Made with in India
Made with in India
Crazy things happen , sometimes. This was one of those crazy things. Cycling has recently been my favorite sport and medium of geographical exploration. Over-complicating isn’t it. I love to cycle around the campus. In the morning you have this cool breeze that wakes your lethargic body up from within when you cycle around.
My good friend (Dinojh) who is also an amazing maker, a Product Designer and a cyclist helps me and essentially ignites the wacky cycling plans, I make. He has never said No. But this time after our last trip that was planned for Matunga ended up in an almost Dadar Darshan, I was cautious.
I wanted to cycle in South Bombay, especially the Marine Drive. So, the plan was to lug the cycle in the Local and reach CST and then cycle around, have breakfast and come back via Train preferably or if possible we can cycle back.
By (Safety Officer) Dinojh has other plans always. He is the one who hates public transport and would cycle anywhere. The only line of reason being , “Why not?”.
We ended ditching the Train out of the plan altogether. It ended up a 101.2km ride to and fro from IIT Bombay. Back breaking, mind numbing but we did quite a lot of exploration, actually most of South Bombay was peddled.
Phew. Lets start from the beginning.
We started from IIT around 6:45am in the morning. It was cold. The supplies to the canteen were coming in. We knew we wont be having any breakfast till CST so, ate up energy bars to help us fueled up. We carry 5litres of water as Dinojh always insists that he runs on water.
We took the eastern expressway all the way till CST. Stopping multiple times and having been lured into a few detours thanks to those escher-ed flyovers Bombay has.
We reached CST. It felt great. Actually we were peddling under a highway and it was CST all of a sudden.
We had breakfast at the Legendary Kyani Bakery. I really love the idea of hanging stair supports that they have.I had already tasted the place the last week in a cheese craving trance. Decent is my verdict. Lets not wake up the foodie inside. Ummmm.
Look what we found in the parking lot
Next up was Nariman Point which would set the starting point of our Marine Drive Adventure Lap.
Now we cycled from Nariman point till we lost our breath, guess where? Bandganga, near Malabar Hills.
The place looked nice for cycling. So, we cycled criss cross in the area. I could not manage some of the climbs though. Lured by the decent, we came down to Marine Drive. Boooo.. We missed Hanging Gardens it seems. No point of coming this far and not visiting Hanging Gardens, said Dinojh.
Okay Then!
We also planned to learn more about the Tower of Silence. But it turned out to be a private property. No Entry la !
But here is the cliched point to click the queen’s necklace. Yeah Yeah! The shoe house was still there.
Hungry again, we went back to Kyani and had some food. The place has for me temporarily crossed its marginal utility.
Next, we visited JJ School of Art to check out the amazing Fine Art exhibition. Thanks Avinash for the tip. Some pictures.
Photography was restricted inside and we are law abiding citizens. So, yeah ! This is what we could capture.
Next what? Well lots of it. Lets go to Fashion street. Why? Because its there and Dinojh has not seen it. Same for Gateway, NGMA, Price of Wales Museum and then back to CST.
We got ourselves clicked an instant photo at Gateway. The photographer was a part time working student and taught us some cool street photography tricks especially in sun.
From CST we started our deadman’s crawl back home. I barely managed to be back. One should always buy those cycling shorts and not just go. Be like Dinojh.
I remember this particular instance when I almost gave up around Dadar and was pissed off at the traffic condition there. You had these Taxi’s on the road side, they dont have a hazard switch or its very difficult to operate. Then as you would be passing by, like a dormant land mine he would come in your path and you apply those discy drum brakes.
Now imagine to do this multiple times in the next 1km. Takes the fun out. I dislodged from the cycle and walked a while. Dinoj like a horse would just go until he would realize that he is not riding alone. I walked and asked Dinojh, “ Dudeh (h is mandatory to make it sound like mallu), I wont be able to make it, my back hurts and blah..blah..” He said , “just smile (plus some random convincing stat about muscles) and change the posture to this”.
That actually helped, i mean the posture part. As we made it to the Eastern Highway, we had a smooth journey post that. We we entered campus back, it was as if some refugees came back to their motherland. We cycled faster and reached hostel. Puffff.
Mission Accomplished.
Thank Youh Dinojh :)
Cheers,
Rohit