My First Solo Kayak Trip

I have watched river Shambhavi from past 8 years. I have felt the cool refreshing breeze from the river during hot summer bus ride from my college(Nitte) to Mangalore. I use to look out of the window and try to see the river as far as I could. Dense Green mangrove and coconut trees on both sides of the river was a mesmerising scenic beauty.

After working at corporate job in Bangalore for few year. I tried to do my own foodtech startup in 2015. After quickly failing to write stable and scalable software. I quit my startup and went for a job in New York based startup, which offered me a work from home setup.

After getting the job, I quickly moved to Mulki, Mangalore. Mulki is 30 km from Mangalore and around 350 km from Bangalore.

My love for Mulki started way back in 2013 when I had come here to learn sea wave surfing.

After moving from Bangalore to Mulki, I bought a surfing kayaking from Kochi. It was a sit-on-top recreational kayak from Mission.

My house was close to river Shambhavi, where I learned to paddle. Initially, I use to paddle 2-5 kilometers at a time.

I watched videos on YouTube to learn the basics of paddling style, and other rescue techniques in case of emergency

After kayaking few weeks, I was confident enough to go for a longer solo trip. At first, I planned to go saint mary island in Udupi. Later on, I decided that It will be much cooler and fun to go and find the start of river Shambhavi.

This will be my attempt to start from one end of the river and try to go as far as I can. This was the beginning of my kayaking journey.