My Subramanian Trip

It all began with my mothers commitment to get my "sarp dosha" removed. For the unknown this is when someone has killed a snake or was an accessory to the killing of a snake, it makes the gods angry. So my mother wanted me to visit Kukke Subramanya and do a pooja so that luck and fortunes falls into place.

The tour began with me getting up at 6.00 in the morning, we left in our gleaming black swift towards Dharwad. The first coffee break came after the tantalizing khambatki ghat in Satara. The cofee break consisted of Idli Wada Sambhar and cofee, next stop was Dharwad. Reached Dharwad by 13.00 and the relatives there were waiting for us to arrive. Our mami there is famous for her sambhar so it was rice and sambar for lunch which was delicious. After having rested for a couple of hours the night consisted of us guys drinking on the terrace before dinner. By us I mean a couple of cousins and me. The seniors had their party which we are supposed to sit and enjoy them drinking. Offcourse we could not just let them drink and us be sober after all the young guys also have the need to enjoy themselves but we had to do it alone as having booze with the seniors means we in the "list" which is not a very good idea.

The most intriguing part of having alcohol with the cousins is the hiding and drinking it within a time frame of 30 minutes. I have had smaller parties before but this is really really exciting as you know the seniors are in the house, have to finish before somebody comes up and after finishing one has to be super sober trying hard to not let others know about our terrace party.

The morning of 10^th Good Friday marked the beginning of our journey towards Subramanya.

This is what our rid looked like, it was a 30 seater mini bus with blue and purple lights in the inside with blaring kanada songs. We left early in the morning at 5.00 to pick up the other relative from the city. In all we were 22 of us with only 4 youngsters and two of them including me were the only ones un-married. The oldies were all my grand mothers brothers, sisters and their families. The first break came is as a pee break on the highway to ankola which connects NH4 with the konkan highway, here is what the road looked like. The roads were good but the traffic mainly composed of stray busses overtaking their ways onto our side of the road.

Reached Yellapura at around 9.00 for breakfast, had good idli vada sambhar with some good coffee. Yup idli wada sambhar is like the defacto breakfast, everywhere in the south you get and its good. The hot breakfast resulted in all of us wanting to empty our stomachs as no was actually able to shit anything at 5.00 in the morning.

The first leg of the trip was from Dharwad to Subramanya directly. Idalunji temple was the first temple enroute, we reached there at around noon believe me when I say this it was really really hot, scorching is the right word. This temple is one of the two temples in India which has a standing Ganesh Idol. I am sorry I don’t have any pictures to support this but you may take my word for it. We were supposed to have our lunch their but we were asked to wait for an hour so it was decided against. The next temple en route to subramanya was the Ganesh temple at Kunddapura, a beautiful coastal town full of good looking tullu girls. We were the last ones who were served food their, which mainly, no no not mainly which only consisted of Rice Sambhar and Saar. The servings of Rice there is something one has to see to believe its like what me and mother eat for two days in a single serving. Crazy is the amount of rice us south Indians can consume, really amazing.

From there next we stopped at Hukadnoor at around 1600 for some tea and snacks. The snacks part was basically divided between all of us, some were asked to make ladoos. We were asked to bring bakery items, things like biscuits cakes and stuff. All those things were used as snacks during the journey in the bus. The interesting thing to mention here is that some of the nanis actually decided to get them selves Gobi manchurian. Now this small portion of manchurian looked like some really scary red shit, they had to have it anyways and so was it.

We reached Dharmasthal at around 1800, you will not belive me when I say this but I actually saw a shiny green Jaguar. No no I am not lying I have pictures to support this. One of the guys from our group knows the owner of this beautiful vehicle and told me that a amount of 78 lakhs was paid to get this car imported from Dubai.

Reached Subramanya at around 20:00 hrs on Friday night. The elders wanted us to have food with them at the temple again which us (by us I mean the youngsters) were not very keen on. So we decided to get our selves a little tipsy. By law they do not sell any sort of liquor or cigarettes or any form of tobacco in the town. But alcohol has its way of being found, has a way to seep up through the ground if the need be. So it was meant to be for us to have a little for the ordeal lying ahead of us the next day.

We were woken up at 5.30 and asked to be ready to move by 6.00. Walked bare foot to the temple got ourselves registered for the pooja, and waited for other to come which lasted for almost hour and a half. We were waiting inside the temple, now that there were thousands of devotees who come from all around the country, this was like one super hot and sweaty place to be in. Once everyone was there, we had to get ourselves a pujari who does the ashlesha pooja. The pujari started his thing taking care of us one at a time. I have the craziest wackiest of relatives possible, one of the mama actually started a conversation with the pujari and it was fun to watch them pull each others leg. Ashlesha pooja is the one which is supposed to take care of the "Sarp Dosha" in ones kundli. Majority of the devotees come here for this pooja and some nice good looking tullu chicks were also present.

All the religious things got over by around 11:00 and by that Sun shining all its glory on us. We the brave ones who had walked barefoot in the morning were not finding it really difficult to walk on the burning tarmac, by time we reached the rooms our feet were red and very close to blisters had started appearing on the foot. Slept for a good two hours after the strenuous ordeal, well prepared dahi rice was served to everyone in their rooms. An approximate of 4 people were put up in one room, accompanying me and mom were Vasu Mama and his wife. Vasudev Datar is the younger brother of my grand mother. He is the eldest male living in the family tree after my nani.

The second leg of the trip was at Dharmasthal. You know the most amazing thing about this place was the capitalism they had in place. The whole place is governed by a single ruler, he was involved in the establishing the temples and the city around it. People actually get into a line to meet him, and its like he is to be consented even if you want to open a tea stall. Our stay was arranged in this lodge which had around 500 rooms/floor and 4 floors. The specialty of the lodge was that if all rooms were occupied they would allow people to stay in the lobby for free and allowed them to use the common bathrooms. And guess what our very own tyrant owns similar 5-6 lodges in the place. The guy fucking owns a Jaguar man.. He is like the god father of the town.


Having slept in Dharmasthal we next headed to Udupi, the magical coastal place which is famous for its Lord Krishna temple and the awesomely hot Tullu chicks. The Krishna temple is actually built the inverse, better said the Idol is facing the back of the temple, so its his back facing the temple entrance. It was weird and like all other places it was full of people, millions of them.

It is sometimes astonishing how many people here in India can actually believe in this concept of religion. Does it make so much of sense that people are ready to go to any means just to get a glimpse of an idol. Everyone has their own options, choices just find it difficult to digest the fact that one would be willing to give oneself so much of pain just to get blessing. Isn't is supposed to be the other way round, if they put as much of an effort to do better will they not succeed in their endeavours.