Letβs take you out on my weekend trip- an unplanned Sunday Day out with my childhood friend Himadri (weβve been friends for over 11 years now). This was the first time in an eternity (since school days) when we were in the same city for the longest time, yet met only once during the lockdown, sometime in June, this being our second! And this particular outing was a long awaited one, as both of us were in dire need of a break too!
On Saturday we had decided to leave the house at 7 am and guess who only woke up at that time? Yes, me! Thanks to me finding a really interesting article to study late at night, the night before and burning my eyes in front of the laptop until I couldnβt read anymore! Anyways, we left at around 8 in the morning and decided on our way that the first stop will be Delhi Art District. Itβs an artistβs version of how they perceive Delhi, through murals and paintings, on Delhi and life in general. We rode till Lodhi Garden, where we parked our car and rented a bike each to discover these lanes. It was still early and the streets were sparsely crowded, almost empty, and we took that to our advantage and rode our heart out! The tree vaulted lanes and the onset-of-winter nip in the air did elevate our riding spirits, but truly it was a bliss to see majorly joggers, and cyclists on the roads and birds chirping in exchange for the dotting and painfully annoying motorised vehicles and honks.
We stumbled upon some pre-wedding video shoots and zipped past them after taking a mental record of their count and also witnessed some very interesting cat-dog fights, rooting for the really pretty white cat this one time and celebrating her win with encouraging smiles at her too!
I have previously cycled on the streets of Delhi (although not this particular one) and I was so happy to ride on the newly made cycling lanes at road-crossings and at intersections. New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has demarcated many critical strips for cyclists and the sheer availability of rent-able bikes (smartbikes, as they are called) in this area was pretty delightful. All this is part of the #Cycle4Change campaign Delhi has taken up along with many other cities in the country. (I recently did a detailed article on this, which you can read here.) But the real test of time will be the maintenance and the scaling of this initiative. People as a whole need to keep these services alive and more importantly keep riding to generate a positive pressure to better the services in the coming future, let alone the maintenance top-notch.
All this also made us super thirsty and we regretted not keeping a bottle of water with us. Despite having ample space for one, it just slipped our minds to carry one. So the moment we spotted a coconut seller, it felt weβd hit Jackpot! Oh the drops of heaven!
If you donβt carry a reusable straw with you, try drinking it from the shell-nut itself, because using a plastic straw in excuse is so not worth it, you know.
Later, after riding the streets for over two hours, we finally took our picnic kitty and had a wonderla time at Lodhi Garden! I loved the Dhokla Himadri got and getting Coffee was a genius move from her end. On the contrary, I had made some apple chocolate granola, which, I can tell from experience now, is not the best thing to pack for picnics! Anyways, we wrapped up breakfast, petted Cheddar (a five month old Dog we found on his morning stroll), waved at many kids and then hit the roads again! Next stop: Sri Bangla Sahib Gurudwara.
Honestly speaking, it wasnβt the best idea to go to such a place, especially during an ongoing pandemic. The Gurudwara was jam-packed with people everywhere, and our plans to sit quietly came crumbling down as soon as we entered the place. Needless to say, Bangla Sahib is beautiful and we couldnβt help admire the beauty. Also, we forgot to carry our stoles with us, and had to buy one each. There is nothing wrong with that, but carrying some basic essentials need to be in our habit. And this must be in accordance with where weβre going to. Of course, when planning trips spontaneously, it is obvious for our preparation to be overturned sometimes but still, a stole is something we should have kept. Iβm saying this because using what we already have with us will always be more sustainable and cheap, but given the circumstances, that purchase was unavoidable. And what I buy speaks so much about the demand I create, and I want to make sure itβs ethical in all senses as much as possible (by me).
I feel it’s almost always necessary to carry with us some basic essentials, a stole in this case, a water bottle, some basic off-the-kitchen cutlery, a cup and a tiffin box to omit the disposables you may have to use otherwise. Itβs not easy to always carry these things, and I too have been victim of peer-pressure from friends while travelling as none of them would carry any bag and convince me to do the same. But the guilt I felt towards the end this one time when I was in a different city with a bunch of friends, and with no bag, was insurmountable. So, maybe, one just needs to start off with something as basic as a water bottle and a spoon, slowly achieving perfection, if that even exists. But the thing is, just like the missing stole in our kitty this time, it could have been something else too.
By this time we had weighed out many probable plans ahead, but decided on taking a wholesome lunch at Connaught Place. And later went to India Gate where we ran like crazy children playing games and finally decided to head home at sunset! Probably it was because it was a Sunday, but the magnitude of βpeopleβ we saw both at the Gurudwara and at India Gate was insane. But Iβm guessing much like us, they too needed a break, and couldnβt resist the desire to taste (the polluted yet the delectable) βoutsidesβ after an indoor hibernation that still continues.. π
