St.Mary's Island and Mangalore

My wife wanted to go to a sea coast for a holiday and I selected Mangalore and booked train tickets accordingly.That it entailed three of us (all seniors) to climb the upper birth was a little deterrence especially the return journey was all for three side upper berths. I booked a hotel after lot of feed back from my friends considering the budget etc. But my wife got carried away by a gentleman in the train who advised us to take a room in a hotel which was double our budget once we landed up there. So we were forced to take non ac rooms and soon found to our horror it was really sickening as we are so used to air conditioned climate of Bangalore. Taste ‘Ideal Ice cream”, Eat Fish and Prawn fry at Preira rstaurant were some of the briefings.None seemed to know St.Mary’s Island and then I got to know it was also called Malpe beach we took an auto to St Mary’s island.The ride was pleasant and once we reached the boarding point at Malpe, we found that there are two ways of going to the Island. It costs rupees 485/- per head for a ferry ride in Government ferry while it would have costed rupees 1800/- per head in a private boat.We selected the Government ferry and thankful for the fun in boarding the ferry and also disembarking at the St,Mary’s island.The ferry ride was awesome and also the clutter of so many voices and cries of children. One could see white coral rocks in a island cluster on the side from our ferry.I think In whole of India the auto drivers of Mangalore alone charge strictly as per meter. We found a lone westerner amongst the tourists. From his cap I could see he has served in Afghanistan and was here may be on a holiday. He said he is from a country which I may not even know and when he said he is from Lithuania, I said i know the three former soviet Baltic republics, he was very happy.Christian (that is his name) said he is curious about his country’s language and its connection to Sanskrit.He said none of the other languages surrounding his country has nothing in common while there is plenty of commonality between Lithuanian and Konkani http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages . Why we Indians have this uncanny knack to neglect our own ancient history while we have to learn about our own history from foreigners especially from the west My wife as usual collected some pebbles. There was also the lone Geological survey of India tablet saying that Vas codi Gama landed here first on his way to Indian mainland.Some of the videos which I took are in the enclosed file.The side upper berth return journey to Bangalore did not look horrifying after the delicious Gadbad Ice cream from Ideal. That the Karnataka Government took this St.Mary’s Island to show case the tourist potential got lost in the orgy some of the esteemed young tourists indulged in.The authorities should be commended for this step but then the tourists selected were not upto the Indian sensitivity .The video of Daink bhaskar on this issue is rather graphic. I will recommend all to go to Mangalore and have that delicious Ideal ice cream before going to St.Mary's Island. Video links to some of the clips. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuubuX15HX0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qne9Vw9yy_M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZWiM0qg2s4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg5UfUPxmcQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXjTswaNU5s