Cycling to awaken minds, save nature

Ineffable pedals

At a time when youths these days fancy hot cars and bikes, it is rather a rarity to see youths ride bicycle. Over here, two friends who have a great passion for cycling, and have been taking up adventure trips pedalling often.

Krishna Vasudeva Rao and Krishna Chaudhari, the city lads, both in their early twenties have a message for their counterparts and have set about educating the masses on need for clean and environment-friendly mode of transport and cycle atleast once in a week while going for an outing in your leisure time. The duo, who organise regular trips to the country-side organising short trips in Mysore region, cycled more than 1080 kilometres on Mysore-Kodaikanal-Munnar route and the return journey in January this year.

Their affluent economic backgrounds notwithstanding, these boys chose to tour the region on their favourite bicycles cycling for more than 11 days.

Speaking to City Herald, the youths shared their experience and talked about cycling and the expedition. “We took the long journey for two reasons - to explore the scenic greenery through joy of cycling and popularise spread public awareness on importance of cycle,” says Vasudeva Rao.

A BBM graduate from Mahajana’s college, Rao says he always liked travelling, climbing, mountaineering during his school and college days and regularly took part in trekking to Chamundi hill and Kunthi Betta, organised during their days of school and colleges and by the Youth Hostel Association of India.

Every weekend, Rao cycled 18 kilometres to his family farmhouse on H D Kote road. When he got his imported racing bicycle, the Trek delivered in Bangalore, he cycled it till Mysore in 2009.

Krishna Chaudhari recalls that his similar passion for trekking and mountaineering brought them together to take up adventures on bicycles. “To start with we toured country-side and outskirts of city moving upto 50 - 300 kms a day during our free time or in weekends. A lot of cycling helped us to get adjusted to long-distance travelling or expedition like Mysore to Munnar,” he states.

Chaudhari, who is into sixth semester mechanical engineering course in Vidya Vikas College of Engineering and Technology says people have a wrong notion that travelling long distance on cycles is impossible. However, such tour gives one a rich experience along with highly strenuous physical exercise. 

On the Mysore - Kodaikanal - Munnar tour, Krishna Vasudev says the expedition was challenging. Except for one cold night spent in a hotel, they spent all 10-days pitching our tent in open fields.

“The people and forest officials enroute were supportive in Tamil Nadu. Infact, a group of boys who were inspired by our expedition in Kodaikanal helped us a lot. They are in touch with us. They too have planned a similar expedition from Kodaikanal to Mysore,” says Krishna Vasudeva.

Asked what kind of food or edible stuff they depended on, to maintain their stamina, he adds: “We used to have lots of tender coconut, besides having dry fruits, milk products with regular food.”

The duo have planned to set a new benchmark on cycle cycling about 12000 kilometres between Kanyakumari and Leh. Both of our parents have agreed and supported us, the duo says proudly.

When they are not cycling, Krishna Vasudeva and Krishna Chaudhary sell imported cycles like Trek, Btwin, Rock Rider, Merida, Firefox, Dahon among other international brands through or a shop called ‘Kamangi’ in the city.