The fourth K a.k.a Random Trip #4 -- Turtle Bay Resort Kundapur

The last trip which was to Belur-Haleebedu (I know I haven't blogged about it) left us very apprehensive of NH4 traffic, so this time we started a full hour earlier at 0730 than the last time around. But this time surprisingly there was not much traffic on NH4, and we did good time reaching Neelamangla soon. After that we took the diversion to NH48. Now NH48 is a two lane highway and has lots of curves and mostly empty compared to NH206 which is pretty much straight and has 4 lanes at most places. But I was zipping at 100kmph on NH48 when I had to round a curve and did a U-turn that made sure we went to 100-0kmph in about 10 seconds and a radius of about a couple of metres. No small contribution was due to the fact that Comfortably Numb was playing while I was driving. Anyway the photo down here will pretty much show how the ABS of my car got tested and passed with flying colors.



We took a diversiona at Channarayapatna and had breakfast at the Kamath there. At around 11am we started and hit Hasan soon and then Sakleshpur. The road degraded a lot from here on and the view was not very scenic either. We were crawling along and the Ghats section roads were atrocious. We somehow managed to reach Mangalore at about 1700 hours. Just before that at around 1500 hours we had lunch at a very shady place called Highway Inn. After Mangalore we hit NH17 and went towards Udipi. NH17 is a very narrow NH and there is a lot of traffic as well on it. So we had to give the car over to our slowest and safest driver.

We were given to believe that the resort was very close to Mangalore so our original plan was to leave Bangalore at 0400 and hit the resort sometime in the afternoon. Instead we left at 0730 and then came to know that the resort is more like 150km from Mangalore. So all said and done we reached Kundapur only about 1845.

Our ounly source of entertainment (my guitar CD and a collection of songs which seemed to have far too many Himesh Reshamiyya on it notwithstanding) was the commentary of the India-WI cricket match on Vividh Bharati. By the time we reached Kundapur we knew the sum total of ODI runs scored by Ganguly, Dravid and Sachin.

There was more disappointment to await us at Kundapur. We were 5 of us and had booked a room for 3 people and a cabana for 2. We reached only to be told that the person suposed to vacate a room had not done so and we 5 of us had to fit into one cabana. We also ended up missing the sunset.

There was a bonfire planned for the night and we just got a few mats and lied down on the beach next to the bonfire. By the time we had dinner and reached the tent all we could think of was sleep.

Next morning we got up at 0700 and played beach volleyball and then went into the sea with the waves. Yours truly realised on coming back that we had not emptied our pockets so our mobile went phut and so did the car remote. We tried a manual enter into the car only for it to start beeping really loudly. After some frantic calls to about 20 different people we found the software hack to open it manually and then finally started off at around 1100 from Kundapur.

This time we decided to hit NH206 instead of NH48 so we went north on NH17 and took a diversion to reach Kollur from where we hit Hosanagara. The drive through this section of the ghats was very good with a narrow winding road but minimal traffic. The view of the forests on either side of us was also truly awesome. We hit Hosanagara at about 1300 and then did good time to reach Shimoga by 1500. We had lunch at an awful dhaba and then drove all the way till the Kamat in Neelamangala where we reached at around 2000 and decided to have dinner there. The meals there were quite awful.

By the time we reached Bangalore the time was 2200 and we had about 50/- and about a litre of fuel left in the car.

The resort is worth visiting and the beach looks great. But definitely to enjoy the resort you need to stay there for at least a day and drive through a better route. Unlike us who reached there and left before we could even have the feel that we are on a holiday.

And yes do not get into the sea with your car remote and mobile phones.