Before my elder son left for university to begin his engineering studies, we decided to go on a vacation. On the recommendation of a friend, we chose to visit Mangalore, Udupi, and the surrounding areas. It was meant to be a pilgrimage cum pleasure trip, with many temples to visit along the way. While there wasn’t much by way of entertainment, the drive from Mangalore itself was thrilling. The roads were lined with trees, cashew, and cocoa plantations all the way through—absolute peace and relaxation.

We took an evening train to Mangalore and arrived in the morning. Incidentally, in our bay, there was a lady traveling with two mischievous kids. Her name, amusingly enough, was Ms. Mango! Thankfully, she managed to put her kids to bed, sparing us too much chaos.

A colleague of mine received us at the station and helped us settle into a lodge, as we were only staying there for a few hours.

To digress a bit—back in the old days, checkout times were after 24 hours. Over time, this shrank. Now, if you book a stay for a day, you could lose as much as four hours—check-in at 3 p.m. and checkout at 11 a.m. If you're traveling with family, this can cause all sorts of issues. How do you time your check-in and check-out properly? If you request a 24-hour checkout and are lucky enough to get it, the rent can increase significantly.

On our recent trip to the USA, this happened twice. In Hawaii, we had to wait nearly four hours before the room was ready, and it was well past the normal check-in time when we finally got our room. And on our return journey to India, we stopped in New York to visit my ailing elder brother. Our red-eye flight arrived very early in the morning, and despite booking for two days, we had to wait for at least three hours in the lobby. Thankfully, a kind man at the check-in counter took pity on us and gave us a room as soon as possible. We stayed from around 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. the next day—a total of 31 hours. Many would say that to be comfortable, we should have booked an extra day but imagine paying three days' rent for a 35-hour stay! In Mangalore, we only stayed for about four hours, yet we still paid the full 24-hour rent.

The fun part began as soon as we went to a restaurant. Naturally, we wanted to follow local practices and traditions, so we asked for the menu. The server quickly listed a variety of dishes, some familiar and others completely foreign. One dish that caught our attention was called "chow-chow bath." To us, chow-chow was a type of vegetable, and the server mentioned that the dish was a combination of savory and sweet—a kind of mixed rice. Curiosity may not kill a human being, but in this case, it nearly killed our appetite. With eager expectations and growling stomachs, when the dish was finally served, we realized it was nothing more than uppuma (a savory semolina dish) and kesari (a sweet dish made from the same semolina).

Now, uppuma is something we rarely touch, even with the longest pole, but being hungry, we had to swallow it down. Disappointed with how our trip had started on a negative note, we returned to the lodge, where we emptied our wallets by paying for a four-hour stay at 24-hour rates.

We then went to meet the colleague who had received us at the station. Not wanting to share our embarrassing experience at the restaurant, we put on happy faces and asked about the arrangements for our further travels. He had kindly booked a taxi, and the driver was said to be very nice and helpful.

Was he?

Continued in 164. Chow-chows And Wah-Wahs - Part 2