Four Years in Four Parts: Overview

"When you leave a beautiful place, you carry it with you wherever you go"

Sipping my morning cuppa , in my cab to office , I was contemplating about few general questions that I come across daily at various situations. "Where do you belong to? What did you study? Oh, Where is this place,is it in North East?"

Again bringing the fact to notice "The stay wasn't the best as my fellow peers" but by default I  have never failed to answer "Manipal, a town near Udupi" , and my entire existence acclaims the same with confidence as if I have been born and brought up there.

For everyone's knowledge,"Delhi" is my hometown, but I, till date can not talk about it with same enthusiasm as I talk about my college town. I have stayed in Delhi for 18 years, studied there, my family belongs there. But I still don't connect with it the same way.

As a child whenever my Mom and Dad used to ask me , where do you want to stay when you grow up, I always answered " I will live in a town where there is sea on one side and mountains on the other, so that I can have best of both worlds. Where I can see greenery, coconut trees, shooting stars, small huts ,rainbows and a light house". And you won't believe Manipal had it all.

Though any amount of description won't do justice to the beauty of the place, unless you go and experience it on your own. But in my attempt, I have tried to , just tried , to describe all of the Manipal, that is known to my knowledge in 4 parts.

Part 1: Exploring the Campus

Part 2: In an around Manipal

Part 3: Befriending Random Places

Part 4: Revisiting our Favorites

Part 1, Exploring the campus : This post will describe about everything inside the MIT campus.My hostel life, room mates, our favorite eating places, easy to go on pocket messes.

Part 2: In an around Manipal: This post will be all about the places , whether it's a famous dish, a famous house, restaurants , beaches, lakes, festivals, Anything and everything I have seen in and around Manipal.

Part 3: Befriending Random Places: The post will try to do justice to me and my friends random exploration beyond the city.

Part 4: Revisiting our favorites. This post will be more about my favorite places and the places where I wanted to visit more in my final year, so that I can keep the memories as fresh as possible.

These Four years would be glimpsed in Fours parts, but the nostalgia would be forever.

Birth of a wanderer

Wanderers are not born, they are made sometimes by the way they are brought up, sometimes by the situations, sometimes by choice and sometimes it is written up there to get bitten by " The Wanderlust Bug ".

Exactly 5 years 11 months and 20 days ago, an ambivert girl brought up in an overprotective though loving family in Delhi, where she wasn't allowed to even board the metro all by herself whenever she missed her school bus, decided to go to Karnataka to pursue her engineering course.

The idea of taking up an engineering course was never on her list. Always being among the top scorers she never planned on studying anywhere except her hometown. But life never runs the way we plan.  One failed attempt in clearing the medical entrance and persuasion from her parents to take up engineering made her give up her medical dreams.

Though there were humongous number of colleges who were offering her a seat for B.Tech degree in her home town, but the urge to be independent, the urge to make her own decisions, the urge to see and travel the world and the urge to explore things the way she wanted , made her pick a college down south in Karnataka. In Manipal.

Marking the birth of a wanderer. Marking the path to find the real me.

As per Wikipedia : Manipal is a suburb within the city of Udupi in Karnataka, India and is administered by the Udupi City Municipality. It is located on the rocky hinterland of Coastal Karnataka. From its location on a plateau, it commands a panoramic view of the Arabian Sea to the west and the Western Ghats to the east. Home to the Manipal University, the town attracts over twenty five thousand students every year. It is one of the most cosmopolitan towns of India, with people from close to 60 countries studying there. It is called the campus town by the locals. And for many of us who don't know, Manipal is also the international headquarters of Syndicate Bank. 

Manipal for me, is a magical place, a magical word. Whenever I spell this word, memories of people, memories of rains, memories of the innocent attachments, memories of stupid fights, classes and memory of everything is ready to flow out and up of my nostalgia box and envelope me every time with a warm glow of reminiscence.

Though my stay in Manipal wasn't the best experience as my fellow peers, but it played a very important role in my evolution as a person. I laughed, I cried, I loved, I got betrayed, I lost and I found myself. Though my present can never match up to my past, I still can dwell in the memories and experience I gained in Manipal. In the wave of change , I found my true self. And the place gave me a learning beyond any curriculum.