Day 15: Kankon – Ankola

In the morning, we decided to try a shortcut given on the map instead of the roundabout highway route, only to discover there are no bridges across the two creeks of Tapona and Galjibaga. Determined to have our shortcut, we pushed our cycles up to the Konkan Railway line, and followed it all the way across Galgibaga. Perhaps the highway might have taken lesser time, but this was something new. We nonplussed a few KRC workers who just couldn’t understand our idea of leaving the highway to cycle on rail tracks.


Across the creek at Maxem, we dismounted the tracks and met the highway. Here we had our breakfast of a strange kind of “Goan bread”, which looked like puris.

The highway was wide and smooth, and we made good pace to cross the Karnataka border and reach Chittakula some 7km before Karwar. Here we had to wait while Krishnan cycled back to search for his watch, which he’d forgotten at the border. He couldn’t find it. Finally, we went on to Karwar and had decent food.

Karwar has a beautiful bay and coastline, and supposedly a fine harbour. We pushed our cycles through the sand to rest in a pine grove just before the beach, keeping an eye out for crap, lovers and buffalos.

Since no one had a watch now, nor the enthusiasm to remove the alarm clock from the bag, the time flew and before we knew it, it was five. We had GKRs and took the highway for Ankola (33km). After the first few ghats, this was a really tireless ride through forest. Now we understood how a kilometre on a highway (rather, a national highway) is different from a kilometre on a country road.

We saw the Konkan Rail almost all the way to Ankola. Apparently there's a train from Mangalore up to Kankon, which explained why the signals on the lines were working. At Ankola, we used our Kannadas (Madhu, me, and a smattering of Krishnan) at the Police Station and got accomodation in a veranda, near a mini-temple of sorts. Then went for dinner, during which none of us drank the extremely suspect water served. Even at the Police Station, there's very little drinking water but enough general water for a bath.

Sleeping now at eleven. Will try to wake up early tomorrow. Let’s see…