Early morning in the growing town of Mangalore (here: one of the many construction sites across the city, next to our hotel).
Before hitting the road again, we visited a local school supported by Round Table India with their program “Freedom through Education”, that provides basic infrastructure for primary
education all over India, reaching out to about one million children
over a period of 10 years. Many of us had brought gifts and collected money to support the school and the children. We spent a refreshing hour there before leaving for our next destination
During the last night, our mechanics had repaired our rickshaw (over the last three days, it had a constant problem with the second gear, which always slid into neutral after a few seconds - so Thomas had been driving all the time, as he knew how to handle this).
Now, it was finally my turn to drive, I was a bit afraid, but looking forward to it! And guess what happened? Immediately after I took over, the motor started to have constant backfires and lost all its power, we had to stop. Obviously, it was my fault, because I had "no sense of how to drive", "never try to understand how technical things work", "just don't make an effort" - "now you have ruined it!!" It was not Jakob who said these things.
We tried to contact the service car, but none of our phones could make a connection. Another team passing by called them, and half an hour later we were on the road again. It had been a simple spark plug defect, nothing serious. After that, driving was as easy as pie.
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| Quick assistance |
Our next stop was Udupi with its famous Krishna temple and lots of pilgrims, where we were happy to meet the two other Frankfurt teams.
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| Giant temple float |
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| Golden Gate! |
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| Shoe parking |
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| On the road again |
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| Well-deserved rest with other rickshaw wallah colleague. |
Afternoon stop at one of the many beautiful Kerala beaches.
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| The children ignored the danger and threw themselves into the ocean waves. |
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| Others prefered a rest in the shadow, including this friendly dog, for which we managed to organise a little lunch. |
We arrived in Murudshvar much earlier than we had thought and had lots of time to explore the little temple town and its treasures.
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| Most others had even arrived before us. |
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| Cute little things! |
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| Second tallest Shiva statue in the world |
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| Very popular beach! In the last years, Murudeshvar has turned into a vacation spot rather than a pilgrim destination (it had been so far). |
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| Majestic! |
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20 story high temple tower, accessible with a lift - breath-taking view!
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| Temple figs |
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| Strongly protected holy plant (I couldn't identify the species) |
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| Our hotel was the building on the right side, still on temple ground (and therefore serving no alcohol) |
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| Life size temple statues; Indian cows are usually not that fat |
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| Caressing crow couple |
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| Thanks for your assistance in the morning, dear mechanics team!! |
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| The children couldn't get enough of the hotel pool |
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| Splendid night view - the end of another wonderful day! |
