Pilgrimage tour on scooter across India since 11 months with a 70 year old mother.
Imagine leaving your job at 39 years of age to take your 70 year old mother on a pilgrim tour across the country on a scooter! That is exactly what D Krishnakumar dared to do in this day and age when most busy youngsters hardly get time even to talk to their aged parents!
It all started from a very middle class joint family household in Mysore. His mother’s whole life was spent in taking care of the needs of all the family members by cooking, cleaning, washing, scrubbing, and silently doing whatever it takes to ensure that the 10 members of the family are in comfort as they go to school, college or office.
Till she became widow at 67 years of age, her activities were mostly restricted to the confines of the four white walls of her Mysore home. She then joined her only son Krishnakumar who was working for a private marketing company in Bangalore.
One day she expressed her wish to visit the famous Belur Halebid temples, and Krishna Kumar suddenly realized that even though he had visited many places with his friends, his mother had never visited even the nearby temples. So he tried to show her as many places as he could whenever he was free with weekend trips.
At the sprawling Madhurai temple, even though he was tired, his mother was as excited visited every corner with a lot of enthusiasm and interest. In his subconscious mind he decided to show her as many places in India, as long as she is fit because he enjoys seeing the glow of happiness on his mother Chudaratnas face as she explores new places like a child filled with wonder!
Last year he took her on a 40 day north India pilgrim tour, starting from Kashmir changing trains, buses, tempos, taxis, or rickshaw. This also meant lots of unnecessary delays and waiting periods and being at the mercy of unscuplous local transporters.
After 13 years of working, he had some basic savings. He also realized that other than the basic meals of the day, both he and his mother hardly had any other habits or needs to fulfill.
Since his mother was already 70, he couldn’t delay fulfilling any wish of hers. She was always habituated to doing hard physical house work with grinding, sweeping, swabbing and other household chores. Unlike other ladies of her age she was quite comfortable to travel long distances on his scooter.
So took a bold decision to live off the interest of his savings and undertake a pilgrimage tour on scooter across India. He chose to travel on his special father’s 20 year old Bajaj Chevak scooter for door to door travel convenience and also because he felt his father’s presence and blessings for this trip with that scooter.
He called this as ‘Matru Seva Sankalp Yatra’ or ‘the trip for the vow of service to mother’ and started on 16th January 2018 from his home in Mysore. They have covered countless big and small temples and other places of interest across different states of India.
They started their trip from Mysore via Ooty and spent two months in Kerala. Armed with his google maps he interacted with his network of contacts and more with the locals to get information about the next place of interest to travel and stay in. He took photos of every place he visited, though did not write about it… He wanted to always experience the thrill of the present moment of the trip and not to miss the look of enjoyment on his mother’s face as they discovered new places of interest and interacted with new locals.
He decided to stay mostly at temples or ashrams, and eat mostly fruits, and the simple Prasad that is generously distributed at these places.
They were careful not to eat hotel food or stale food or fridge food, because keeping good health was their ultimate priority on this trip.
After two months in Kerala in Jan and Feb’18, they entered Tamil Nadu in the first week of March visiting every amazing temple after another, for the next two months.
They did not have any fixed agenda of how many kilometers to travel per day, they just traveled from one place to another and spent as much time as was required at every place.
In May and June’18 they rode their trusted scooter up and down the roads of Karnataka and Andra Pradesh. The spent the next few months entering Maharashtra and Goa and experiencing natural beauty, new cultures and local customs along with the temple visits.
By now they had visited lakhs of places and the media sources had come to know about this unique venture. Even though he shies away from talking about this essentially personal mission, he had to fulfill the curiosity of the journalists. The told him, it was a heart warming message to youngsters to take care of the simple needs of their parents in the last few years that they are alive!
I was lucky to meet them in Mangalore in the first week of December’18, when they had covered almost 27000 kms on their scooter and were ready to travel even more to whichever corner of beckons them, with no immediate plans of returning to their Mysore home that they had left almost 11 months ago! He told me of amazing closeby temples that were beautiful but not famous in places like Anantpura or Hosnadu or Machur, and I made a mental note of going to visit more of local unknown places of our great country India.
Really there is a huge world of amazement waiting for us when we decide to see and experience the local flavour of the nooks and corners of India.
When I asked him about memorable anecdotes of this trip he replied that he has a sense of quanimity towards all situations and all people. He neither got very happy nor very sad and just takes each day as it comes.
He attributes his simple living and high thinking to the variety of books that he read as a youngster when he frequently visited the public libraries. Even in this trip he has an unfinished book at all times.
When I prodded him more to give his special incident in this trip, he mentioned that at Sringeri temple he was given a chance to meet and spend 5-10 minutes with one of the most powerful ex politician of Karnataka and our ex Prime Minister Mr. Deve Gowda.
He has funded this trip from his own personal savings and interest and refuses to accept any kind of financial help which has been consistently offered to him.
He does visit private homes if there are personal invitations of love, and was keen to meet my philosopher surgery 85 year old father. I was happy to see my mother interact with them during this unexpected visit to our home.
I wondered what all he had to pack before going on this trip across India. He carried about 9 sets of clothes of his mother and 6 sets of his and washed them at night and reused them during the trip. Besides there were other accessories and paraphernalia and spare repair kits that had to be fit in 6 kit bags.
I saw his 6 kit bags of luggage along with 2 helmets, bedding items, and a handbag and I wondered how he managed to fit all this for his long distance travel on the old scooter. He actually visited us again on his scooter to show us how he traveled with all his luggage, made his mother sit comfortably on the bed sheets holding only her seventh item of hand bag in her hand.
The 3 kit bags were on the scooter, the 4th was tied to the side, the fifth lap top bag was slung in front of his neck, the 6th back pack was strapped behind his shoulders.
As he said bye to us with his mother, I said a small prayer for the safety and success of this trip.
Compared to most people who are so finicky about comfort on road trips, the thought of these two on their loaded scooter driving up and down the unpredictable streets if India through all kinds of terrain and all kinds of weather with a smile on their faces really restored my faith in humanity and parent child relationships!
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