt so happy at the gesture of this autodriver, for a while I was lost in thoughts and felt so glad about the kind of welcome that the mangalore city gave to us in the form of this person. Going to Mangalore was, is and will always be a special thing.

For those of you haven't visited Mangalore, my only piece of advice, pack your bags and head straight to Mangalore, it's going to give you loads of scenic beaches to visit and some mouthwatering cuisine, serene countryside and finally the warm people who are going to make your visit an experience like never before and make you want to visit Mangalore again and again.

Traveller's advice, the road in the ghat section is horrible, you'll have to go at snail's pace to make sure you and your car doesn't suffer unless you're in a humve.

This is Vattam signing off!