The Manipal Story.

  While walking around the paddy fields looking for the different varieties of birds like Ibis and the Kingfisher, I spotted a beautiful woven nest hanging from the Palmyra tree above my head. I was immediately captivated by the nest and wanted to know everything about how such a thing of beauty could be woven so high in the air and how it managed to stay up in the strong winds and rains. I had recently started bird watching as a hobby and wanted to know about which bird weaved the nest, how many eggs were laid and when was the nesting season, what was the lifespan of the bird, what their social organization was like. I observed closely and saw a small sparrow like yellow bird flying around the nest and got to know that it was the Baya Weaver Bird. The Weaver Bird turned out to be an excellent architect and I was really amazed at the skill of this bird in making an eco-friendly, organic and bio degradable house for its mate and children. Not many humans take the initiativ

I had just shifted to Manipal and there was a beautiful valley of trees just below my balcony, it was really an amazing view as I saw the valley as a huge forest as far as my eyes could see and it ended with the Arabian Sea, which was around ten kilometers away. On a clear day I could see the beach and the parasailing activities in the horizon. It was a wonderful exposure to nature as there was a constant parade of monkeys marching through my balcony and fly past of different varieties of birds. Now living above a forest meant that there was absolute peace as all I could hear was the sound of toads and crickets along with the splitter and spatter of rains in the night. I woke up in the morning to the sound of “eew” made by the snobbish peacocks who had probably discovered something disgusting in the morning. They were always hanging by on the electrical tower and seemed to be an elite group. There were lot of different bird chirps which I could hear and identified a few a

  I was going to work in Udupi is what my boss told me and I was to shift from Mangalore the next day, the posting came as a surprise to me and my mind was flooded with thoughts. I had heard about Udupi Restaurant and I always wondered what it was all about and then discovered that Udupi town was famous for its thirteenth century Krishna Temple where different kinds of food was offered to the Lord and served to all the people and it was something very tasty and different. There was a huge “langar” type of service conducted every day in the Krishna Temple where various types of food was prepared in the community kitchen of the temple. The variety of food prepared may be due to the significant migration of Brahmins to this region and the famous Udupi Restaurants were subsequently run by cooks and priests trained at Krishna Temple in Udupi. Therefore this rustic town became the “vegetarian hub of Karnataka”. However non-vegetarian dishes like Kori Roti and Chicken Sukka ,Neer Dosa and F