Pedal to Venugopal Swamy Temple, Bagalur

September 18, 2016

It was a long discussion to have a cycling trip to a far off place with one of my friends’ son, Rishi. I never doubted on his fitness but had my own doubts if I could pedal far enough. However now that I was pedaling to office which was 5 km far from my home since a year, I had gathered enough immunity to take a bit more. I decided to go to some place but often if you don’t fix a destiny the motivation to reach the goal becomes flexible. Hence to give a meaning to our pedaling effort, I decided to go to old temples and explore them. So we now fixed Venugopal Swamy Temple in Bagalur which is 30km from my house. It didn’t make any difference to Rishi as he was just interested to pedal. We were also accompanied by Rishi’s father and my cousin whom I call dearly “Mama”.

All four of us got on our bicycles and left to the temple at around 6:30 am. We didn’t dare to estimate the time that we might reach our destination as we didn’t know our riding speed. We all had bicycles in good condition except for Mama and the issue was with his bent pedals which almost activated the wrong tissues of the body and I had to force him to change the pedal at some bicycle shop.

We reached the destination around 7:45 am which was not a very bad timing for the first timers. We had a glimpse of the temple from outside as it was closed. We tried to inquire about the age of the temple and the person in the temple who was around 60 years old told us that his grandfather’s father had not seen the construction of this temple which explains us that is was around 300 years old.

Before we returned back to Bangalore we visited Mama’s colleagues house who was form the same village and they were very happy to see us pedaling for such a long distance. Our legs were strained with a good feeling in all of us. I felt this was one of the best way to enjoy the nature.

We plan to do more of these so with intention explore more temples and also keep ourselves fit.

Venugopal Swamy Temple

The Auto Guy - Ramagundam

Ramagundam – 8^th June 2016

Ramagundam for me was quite a life experience. It all began with our visit to mine where we had scheduled the tests of one of our product. It was a coal mine and it can be a haunting place for anybody as we can find only huge trucks moving and people busy with their work despite the scorching heat. When I mean scorching heat, the temperature was around 42 C and this is the time you will feel as if you are carrying sun on your shoulders. It is a tough job and appreciable as to how people work for their living, for their family well-being, staying away from them for months deprived of the basic luxuries what we enjoy every day. Yes, it feels bad but it is part of life which probably few are destined to.

I was scheduled to return today (8^th June) to Secundarabad by Bhagyanagar express which leaves Ramagundam at 5:15 am ideal time. I mentioned it as ideal time as the train was delayed by almost an hour. However, I had got up at 4 am and called up the auto guy and got myself ready. Strangely it started raining heavily when I came out of hotel. The auto guy didn’t turn up as it was raining. I soon rushed to a circle which in a normal time is an auto stand. There were no autos and I had to wait in rain half drenched for few minutes and after which I found an auto guy who agreed to take me to railway station.

The railway station was 3 km away from the circle but had to run into quite a bit of twists and turns to reach there. At times I was really afraid not knowing where we are going. I tried to engage into a conversation more than once just to confirm that he is a good guy. At one point of time I asked the auto guy “3 km seems to be taking lot of time, are we going in right direction, where is the railway station?”  The auto guy just replied saying “We are in right direction, Sir”.

Few minutes later the auto guy showed me the railway station from far and told me in a soft voice, “You are not from this town and I understood that you were anxious as you didn’t know the route and moreover you are travelling in Auto who have never been trusted for safety. But not all Auto drivers are like that and we try to take care of you as much as we can.”

We reached railway station and the words of auto guy is still ringing in my ears which left me dumbstruck but gave me a soothing experience of Ramagundam people.