Mangalore - Bekal

 Visited Mangalore and Bekal between Sep 30 and Oct 3 2026. This was a short trip 3 days and 2 nights. 

September 30

We started from Chennai on Sep 30th. Booked in Mangalore Mail which starts from Chennai at 20:10. Since this was a long journey booked in two tier. To experience little bit of luxury was another reason. Bought dinner at Central because I was not sure if they would sell food within the train. The train started on time and on the way it rained in few placed. 

Oct 1 - Day 1

There was a hopeless crowd in the adjacent coupe who were making lot of noise from 5 AM. So woke up early morning and was listening to their boring jokes and absorbing the scenery outside. The family family woke up late (I had to wake them up so they enjoy the scenery). Most of the crowd got down at Kozhikode around 8 AM. The noise making crowd got down at Quillandi. After that the compartment was almost empty. The mistake I made was I did not buy breakfast at Kozhikode assuming they will be selling inside the train but unfortunately no vendor came. Luckily we had some left over roti from dinner and the kids had to satisfy themselves with that. Me and my wife had to skip breakfast.

The train reached Mangalore 20 mins earlier around 12 PM. I had booked our rooms in Metro Plaza. As expected it was very close to the station. We simply walked to the hotel. We freshened up and went to the restaurant inside the hotel and found it was heavily crowded. So we headed out to another restaurant. 

We then walked to St.Aloysious Chapel. It was almost 1 KM from the station and we noticed the roads were not flat it was uphill and downhill. The chapel has some beautiful paintings. From there I had to choose between Tannirbhavi and Panambur beach and I chose Tannirbhavi a blue flag beach. We took an auto from there to Sultan Bathery and took a ferry to Tannirbhavi. There was very less crowd. The sand was nice and soft. We spent some time there and took ferry back to Sultan Bathery. From there we took an auto to Bharath Mall. I had to choose between Pabbas in that Mall and the classic Pabbas for ice cream. We decided to go to the classic one which was at walkable distance from the mall. I think the location is called Lalbagh if I am right.

Pabbas was crowded but we gave our names at the entrance and decided to wait. We were called in just few mins. We ordered the famous Gadbad and Tiramisu and it was good. But I couldn't say if it was the best as I find all ice creams good.

Finally took an auto back the hotel. After some rest went out to a restaurant and had our dinner.

Oct 2 - Day 2

We had a good breakfast at Metroplaza and checked out at 0930 AM. I had already booked a cab to take us from there to Bekal Village Homestay.

One the way we visited Ananthapura Lake temple. It is located in a beautiful green lake. We went around the temple. From there we went to Chandragiri fort but unfortunately it was closed as it was Gandhi Jayanthi, We climbed the small hill and then came back. From there we went through the Chandragiri river and made a short stop at a beautiful locale. Spent some peaceful time there. From there we headed straight to our place of stay. 

Bekal Village Homestay is located around 2 KMs from the beach. It is located inside a farm house and close by to a huge river, The location was beautiful than I had imagined. The family liked it. Since we reached around 1230 which was little earlier than they expected we had to wait for an hour for the room as cleaning was in progress.

The villa was beautiful as well. Spacious with glass walls giving beautiful view of the farm outside. It also had a kitched incase we decide to cook.

We took off from there around 1515 to visit Bekal Fort. Bekal Fort looked small from outside but it is a huge fort. You need minimum an hour to visit it. We went around the fort. It offers some excellent views of the sea. From there we went to Bekal Beach. There is a park there where you need to buy tickets. There are some adventure activities there and a pet zoo for which you have to pay separately. We bought some gift items there and returned to the room. On they way we had bought some dinner and Pazham Porichathu.

Oct 3 - Day 3

Our last day of the trip we checked out around 10 from Homestay after complimentary breakfast. I had reserved a houseboat at Valiyaparamba Lake. It was approximately an hours drive and we reached the place around 11 AM. The house boat was awesome it had a party speaker. The staff were friendly they gave us fruit juice and some snacks. We spent 2 hours in the boat and returned. The next stop was Vayalpara Park and on the way we stopped at a restaurant for lunch.

Vayalpara park was almost deserted. It has a long floating walk on top of the lake. There is a small theme park inside. In the lake you can Kayak or take a boat for a cruise. We spent around 90 minutes there. We had the famous Avil Milk there. It started raining while we were there.

Then we took the cab to Payyanur where we were supposed to catch the train to Chennai. I bought dinner in a train themed JuJu Express restaurant outside the Payyanur station. We caught the train at 1830. 

Oct 4 

Reached Chennai around 0800 AM.

Chinna Chinna Aasai

Beautifully shot is what we can say about this movie. Every frame is top notch. It made me want to visit Varanasi. The approach of a movie happening overnight and based only on conversation is a welcome. 

This could have been a great movie except that I couldn't understand why Leela was so sad. Everyone in life faces what she faces. This was not explained clearly. Also I did not see how Master helps her overcome her sadness. 

Most of the conversations lacked depth and did not convey if she was feeling love or just companionship. I felt such an ending was unnecessary. 

They could have made it a beautiful feel good movie and unnecessarily they gave it a morbid ending. But I feel they would have expanded the movie from such an ending. The ending would be where the story writing would have begun.

Because of the ending they spoiled the rewatch potential. They should have a alternate ending.

Life is a struggle

• Beyond an age life is a struggle. 
• One of the most difficult things in life to watch your parents getting sick and weak. The ones who taught you how to walk, when you see them struggle to walk, it breaks you in unimaginable ways. 
• When you can do nothing but just watch them suffer, that is the peak of pain
• When you sit near cardiac ICU, you will be reminded that life is not what we have been experiencing so far. The amount of suffering so many people are going through at any point of time is just beyond words.
• God who created the world how does he view all this? This is the question that keeps repeating in mind.
• Grief is much sharper than any weapon in the world.

Sunset Boulevard

When I started watching this movie I didn't know what I was getting into. The IMDB poster showed a woman looking weird. 

So when I finally watched one of the thoughts that hit me was the problems that existed in 1950, when the film was made, are still the same problems we struggle with.

For example we have a writer and he is afraid he is not able to write anything original. If he felt that way in 1950 think about the state of writers now.

We always thought, at least I thought, fame is something which exists in present. We do not imagine that every time had their own famous people or celebrities of that period. And all those celebrities felt the same way. Or we as human beings feel the same whether it is 1950 or 2025.

Human emotions has not changed, we long for love, we long to be celebrated and above all in our mind we are always young. The mind does not age at the same speed of body. I do not know if it catches up over a period.

It is a depressing movie and such a movie being celebrated even during that time shows the audiences were also mature.

Switch (1991) Movie

 I accidentally watched this movie and totally loved it. Though the movie has a simple concept of body swap they did a great job of executing it. 

A womanizer is murdered and meets God. God gives him the option of heaven if he can find at least one woman in earth who would love him. Satan interferes and asks God to transform him into a woman and then send to earth to find the woman who loved the original man.

Amanda Brooks has played that part of woman who returns to earth and they had done a great job how a man would behave when he has transformed into a woman. There were no cliches.

There were couple of moments where it looked like it would resort to some unnecessary skin show and it didn't. 

When she runs out of all options and couldn't find even one woman who loved the guy she was I was wondering how the makers would finish the movie. The ending just blew me away and it had such a beautiful message.

One of the most beautiful movies I have seen in a long time.

New World (2013) - Korean

 Korean movies rarely disappoints. New World was in my watchlist for a long time. To watch Korean movies or for that matter any foreign language movies or serious movies I should give my full attention to understand what is happening. For this reason I would choose light weight movies than serious movies. Finally I did find some time and watched it and was blown away.

I could see that many movies in Tamil had already tried to lift few knots from this movie unsuccessfully. 

New world was a bit confusing as there were so many characters and it did take some time to understand what was happening. Once we get into the groove it does not stop at all. 

This movie also reminded me of some moments in Coolie. Maybe Lokesh was inspired by this movie.

Even without the last scene twist the movie was great but I think the writers wanted to give a final twist and included that part.

If only this can be made in India without spoiling its original spirit, but our guys will add masala and spoilt it. 

The Nun - Movie

Yes the demon in Nun costume looks scary. Even in one of the earlier movies when they show this painting it had good impact. But beyond that there is nothing much.

I think its time Hollywood move's away from a scene where the demon either gets sucked into an abyss or taken away in a twister or burns to ashes in the final scene. This has been shown in so many movies to show the devil has been defeated. Now it has become so predictable its boring to go through it.

I fast forwarded most of the movie.

Lack of an engaging plot is a major problem with this movie. Not a single interesting character.

It is a snoozefest.