BELGAUMA City Taking Wings!
 God has not finished building Belgaum! That is the impression the first-time traveller to this wonderful border city in Karnataka will get when he steps off the tiny Air Deccan aircraft at Belgaum’s Airport and finds a motley crowd of colourfully dressed villagers come to see the plane landing. The city has a healthy mix of people, Kannadigas and Maharashtrians, and this is reflected in its food and culture. Belgaum is also the base for the Indian Army’s Maratha Light Infantry Regiment. And the city is known for its pure, home-made Belgaum ghee and loni, that wonderful snow white butter. Swamy, the bakery is what locals can’t do without or the pedhas of Dharwad nearby, the fiery red chillies of Bygadi outside the city, plus its own delicacies like Mande, Kunda and Alipak.
Mande is a popular sweet made in Belgaum by Vijaykumar Saralaya. To locate his house, from where he works, you will need local help. It is in the middle of a lower income group chawl where every passerby peeps into the home to see the process of Mande being made and offer friendly advice. But everybody in Belgaum knows Saralaya. And if you want to buy Mande, then you must buy it from him.
Dharwad, the home of the delicious, tongue-melting pedhas The one specialty item that people make a longish car journey for, is the brown pedha that Babusingh and Mishra make in their shops in Dharwad’s Line Bazar. Dharwad is more than an hour’s drive from Belgaum, and yet people staying here have travelled there just to buy those pedhas.
The Lingayats of Belgaum provide the city with its caste, culture and cuisine. The famous author and novelist Manohar Malgonkar, who is 93, spends his days in splendid isolation in an old stone-and-wood cottage in the heart of a jungle off the Goa-Belgaum Highway. He does not write much anymore but is pleased to play host to old friends and fans who call on him for a gimlet and lunch.
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