I only went to Udupi to eat at the temple, which was a bucket list thing to do.
Oddly enough, Udupi was one of the first places in India I ever heard of outside a few of the megacities. My introduction to South Indian food was at Udupi restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona over 15 years ago. Maybe it had no connection to actual Udupi cuisine which is true of most “Udupi” restaurants, but it was the first time I had any inkling that some Indians ate things other than naan and palak paneer and whatnot. Very embarrassing, and of course I’ve come a long way since then. My journey has taken me to the point where there is no restaurant in the world I have eaten more times at than A. Rama Nayak's Udipi Shri Krishna Boarding in Matunga, so going to the source was a must.
Is that the only reason to go to Udupi if you don’t have any spiritual connection to the place? Is it worth it? Should you go? The answer to all of these questions is maybe. I’m definitely glad I went and I would recommend it as part of a larger trip to places nearby (Mangalore and elsewhere). It’s definitely worth the drive from Mangalore. But I wouldn’t say it’s so interesting that you absolutely must go. But if you do end up there for a day or two, you’ll have a great time and eat excellent food!
We also saw the neighboring Manipal (which has the Hasta Shilpa Heritage Village, one of India’s best museums!) and we went to Kundapur to eat at Shetty Lunch Home on the drive in, more on those below.
We stayed at Shree Homestay in Manipal for two nights in February 2023. It’s nice, clean, comfortable, reasonably priced (around 2k inr a night), it has AC (the room gets brutally hot in the afternoon otherwise), the family that runs it is very nice (they even invited us join them at a get together at their home), and they serve good homemade food if requested in advance. I recommend it, though the location is about a 20 minute drive to Udupi, so you may want to stay closer by. But the Manipal area is fairly nice too.
Beyond the stuff I did, people enjoy going to the beaches nearby and seeing the very striking rock formations on St. Mary’s Island (where apparently Madagascar was once attached and also where Vasco da Gama stopped on the way to Calicut). It seemed nice but not that interesting and I didn’t feel like running around too much in the heat.
Udupi
In Udupi, the main attraction is obviously the temple, and the main attraction for me is definitely the food. If you plan to go, it is of the utmost importance that you get a VIP pass! If not, you will be ushered into the large dining hall where you are served just rice, sambar, and rasam on a plate and you will not receive the full banana leaf meal! To get the pass, go to the temple entrance (there’s a long line of people waiting to enter at lunch time, just follow that line to the front near where the chariots are) and look for an opening to the right of the main temple entrance, I believe it says “Seva” on a sign. Inside you make a donation, you pay what you want, we paid 500 inr (250 per person). I’m not sure if there’s some minimum where they don’t give you the full banana leaf thali because you’re a cheapskate. Best not to test it. Anyway, its worth more than what I paid and I’ll pay more next time.
They give you a receipt that gets you entrance into a different dining hall which you will find beyond the main temple in the courtyard to the left (non VIP peasants eat upstairs, and if you’re a Brahmin there’s yet another eating area right below the peasant section). You can also get free prasad with the pass, when we went it was [I wrote this roughly a year and a half before publishing and now that I’m editing it I see that the sentence just trailed off. I have no idea what the prasad was.]
The meal was obviously sensational. There was rice, pumpkin sambar, rasam, chutney, sprouted dal and coconut salad, plus payasam and buttermilk. The pumpkin sambar was the shining star of the meal but it was all great. It was very special to experience and I hope to return one day, or at least have more temple meals elswhere.
I feel kind of weird that I am just writing about the food when really this is a spiritual place that has deeper meaning to people. I hope nobody minds. I am a little insecure about this. Probably most people who read this blog are doing so just for the food recommendations, so maybe it’s okay with this crowd. (I guess it’s interesting that I feel there’s something slightly disrespectful about going primarily for food, though I usually go to religious sites for some combination of architecture, atmosphere, and historical significance, and there’s no reason I should feel shame about going for food but not about going for those other non-spiritual reasons.)
Other than the meal, the temple and the neighboring temples are nice and have some interesting architecture. I liked petting the cows who live at the temple. I especially liked the ship-shaped Ananteshwar Temple. Walk around in the lanes by the temple, there are some very cool buildings. I don’t know what to call it, but I like Temple Town Architecture, an underrated style, it reminds me of frontier towns from old westerns, but it’s distinctly Indian. Keep an eye out for the vegetable vendors, they had some interesting stuff like a local eggplant variety, a very long, pale okra variety, and some things I couldn’t identify.