Woman-son return home after 'Bharatha Darshana'

motorcycle tour

He is equated with Shravana Kumara of ‘Ramayana’, who is celebrated for his sacrifice for the love for his parents. However, 71-year-old Chudarathna, mother of D Krishna Kumar, says her son is like no other and she is the luckiest mother.

Krishna Kumar, 41, a former employee of a private company in Bengaluru, has covered 56,522 km, across 20 states and three foreign nations — Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar — on his 2000 model Bajaj Chetak scooter (KA 09 X 6143) with his mother as a pillion rider, as part of his ‘Bharatha Darshana’ tour, for his mother.

Chudarathna said, “Up to 67 years, she was completely into household chores and had not seen any tourist place, except those in Mysuru. Once, during a casual conversation, my son asked me, if I had seen a couple of pilgrim centres like Thiruvannamalai. I just said that I had not even seen Belur-Halebid in the neighboring Hassan district.”

“In 2017, he took 30 days off from work and took me to Kashmir, in a car, and covered many places in Rajasthan, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir. Later, he resigned and we started off on January 16, 2018, for our tour on the scooter, after offering puja at Sri Chamundeshwari Temple, atop the Chamundi Hill in Mysuru,” she said.

Krishna Kumar said that they only returned home on September 16, 2020. “Our two-year-nine-month ‘Bharatha Darshana’ was more of a pilgrimage, than a tour. We never stayed in a hotel or a lodge. Similarly, we never had food in any hotel. In fact, our discipline in the consumption of food kept us healthy throughout. We fell ill only initially, twice — in Puttur and at Guntur. We used to have one breakfast and one dinner at either a religious institution or at the house of a local philanthropist,” he said.

“We were welcomed at most of the places, by people as they would have either read or heard about our tour, by the time we reached, due to media. Before starting to our next destination, we would gather information and contact details. Thus, at all places, we were offered food, beverages and gifts — in either cash or kind. But, we did not accept anything, as the tour was actually a pilgrimage and our needs were minimum. I spent around Rs 6.85 lakh from my savings and its bank interest,” he said.

Krishna Kumar said, “We were not in a hurry and would stay for a day or two in a place. We wanted to see all towns and cities of each state and also villages, as we could understand the culture and traditions of the people, only in rural areas. We visited all temples and religious institutions on our way.”

“We had to stay for one month and 21 days at Samsing Tea Garden near Darjeeling when Covid-19 crisis started. MP Raju Bista of West Bengal and Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa helped us to get a transit pass and entry pass. We covered 2,673 km in seven days and entered the Karnataka border. Again, we stayed for one-and-a-half months at Ramakrishna Ashram, Taggihalli in Madhugiri taluk, before brief stays at Mandya and Srirangapatna,” Krishna Kumar added.

As promised by Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, in a tweet on October 23, 2019, in response to a video on a Tweet, Krishna Kumar received a KUV 100 Nxt car in Mysuru, recently.