Random Thoughts

today, after weeks of making weekend plans which always failed, today I was successful in going on the cycling trip. me and my friend woke up at 7:15 in the morning, and by 7:30 we were on the roads. the last night it had rained and till the morning the whole sky was covered with clouds, so there wasn't much temperature. though we were afraid that it might rain during our trip, we decided it was better to give it a try rather than wait for one more week.

we had planned to go to a step well which is some 15-16 kms away from Ahmedabad towards Gandhinagar. in total the trip was 32 kms long (actually a little more, if you consider that we had to move from our campus to the Ahmedabad - Gandhinagar highway) and my friend, who has done lots of cycling, estimated that it should take us around 2 hours.

the first half of the trip was good. i was somewhat wary of riding on the highway initially because i have had some not-so-nice experiences on Patna highway when i used to rise my scooter, but got comfortable after 30 minutes. the roads were wide, and there were no potholes, something so ubiquitous in patna that i think officials of patna transport corporation have adopted them as a substitute for speed-breakers.

after some 75 minutes we reached the step well. well, the underground well, which is some 10 metres below the surface, was exactly as romantic as i had thought. the water was dirty, and the place was too humid. the building had several floors, and the same design was adopted to build all of them. we spent only 10-15 minutes there and decided to return. while we were returning, we saw a group of 20-25 old men who had come to visit the place and the guide was animatedly talking to them, as if explaining what a great architectural marvel the building was. i remember the group only because some of them were wearing gandhi topi, something which you don't see very often these days.

i will write the remaining part in the next post.