Mt. Abu and running

I wouldn’t say I lost my way while running today in Ahmedabad. I have never lost my way while running. Nobody loses his / her way when running. You have to be a loser to lose your way when running and loser’s can’t run.

What I would say instead is that I couldn’t take the path that I had earlier marked on gmap. I realized this after like forty minutes of running. So I had to ask for directions. You don’t ask for directions only when you are lost. Sometimes it’s important to be sure. Especially if you are running.

I could reach back the hotel only after one hour fifteen minutes of running. Had I been able to stick to the marked track, I should have reached in 50 minutes. I have no idea how much I ran. The good thing is, I finally ran in Ahmedabad.

I know that I had declared that I would go running last Friday itself. Like an asshole, I just gave it a miss and then next day, I and some of my colleagues were off to Mt. Abu. I didn’t really know Mt. Abu was so close and all that to Ahmedabad but hey, it is! I remember being there a long long time ago when Papa had taken the family on a tour of Rajasthan.  I also remember that it was in Mt. Abu that I learnt what OMNI was. It was a white coloured taxi and I asked Papa what the word OMNI written on the front of the van meant and he told me it was the name of the van. It’s weird why I remember such vague things but I do. I need to dig out my baal-awastha ke pictures from Mt. Abu the next time I am home. It’s been a long time since I have been home. Om shanti Om. LOL – just like that.

I probably would have given running a miss today again had LoLy not called up early in the morning. She called up and told me she was off to Chennai from Bangalore. It was quite some time after six and I told her I found it funny that there was no sun outside. I was thinking more on the lines of an out of a blue ‘solar-eclipse’ but she was quick to make me realize that unlike Orissa, Gujarat was on the west. Finally, decent light showed up only by 6:45. Roads gathered decent traffic by seven. I am shifting my hotel today and I hope that the new running route that I finalize is a little devoid of traffic in the mornings. Let me tell you something about the way traffic moves here in Ahmedabad.

The city is full of intersections. Many cities and towns are full of intersections – so nothing special there but the funny thing about Ahmedabad is that most of the intersections neither have a signal nor traffic police-men/women. All vehicles rush towards an intersection at the same time and yet, there never is any jam or clog. The trick is in the eye-contact. You have to win the first right of way by the sheer intensity of your gaze clubbed obviously with the size and speed of your machine. And the city is so good at it that vehicles seamlessly pass through each other at all the intersections. Even when they don’t actually pass through each other, the effect is the same. I was reading a ToI front page article today that praised the recently introduced BRTS. The article used a phrase that best captures the traffic flow in Ahmedabad – ‘bumper to bumper’.

Alright, before I stop, here is a link to some ‘bumper’ pics from the Mt. Abu weekend trip.