Woke up 4am on a sunday morning to go for cycling, with the thought it better be good, I have lost hours of sleep for this. After driving for an hour we reached Hesaraghatta which I had known only for two reasons a. Nrithyagram b. my father’s training there. Once we reached the place which marked the begining of our off-road cycling, I was happy. It was green, muddy and beautiful.

We didnt actually have any particular track in mind. We rode as we liked and ended up at Hesaraghatta Lake. We rode on the lake bund until we reached the end. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t worry about grammar or meaning of the title. This post is about our ride to Nandi months back, so it’s a delayed post. It was on a friend’s birthday, I was partying until early morning and slept around 2. All of a sudden my mobile started ringing at 4:30am. I drove thinking I would be the last to reach Columbia hospital (meeting pt). Thanks to less traffic and my driving, I wasn’t :) Then we parked our silver oak resorts and started from there.

First few kilometers were easy as it was flat and then started climb. I was still sleeping and that didnt help me to concentrate. I was tiring out very soon after each break.
It was struggle, rode the whole climb in 1,1 or 1,2. I took about an hour to reach the top. At a speed 8/9 kmph its a slow climb but was very fulfilling.

If it wasn’t the group, I would have given up. This ride made me to realize, how much important is your riding group and concentration.

At last I reached and we clicked that customary bike salute picture.

Photos are by Anita and Ramesh

My self and manju took part in first edition of Cyclothon Bengaluru. The distance of amateur race was reduced 36kms from initial planned distance of 50kms. We were not really happy as both of us wanted to do 50km. Never the less we set our own targets. Manju – complete with out walking and me – complete with in 2 hours.

I was surprised with the number of cyclists turned out. I was trying to convert whom ever I met into regular critical mass rider. I hope there will be more participants this month end.

The event started with flagging off men’s and ladies’ race.

Then it took ever for flagging off us. So we into the photography mode. Took pictures of ourselves, crowd and the winners of the race.

That is me and manju. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday of every month, we do group ride in Bangalore called critical mass ride. Critical mass is that minimum mass which will make others to notice our existence (Cyclists). Hundreds of cities around the world organize such rides to make or to educate citizens about the importance of cycling. Its mostly a fun ride around the city but also involves educating curious onlookers.

Even though we don’t have hundreds of cyclist like in other parts of the world. We still have decent crowd to attract the traffic. This week we rode from our regular starting point PTI to Freedom Park (old Jail).

I was happy to see how they have converted old jail into public community space. Its location makes it much more important to have such a place. May be few days from now we will have music or drama evenings like Lalbagh bands at open – air amphitheatre that can seat 300 people. There are art works on freedom wall, there is that old charming watch tower, etc. Kudos to BBMP they have done a great job until now. I hope they maintain it in the same way. Actually I didn’t have good camera and hence the lack of pictures. I will probably get more pictures next time I visit Freedom Park. Make sure you visit it too.

Its been three weeks that I got a cycle for myself. Unfortunately I couldn’t cycle much the first two weeks. I live beyond electronics city on Hosur road. I have done couple of trips to Koramanagala to meet my friends. Its about 15 kms one way from Koramangala to my home. Other than that I cycle to office on Fridays which is about 4.5km one way. Those were the only chances I got in last two/three weeks. I have done close to 50kms.

With the above experience of cycling in Bangalore, Here I am sharing my experiences this blog post. I am also trying to address some of the questions raised by my friends. I hope it helps.

I got my bicycle from track n trails store at Koramangala. So my first ride was to ride from the store to home for about 15kms. I started to ride with the helmet and I was wearing formals. The ride was pretty smooth until I got to know that I am center of attraction for other motorists on the road.There were at least two BMTC buses which came close to me near silk board flyover. But then both the bus drivers and others had a smile on their face and in fact the BMTC guy almost stopped his bus to allow me to climb the flyover. The point I wanted to make is people love cyclists more than others. May be the helmet made a difference.
Read the rest of this entry »