By 4:30, we were in Agumbe, the fictitious Malgudi made real by Shankarnag. I mean, it is here that the ace director imagined and brought to life all features of Malgudi, a fictitious town created by the legendary Indian writer R K Narayan in his novels.
@image: Agumbe, the Cheerapunji of south India.
Agumbe is known as the Cheerapunji of the south. Cheerapunji recorded the highest rainfall in a day in India. Agumbe has that credit in the south. The sleepy village of Agumbe has its own charm unmatched. Many of the poets in Kannada have praised this valley of green thru their works of art, immortalising it.
Agumbe is known for its Sunset view. Since it was on a cloudless day that we travelled here, how could we miss it? Though we had another two hour’s journey left for the day, we decided to stay back to witness the much-hyped sunset. 2 more hours for the spectacle, We tried hiking up the hill, and were disappointed to find nothing interesting over there; we tried taking rest on the muddy road for a while, but the passing vehicles alerted us; There was another group of college students that had come to witness the sunset, they reminded us of all the pranky times we had in college; there were monkeys as well to our company; Prashanth tried to capture some of these visuals thru his SLR camera.
@image: The Sunset view.
Finally at around 6:15PM sun showed some mercy on us and his sharpness slowly diminishing gladdened us. He pleased us more when he actually took a position to dive in the sea that was visible afar. Changing colours of the sky had in them an angel spirit and an imaginary radiant grill. The amazing turn of events before our naked eyes mesmerised us. Sun changing colours from sharp cream to light pink and then to pleasant orange had in him magical opium that gave us all a kick we were unaware of. Sun went on his journey from being a bad hazy boy of sharpness to a ball of apple, from being a huge mischievous man to a silky blossoming young woman, from being a demon of yellow to an angel of the sky. He was delightful in appearance and blessed in nature.Though the same sun and same sky we get here in the city, his abnormal naughty behaviour in display at Agumbe was an unforgettable indomitable experience for me. It was for me a skilful show of strength by nature, which I admired superlatively. With such a decorative sun taking a dive in the sea, we were on our saddles again towards his direction, to west, to the coast, as if in search of him.
Udupi was about a 2 hours’ ride from the Agumbe viewpoint. The road from atop the hill till the foothills is a single way carved out of the mountain, dressed in concrete, a highly creepy one. One must be very careful to be driving along here, he must be guarded against a vehicle coming in the opposite direction, must guard himself against the dangers of the darkness, the dead slope, steep, ghat road could deceive anyone. The hairpin bends across this road are better covered under sunlight, or else the dead steep valley beside the road could be as dangerous. We managed to reach the foothill of this enormous mountain before it was too dark, and so, we saved on some of the adventures at least. We were in Udupi in no time, at around 8:15 night, surpassing the famed educational town of Manipal.
We checked into a hotel suggested by our Udupi friend, and this special host of Udupi was waiting for us and we couldn’t wait anymore to meet him.
For wonderful sunset view pics from Agumbe, click here.To be continued………….Day I:
Bengalooru -> Nelamangala -> Kunigal -> Chennarayapattana -> Hassana -> Belur -> Yagachi -> Chikkamagalooru -> Balehonnuru -> Sringeri -> Agumbe -> Seethanadi -> Udupi
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