Birthplace of Udupi Cuisine — the coastal Karnataka city where neer dosa and fish curry meet Tulu Nadu's ancient culture, Bekal Fort guards the Malabar Coast, and the Western Ghats' coffee estates begin 50 km inland
Mangaluru (formerly Mangalore) is the chief port city of coastal Karnataka — a city of 500,000 at the confluence of the Netravathi and Gurupura rivers on the Malabar Coast, where the Tulu Nadu cultural region (distinct language, customs, and temple architecture) meets the Arabian Sea. Mangaluru is considered the birthplace of Udupi cuisine: the vegetarian tradition that spread from the Udupi Sri Krishna Math temple (75 km north) via the Udupi hotel system to become one of India's most exported regional food cultures. The city's seafood is superb: Mangalorean fish curry (kori gassi), clam sukk…
Mangaluru was the capital of the Alupa dynasty (the oldest ruling family in the Karnataka coastal area, ruling from the 3rd to 14th centuries CE), then successively under the Vijayanagara Empire, Keladi Nayaka, Ikkeri Nayaka, Haider Ali, and Tipu Sultan before the British. Tipu Sultan defeated the British here in the 1784 Treaty of Mangalore — one of the rare instances of a British military defeat in 18th-century India. The Tuluva people of Mangaluru are distinct from Kannada and Malayali cultures — Tulu language (one of India's classical-era Dravidian languages) is spoken natively by 2+ mill…