Mangalore, India

Friday December 8, Mangalore, India.
Guides name today is ROSHIN

This morning at 8.00am, the ship docked in Mangalore, India. Mangalore is a small town with a population of around 1 million people. The religious breakdown is 70% Hindu, 14% Christian,15% Muslims and one percent belonging to a mix of other religions.
Mangalore is known as the hub of education, having 3 universities, 16 engineering colleges, 5 medical colleges and a number of colleges offering paramedic courses. English is taught in all junior schools, in addition to their choice of two other languages so many students will be adept at speaking 3 languages.
Occupations are farming, and fishing with 300 varieties of fish caught off the coast but surprisingly, we were told there was virtually no egg or meat production.

Our 5 hour tour today is Karkala and Moodbidri Temple. The tour was supposed to start at 8:30 but there was quite a delay waiting for the ship to clear customs. Looking out from our verandah, we could see a large welcoming committee on the pier, including some bare-chested drummers, and two ladies dressed in elaborate ceremonial costumes. A beautiful walk-through canopy led us to the customs area.
Mangalore is quite a modern city with an almost 100% literacy rate. It was slightly cleaner than our previous stops in India and in some locations, it was very much cleaner.

Our first stop, after a 1 hour drive, was to the state of Karkala to visit a religious statue of Lord Gomateshwara. The tallest monolithic statue in India, Gomateshwara is dedicated to Lord Bahubali who is said to have meditated motionless for 12 years in a standing posture (kayotsarga) and that during this time, climbing plants grew around his legs. After his 12 years of meditation, Bahubali is said to have attained omniscience. Carved out of a single block of granite, the statue, situated at the very top of a hill, depicts Lord Gomateshwara a Jain saint and stands 60 feet tall. But first, we had to climb a fairly strenuous 212 stairs to get there, in 32C heat, but all of us did fine as well as coming back down. Peter and I agreed that it was a lot of work to see a dirty statue!
After that we visited Sloan Farm, a spice plantation and were led on a tour by the male owner.
Next another Hindu temple called the Thousand Pillar Moodbidi Temple . And just to show you how complicated things are in India, it is also known as Sri Rudreshwara Temple. The temple was built in 1163, badly damaged in 1397-1399 by the Tughlag Dynasty invasion. As usual, we were required to remove our shoes, but they weren’t as strict as in previous temples so men in shorts and women without head covers where allowed in. The temple is remarkable, in part, because each of the 1000 pillars are carved with different designs and characters such that none of them are the same. The Temple is like others, enormous in size but we were able to only visit the relatively small area where the pillars are. Areas we didn't see consisted of a large monolith of Nandi, (Lord Shiva's sacred bull), and the the three deities of Lord Visnu, Shiva and Surya Deva. I told you it was complicated!
The trip back to the ship was rather quiet because we were all tired tourists.
It is remarkable that there aren’t more accidents or deaths. In fact, we hadn’t seen any accidents to this point. As close as I can figure out, the rule seems to be that everything is ok, regardless of which direction you’re going, what you are driving or what lane you are in, so long as you don’t hit anything. It’s very scary.

Our trip today ended a little earlier than most and we had an opportunity to relax and have a swim on the pool deck. As the ship departed, there was an exuberant farewell performance on the pier with dancing, drum beating, and lots of local people waving us goodbye.
Dinner tonight was at the meatball place a.k.a, the Italian restaurant Sette Marie, and the entertainment which we said we wouldn’t go to, but did, was two brothers tap dancing to a wide variety of music. It was surprisingly very enjoyable.Read more