kanakpura road and beyond > > 50kms up and down

After a palak(spinach) panner lunch today(a recipe i tried from my new cook book), we decided to head out ..we didn't

want to spend another weekend indoors.
Took Raghu's bike, a YAHAMA, actually his friend's and has been repaired recently .I prefer bikes to cars any day.The

Reasons being the following-
1- In a crowded city like blore you will be stuck in a traffic jam forever if you re in a car.
2- Somehow the whole view and the surroundings cannot be enjoyed in a car,the picture outside seems framed through

the window of the car.Its tough to totally connect with your surroundings and then there's the lovely blore breeze which

is hard to miss..


We were quite clueless about where is it that we were going to go, but first decided to go and get a bangalore map(which

we never ended up using). Raghu suddenly had a brainwave to get to the kanakpura road. I quite frankly only know the

new part of bangalore(indiranagar-mg road-vittal mallya road(office) and back ).Hence I certainly had no opinion in this

case and quietly sat behind the bike and knew that it was going to be somewhere far off. I had taken a sweat shirt and a

scarf of a sort and a small back pack(with a camera, water ,etc.). After about 25kms on the kanakpura road we started

feeling the absence of the city (which is a good thing).Suddenly the temperature dipped because of no cars and lots of

trees.
Kanakpura road is quite an interesting one.While on the road we saw a road sign indicating us to the valley

school(which was 1.5 km in).The valley school is run by the j krishnamurthi foundation. Recently i have been a reading

a bit of j krishnamurthi and i find his philosophy quite fascinating, hence tempted by my desire to learn more about

him i convinced raghu to take a road which went right in from the main road.Those 1.5 km were completely cut off from

the city ,we saw sprawling fields and a pond on our way ,with a view of some hills close by and absolutely no civilization.

Raghu was worried about his fuel which was running out.
Once we reached the school we were' nt allowed in ,it being a holiday and the guard suspecting that we were potential

bored blore people who wanted to come to the school for a picnic,we were 'nt allowed in. I was slightly disappointed but i

could certainly peep into the school.The school looked lovely with luscious trees and plants all around.The school had a

very earthy feeling and I quickly asked the guard about other details of the school.
Moving on..we next came across Sri Sri Ravishankar's art of living centre.The head quarter is based here and it runs into

several acres.curiosity aroused in me and our next destination was going to be the aol centre for several hours.Again

extremely impressive campus,self sustained, it had a supermarket where you could buy anything from clothes to things

to eat.A lot of stuff being sold here catered to the foreigners. There are a number of courses that are done here and this

place in particular holds great fancy for foreigners , for most of them-- its the "Indian spiritual experience".

I myself have done the basic aol course twice but was still a little wary about the place initially. But this feeling went

away when i saw a the number of people who were being employed by the centre -to stitch clothes, as guards. They have

several sections -
1- carrers at aol
2-matrimony at aol
3- nadi centre
4- ayurveda massage
5- a school
6-veda research centre
and a whole lot of others things..
The whole place is quite like any resort -trees planted well,nice cottages to stay..very well maintained and i needn't mention

the magnanimity of the whole place.
The HIGHLIGHT of the place- meditation centre . In the shape of a lotus with several levels and all marble flooring.

Once you enter the centre you notice a pic of guruji right at the centre of it all..

a deeya. we took a place on the floor and were chatting about religion and belief etc, raghu had some v interesting

comments about the whole thing-
1- he thought that a temple /religious place gives you some space to ponder over things in your life
2- People grew increasingly religious as they grew older-don't know why?

my comments-
1-everyone needs a belief ,very often it is easy to believe in someone outside other than us.However this in the end helps

us to believe in ourselves
2- Also largely driven by the society we grow up in

We very soon saw a number of people entering the hall..the time for their evening kriya had started..we stepped out and

decided to take a walk around and then once we came back to the hall, the bhajans had started and i saw some people

dancing to the bajans which was really different from what we see otherwise. However this man seemed to be completely

enjoying himself which made me think why it was not a common practice.

anyway raghu was inclined to have some prasad, i was quite full but would be accompanying him..i ended up taking

some dal and rice myself.we then had to wash our plates and keep them aside.On our way back raghu went to one of the

people who were serving the food and asked him if we could help them out in anyway..he told us that we could help out with

the cleaning of the vessels... while in the kit hen i had never seen such huge vessels( was in a state of shock) , these were

the vessels in which dal ,prasad and subzi was prepared for hundreds of people and we had to wash them..i was

washing the smaller vessels..and was wondering how were we going to manage the rest but very soon there were enough

volunteers..after spending about 30 mins we were out.
I remember him earlier telling me about how we would experience everything..i guess this was one of those
experiences..totally unexpected...

next was to take the bike and head back..jayanagar was on the way and we decided to drop in at the

rangashankara(theatre) to enquire about the festival that was going on..but we found out that most of the plays were in

regional languages..the rangashakara boasts of an excellent cafe which has beautiful candles on every table ..and

then of course there are some red paper lamps on the ceiling..we ordered some tea and coffee and surprisingly had the

energy
to go to pvr to check for movie tickets. we ended up seeing this movie called "fashion" and came back home only at 2 am.