As the sun broke through the darkness of the night, and the first rays filtered out through the cocunut palms, our train hurtled through the beautiful unspoilt, unexploited farmlands and cocunut groves of north western Karnataka enroute from Goa to Mangalore. Looking out, you cannot help but notice that the villages and their people have a beautiful virgin innocence about them. There's no plastic clogging the drains along the road, you don't see ugly concrete structures and garishly painted signboards advertising the material needs of our civilizations. People have genuine smiles on their faces. When you thank them, their faces light up with a genuine happiness and gratefulness that warms your heart and makes you want to hug them.
The jungles are beautiful, the majestic trees framing themselves so elegantly against the blue skies, and dense undergrowth jostling for space with beautiful coffee plantations.
The roads are bad, and the traffic discipline, in the best of times, is pretty horrible. Buses zoom past you on the impossibly narrow lanes that pass off as national highways, the conductor frantically waving his hand out and expecting you to magically make way for the bus to squeeze back in front of you before the incoming traffic reaches you, narrowly missing the collision and leaving you gasping for breath. Unless, of course, everyone is waiting for the convoy of elephants to cross the road. And all the while, the traffic police with their upturned hats do their best to bring method in the madness...
Yenna Rascala, you Kannadiga, take a bow for your beautiful state, and your beautiful people...
Note: I have been to Karnataka dozens of times in the past, but this trip to Coorg was the first time I was in rural western Karnataka in over a decade.
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