April 10, 2011
Bangalore
Dear friends,
This letter which I am writing now is about the Bangalore – Chennai cycling expedition that my friend, Jonathan and I completed a couple of days back. I am writing this while keeping in mind about those comments many of you posted in various social networking sites with respect to the expedition pictures and the tweet that I posted few days back.
Jonathan and I had planned for the cycling trip to Chennai nearly a month back. In order to do such a long distance cycling, we thought an expedition of smaller scale could help us prepare for the potential challenges. Hence we did the Savandurga cycling expedition (150kms) two weeks back, along with one more friend from our institute (IISc , Bangalore). The plan for the Chennai trip was to cycle during the night while to take rest during the day time so that we wouldn’t get charred by the super hot rays from the summer sun. Well, we stuck to our plan. We started our journey from my place in BTM layout at 11:30PM 5th (Tuesday), though Jon would disagree for the fact that he started his journey from the Institute. Some of my close pals had come over to my place to wish us for the trip. It was damn nice to get a send off from your great friends when you are trying out something less normal.
The first stretch of cycling 100kms from Bangalore to Krishnagiri was fairly straight forward as we were all energetic, the roads were more of negative slope and well, we were super motivated. Every time we talked during this particular stretch, we were totally appreciating ourselves for taking up this expedition. We covered it with little difficulty. The best thing that happened during this stretch was that we found a MacDonald’s 24hour outlet. Instead of concentrating on the food we rather spent more time clicking pictures with my DSLR, which I must say turned out to be a worth it luggage to carry. After the sweet ride, the journey from Krishnagiri became incrementally painful with time. We could feel the ups and downs on the terrain. I guess it was also because we were fiddling with our body clock. I was feeling very drowsy. Jon was also fairly drowsy. By the time it turned six in the morning we were searching for a place to crash. We thought of even sleeping below a tree till the evening, as our next planned destination Vellore was about 100kms or less away. The only awesome thing during this stretch was listening to great music from my friend’s IPod to which he had ‘hand’ picked the songs to make a rocking playlist from his freaking entire collection, specifically for my cycle trip – what friend he is!
When we were about 80kms away from Vellore (8AM), Jon saw a sign board saying “Ramakrishna Mutt – 1 km” and told me about it. I felt a sense of relief listening to it as I always heard good things about that particular Mutt. We could trace the Mutt which was located inside this small town called Natrampalli. Immediately after entering the Mutt we met many students of the school, which is run by the Mutt. Though we didn’t know a common language still we were able communicate with them. The Mutts’ bhramacharis were very gracious. They allowed us to take bath at their facility, served us amazing breakfast, lunch & evening tea/snacks and also gave a neat place to take rest. It was a heavenly treatment. We slept for nearly six hours during our stay at the Mutt. Before leaving the Mutt , we amused the children’s of the Mutt, who are mostly orphans, by taking several pictures of them with our cycling stuff like helmet, torch light and stuff. They were very pleased to see their pictures on the LCD screen of the camera. Jon and I have promised ourselves to send the hard copy of few of those pictures to the Mutt.
We left the Mutt at about 6:30PM (6th –Wednesday) after meeting the Mutt’s head who gave a very friendly advice about life and things we have to do in life, some things like that. Our plan for the night was to reach Vellore by 10:30 – 11, have a dinner at a neat restaurant and if possible reach Chennai by morning or at least lessen the distance by a good factor. Since the plan was fairly practical we could adhere to it to a good extent. The place we chose to have dinner wasn’t all that good as there were very few restaurants open at 11:30 at Vellore. We did our best to reach Chennai by morning but again the body refused to cycle after five. We took a short detour to Kanchipuram to take rest. This 150kms stretch from Natrampalli to Kanchipuram was super awesome as the route was mostly even and the roads were too smooth. The pleasure one gets by cycling on such tracks can only be felt by the cyclist himself. The feel for the machine we get while changing the gear arrangements is some thing impossible to articulate. My dear friends try cycling it gives a kick probably way to high than alcohol, well you might tell me the other way, perhaps I will try alcohol some time and hopefully reiterate the statement with more commitment. Besides the joy that we extracted by cycling, we met many delightful people while cycling on the high way. One person whom we could never forget is this shop keeper with whom Jon got into a conversation with while cycling. This person, while driving the two wheeler at the pace of cycle, asked Jon about our expedition. After hearing the story he was damn impressed and served us a bottle of Pepsi and other stuff at his shop which is located on the high way. Like wise, we met several other people who showered their wishes on us and also at times advised us in keep ourselves safe from the Heavy duty vehicles ripping on the high way.
Coming back to the main story, we took a lodge in Kanchipuram to take rest and also to kill time till the evening. Like in Ramakrishna mutt, we slept off for a long duration in the lodge. One thing that we could infer during the trip was that the people of Tamil Nadu are very generous and polite. When we were having coffee at a proper south Indian restaurant, Jon spilled his coffee on to the table by mistake. After seeing that, a maid immediately came over to our table to clean it. Having lost more than half the cup of his coffee to the table, Jon drank the remaining coffee and then we decided to leave. When we were about to leave the waiter came with a full cup coffee and insisted Jon to have. Though it’s a minor incident here, we could see a great sense of hospitality around us through out the trip.
We didn’t check into any temple in ‘the city of temples’ – Kanchipuram, however we roamed around the city taking pictures and videos till it turned dark on 7th (Thursday). We left Kanchi at around 6:45PM and hit the down slope National High way to Chennai by Seven. The plan was to meet Jon’s Mathematics geek friends from Institute of Mathematical Science (IMSc) before midnight. We had our dinner in a fairly overpriced restaurant called Indo – Muscat Bakery which was located on the high way. The food was alright but I was glad about the neat lavatory facility in the restaurant. Things went fairly according to the plan and we reached IMSc by around 12:30AM. Jon said couple of time that “how can you not meet Caesar when go to Rome?” when I showed disinterest in cycling to IMSc which is away from Chennai Central; Well, after meeting those friends of him I could actually appreciate the quote. In fact one of his friend happened to be my friend too, we had played cricket together on a few occasions when that guy was in the campus. And yes, now I fully agree with Jon, you got to meet at least some one you know when ever you travel to a different place. It’s a totally worth it idea!
It was a wonderful time roaming around Chennai city during the night as the roads were dead free from vehicles. We reached Chennai Central Railway station by 3AM (8th – Friday), with that we completed our expedition of cycling 350kms (= 130 +150 + 70 kms) in 28Hrs (8 + 12 + 8). And yeah, I forgot to tell you that we had booked a train ticket for the return journey. The biggest set back of the trip happened when the luggage department at the Chennai station informed us that the train that we had booked, Shatabdhi express, wouldn’t carry any luggage as it didn’t come with the luggage carrier that day. We were apprehensive about our next move but the luggage handling guy advised us to send our cycles in a train which would arrive at the Bangalore station two hour after we reach. We had no other option but to go with that advice. We were fortunate as it didn’t turn out to become a real setback; we got our cycles in proper shape.
Well, that was the story of our Bangalore to Chennai cycling expedition. I have already said that it was awesome, kick ass, killer and all, what I haven’t emphasized much is being in the awesome company of Jonathan Fernandis. This guy from Goa, who spends most of his day solving problems in Algebraic number theory, is an absolute fun guy. In fact, when he told me that he would be leaving India to do his Doctoral studies at University of Maryland (college park), I told him that we have to make the rest of his stay here large and super kick ass. He got an imported sports cycle, which he prefers to call it as has machine, just before our Savandurga expedition. The best thing about this guy is he is logical, argumentative, straight forward and at the same time very considerate. I have had umpteen numbers of discussions with him during the trip, in all these discussion he sets his argument with a clear rational base –amazing. Before taking up this trip both of has had promised ourselves that we would complete our primary work in life to a significant extent so that we could have a neat adventure of cycling the mentioned distance, so did we do. The fact that we would always have difficulty in taking up such expedition because of the work that we do for our living is never debatable but what is debatable is that many a times we just don’t take up such expedition for the fact we have to focus on things that makes up our living. Anyway, I have made this letter fairly lengthy though I have missed several minute details, I wish to end this letter with few lines that I wrote in hindi some time back, which in some way fits the context here:-
“aare yaar woh dhin hey kya jab mazak na ho
woh pal hey kya jab dil may arraam na ho
chodo yeah sab kam dhandha kuch waqt ke liye
phir dheko yeah zindhagi kithne kubsurath hey aap key liye”
cheers,
Ganesh
