Our Farthest Round Trip on Bicycles - Mysore!

 Prelude:

A couple of successful short-distance cycle trips to Bannerghatta encouraged me and a few others to venture out on longer trips, and we thought of romancing with Mysore, which is a good 135 km southwest of Bengaluru. Preparations – what can we prepare for, considering we were all students and none of us were earning? Nevertheless, we chipped in with whatever we could. Packed a couple of sets of clothes for the trip, cycles checked (well, mine and Kishan's bicycles were of World War II vintage and mine still had the black colour throughout - without a hint of Chrome); oiling of crucial joints and ball bearings, brakes, tyres properly inflated, torches with a new set of batteries, and all these happened on the eve of our departure. We also had an AGFA Click III camera to pictorially immortalise our trip.

The Trip:

One fine day, in 1980, a couple of us decided on our trip, and I was the first to volunteer for this adventure. I was living in HAL quarters at Marathahalli (East of Bengaluru) those years (Circa 1975-1982) as my father worked in HAL, and as we had planned to start off very early in the morning (from N R Colony), I had to stay overnight at our friend Krishna’s house. His elder brother, Sheshagiri (Sheshi, as we all used to call him), was one of the cyclists, and Kishan (Srikishan – as he is officially known) completed the trio for this trip.

So, I started off expedition on my bicycle from Marathahalli, a good 20 km, well before sunset.

I had removed the mudguards of the vehicle beforehand for some repair and had to carry them unfitted, on the bicycle. I was the target of ridicule as my friends kept taunting me for my supposedly foolish behaviour (they thought that I had taken off the mudguards to reduce the weight of the bicycle, but it didn’t make sense as I tied it to the bicycle – I just let them enjoy their laugh). I got the mudguards fixed and got the final check done before we retired for the night.

The next morning, Sheshi and I left his house as soon as Kishan joined us. I still remember it was just around 03:30 am when we started off that morning to what was our first long-distance trip. We had our torches lit up as we pedalled our way through Bull Temple Road and took a left turn at the dead-end of that road to join Mysore Road.

So far, so good as we took it easy on this slightly nippy morning. In those days, Mysore Road was just a dual carriageway with no shoulder on either side of the road. The shoulder was a gravel one and left very little margin for manoeuvring error.

As we glided down Mysore Road, passing Remco (now BHEL) and a lot of other industries, the University campus, etc., we had the road for ourselves as we seldom crossed, or were overtaken by, any vehicle. Street lights were sparsely able to light up the path for us, and at times, we were totally blinded by the bright headlights of one of those rare vehicles that crossed us. This has been one of our first experiences as we had hitherto ridden only in the city limits on reasonably lit streets. Vary of the perils of ill-lumination on the roads, we pedalled cautiously ahead.

At one point, Sheshi, riding in the front, shouted us to ‘DUCK’ and in the nick of time Kishan and I ducked to below the level of the handle, to save ourselves from a tractor carrying hay with bamboos extending on both sides of the trailer almost covering the entire width of the road. The tractor was almost invisible in the darkness, as shockingly, there were no headlights. Jeez! That was a narrow, proverbial 'By the Skin of Our Teeth' miss, and we just counted our blessings while reminding ourselves to be a bit more careful and watchful for such surprises.

Taking a couple of breaks on the way for coffee and breakfast (oh! We had a lovely packed breakfast of Idlis and Vada by the roadside, probably near Maddur, and there was a canal—'Indvaal Pick-up' (if my co-cyclists remember it)) with flowing water where we washed our hands before resuming our journey, and reaching Mysore around 1:00 p.m. in time for a quick fresh-up in the room and lunch.

It was on returning to the room that I revealed my ‘shoestring budget’ position and shocked the other two. Had I mentioned that I needed money for my trip to Mysore, I knew I would be prevented from taking this trip by my parents, or at least to defer it to a future date. But I couldn’t miss this trip for the world, and there I was. I was nicknamed here by Sheshi, and that name was with me for a long time. Where could we source funds those days except beg, borrow, or steal small amounts from various hiding places of my mother? That was an eye-opener to me, and I decided thereafter not to venture out without adequate funds.

Post lunch, we returned to the room and were on our tummies in no time, to rest our aching and smoking bums that had been bearing the brunt over the last 10 hours or so of being plastered on the seats of our bicycles.

That evening, we took a bus to head out to the famed Brindavan Gardens and KRS Dam over the river Kaveri. The next day, we had a quick tour of the Mysore Zoo and the Palace from outside and a few other places. 

In the afternoon, we went to my uncle and aunt’s place while planning to return. My uncle was the then Superintendent of Police for Mysore. We stayed at their house on our second night in Mysore. A few more places were visited the next morning, and we started off on our return journey pretty early in the afternoon so that my uncle and aunt couldn’t suspect and prevent our plans to start later in the evening.

Our return plan was a two-stage one. Our intention was to have a pitstop at Mandya, watch a late-night movie, and pedal off throughout the night to reach Bengaluru early the next day. For the first leg, we pedalled our way to Mandya and had dinner before lining up at ‘Sanjay’ theatre for a late-night Kannada movie ‘Ravi Chandra’, a Dr. Rajkumar starrer in a dual role with two heroines – Lakshmi and Sumalatha.

After the movie, we started pedalling towards Bengaluru cautiously, to mitigate the risks we experienced on the onward journey. It was in the wee hours that Kishan’s bicycle had a puncture on the front tyre, and we had no way to fix this till the shops opened.

We came up with a plan to tow his cycle till we get to a shop that can fix the problem. Kishan rode with Sheshi while I towed his bicycle to Channapatna.

In between, we took a pitstop to relieve ourselves and clicked some pics, including the one lying on the railway track alongside the road.

We had to wait for quite some time in the morning, as the shops opened only after 9:00 am. Once we got the tube changed (instead of just fixing the puncture), we told Kishan to ride on while Sheshi and I pedalled leisurely to be a backup should any need arise.

We checked, after reaching our respective homes around 2:00 pm, that Kishan had already reached his place an hour or so before us. Relieved that all of us returned safely, I parked my bicycle for a couple of more days at my grandmother’s place till I embarked on my return journey to my home at Marathahalli.

Epilogue:

Three of us, for the next couple of days, were almost walking with our legs widespread as our bums were roasted with so much cycling. Nevertheless, we didn’t miss our evening walk to Gandhi Bazaar (a tradition we had adopted for years), even on the day of return.

Though we were not given a heroes' welcome, we had stories to tell about our experience right from the start till the end.

Naturally, I was the centrepiece of the discussions for my plight mentioned above. The nickname stuck with me for decades, and even today, after 45 years, whenever we discuss our Mysore trip on bicycles, friends in that group remember me for all the wrong reasons. Though I used to get embarrassed earlier, I took it in my stride as a lesson of life, and learnt it the hard way. 

My sincere gratitude to Kishan and Sheshi, as they had to chip in with additional funds for this trip. Thanks, Kishan and Sheshi, for bailing me out and for the memorable trip. I am sure Kishan and Sheshi would mull over the recollection of our trip by going through this article. Similarly, my other friends and people of my generation can relate to this article in their own way. 

Long after this trip, one of my second cousins (presently in Houston, USA), questioned me if we did find it a bit difficult on the return journey, as Bengaluru is at a higher altitude than Mysore. Intelligent guy! This concept of difference in altitude had never crossed my mind during the journey or later, till he raised the question.

A few of the readers may be surprised at my candid recollection and penning down of my/our experiences. Such trips have shaped our future and character.

Thereafter, we graduated to scooters and motorcycles and made a few trips to Mysore, but the bicycle trip stands out to date, and those are stories for a different day.

Some of the pictures (Courtesy - Kishan), taken during our trip: