If I walk up to anyone and say that I love street running in Bangalore, people must think I’m crazy! But the fact is that by changing your strategy you can also love running on the streets.

I asked myself how come I love running on the streets and others don’t. I figured I was doing a few things differently.

• Running in residential areas:

Avoid main road when you can. If you are running random and don’t care to do a loop  it is best to run on small roads. Here is an example of my run around Padmanabhanagar. You  can see on google maps that there is only a few spots I hit the main roads (roads shown in yellow). I run mostly in the residential areas and small roads (roads shown in white). You can go from one area to the other by doing this, once in a while you might hit a main road, but find the next cross road as soon as possible.

What I love about running in the residential areas/small roads is that there are quite a number of trees around you. And all the houses look so different. Every house in Bangalore has its own charm in the way it is built. Some are colorful, some are built big, some are small and cozy. I keep myself entertained looking at all this.

• When you hit the main road stay to your right:

I feel this is very important to see a head on traffic than traffic behind you for two reasons, 1. You hear less honks. People in India honk so that the other person knows they are coming. 2. It is safer to see head on traffic so that you can move around looking at the vehicles.

But yes… most important thing is to find the next small road and get into it!

• Music helps

Music has always made me stay in my own world while running. I listen to a lot of podcasts / audio books while running. This can make you run a couple of extra miles.

These are the top three things that I do that makes a difference. I’m sure the other runners will have more points, do comment your experiences so that this helps other runners. Let us make street running a culture in Bangalore!

Took part in the bangalore cyclothon 2009. This was one of the biggest sports event in India I have attended. Over 7000 people participated in this event.

My wife and I took part in this event. Click here to read her experience.

The event was held at the NICE road starting at the Bangalore International exhibition.

It was fun to see Raghu Dixit perform at the show.

We had a lot of fun cheering…

Our cycling route: click here. I took 59min for 26.5KM. Hope to beat this next time.

Click here to see all pictures of the event.

I recently discovered a new route to cycle in Bangalore south. Thanks to Varun’s new toy – Garmin 305, I’m able to show you all how the route is.

What I love about this route is the bangalore-mysore road stretch. Lot of this road is incomplete which makes it a great route for mountain biking We took a small deviation at Uttarahalli towards subramanyapuram, this is a great route for cycling. There is no traffic, no pollution.

The best thing I like is the way google map shows exactly the way bangalore-mysore road is! It just ends at once!

Three cheers to Garmin GPS

It has been almost an year since we quit our regular jobs and have been working on our new product TrackEveryCoin. The product will be out in July 2009.

This is a pre-launch site, we are letting everyone know what the product is all about and we request everyone to signup if they are interested in the product. This will help us to be better prepared when we launch.

Track every coin is a personal financial tool that will help you get organized in your financial life. If you ever thought you had no idea how much you were spending per month, what were you spending it on, or how much is your saving, then this product is for you. It also helps you do a lot more than tracking your expenditure, like goal setting, reminders, sharing, events etc.

We appreciate it if you blog about it, tweet about it, let all your friends know about it. Let people know that such a product is going to come soon to solve their financial management problem and help them.

Pre-book the product to get special offers when we launch it.

Please visit: www.trackeverycoin.com

We see so many problems around us and always wonder why doesn’t the Government do anything about it! We always say the Govt is corrupt and say nothing can be done about it. I always wondered if there is anything that we can do to make a difference in India or is it only in the hands of govt.

 Here are a few things that I tried my hands. Might be worth giving it a shot!

1. Traffic and noise

When I came back from the US the first striking thing that hits you is the honking. When you sit down and think for min about honking it is very interesting. Honking has different meanings in different countries. In US it means – “Dude you are making a mistake watch out”, and in India it means – “Dude watch out I’m coming, give way”. How can we make a difference in the noise levels of traffic. The first thing that I did is – “I NEVER HONK IN BANGALORE”. When I first said this, most of them say it is not possible. I’d say it is. If you think about yourself while driving then you have to honk. If you think about others while driving and yield, you will never need to honk. I’d say take this up as a challenge and make a difference!

2. Garbage on the street

There are a few wonderful things that I learned in the west. One of them is not to litter. Most of us don’t know that we shouldn’t litter. If a small boy is given a chocolate, the first thing he does is he opens it and throws the wrapper down there. Why does this happen? We have never been taught not to litter on the streets. We don’t realize that we play a big role in the society and not just the Govt. My solution to this is: 1. I never litter any place. 2. If I see someone doing it and if he doesn’t look like a big guy, I give a BIG smile and say, sir please don’t litter the place!

3. People urinating in the city

It is very sad to see that urinating in public is legal but kissing in public is questionable! This is a hard one. There is no use in blaming people or the Govt. I’m really glad for Nirmala for installing so many public toilets in the city. But here we need a social movement to make a difference. If everyone of us object people who do it in a very polite way it just might work! The other day when I was running in lalbagh this guy was urinating right next to the public toilet!!! After he was done, I waked up to him and said – “Sir please use the toilet next time”. Don’t know if it helped, but I did my job.

 Again these are very small problems, might not even be considered as real life problems in India, but, the point is to act on every problem to make a difference.

 Germany rebuilt itself from ashes after the world war. If someone says it was the Govt alone, I’d disagree. I believe a country can do better only if people work towards the betterment. We as Indians should believe in our own people only then we can make a HUGE difference.

I have been wanting to implement rainwater harvesting at my home for a long time. Finally I did it today. It took me less than an hour to complete it.

There are different types of rainwater harvesting. The one that I have done is putting the rain water back to the under ground water. Because of so many roads and houses, the rain water doesn’t go back to the ground anymore. It is mostly evaporated. 

To start with I first got some pipes, joints and some glue:

We were very lucky to have a well in our house. It was all about filtering the water a little bit and leave the water to the well.

Install the filter in the pipe. This will block all the leaves and other suspended particles from entering the well.

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Bannerghatta National Park is situated 22 km south of Bangalore, Karnataka, India. The journey to the park takes nearly half an hour from Bangalore. This hilly place is the home for one of the richest natural, zoological reserves. The 25,000 acre (101 km²) zoological park makes this a major tourist attraction of Bangalore.

Having stayed in Bangalore for so many years I had never visited Bannerghatta National Park. In my previous attempt to this place, I ended up climbing a hill near that place.

The place reminded me of the movie Jurassic park. It was my first wild life safari!

We started off with the herbivour safari.

The Deers are so beautiful:

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This festival is unique to Bull temple, Bangalore.
Some information about the festival which I found out from the internet is:

The legend has it that the surrounding area of the temple, known as Sunkenahalli was cultivated for groundnut. A bull started grazing in the well-grown groundnut crop, at this, a farmer got furious and hit the bull with a club. Immediately the bull sat down becoming motionless and was transformed into a stone. Poor farmers were left stun and felt guilty. For their repentance they decided to build a temple for the bull, to their surprise the bull was growing in height. The worried farmer then prayed to Lord Shiva who advised them to redeem a trident buried a few feet away from the bull and place the trident on the forehead of the stone statue to stop it from growing. Farmers followed the Lord’s advice and the bull stopped growing. Still one can see the trident place on bull’s forehead.
Since then farmers offer their first crop of groundnut to the bull. The farmer’s hold a Groundnut fair known as Kadalekayi Parishe, near the temple premises every year, to show their thankfulness. It is one of the worth visiting places in Bangalore.

I studied in B.M.S. College of Engineering which is right across the Bull temple, and I had never been to this festival.

When I reached the place, I could see lots of stalls around. Huge piles of groundnuts and people selling them.

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We have been running around Turahalli Forest (Off Kanakapura road, Bangalore South) for a couple of weeks now, and I always wanted to do night photography at that place for obvious reasons:

My friend Varun and I finished work early today and decided to head out. We first wanted to capture the sunset, but by the time we reached the place it was dark. So we deiced do a small night trek and climbed the hill. The view from top is fabulus.

Last but not the least, I wanted to click the start streak, so I did a 5 min exposure.

The rock and the trees are very clear in the picture. It was pitch dark. We can see a small start streak. We had to head back so I had to stop the camera. One of these days, I want to try this again for may be 3 hours or so

Jayanagar… something I always wanted to capture. The best part of jayanagar I like is that it caters to all classes of people. The rich, the middle class, and the poor. I’ve seen all kinds of fancy restaurants to simple restaurants. From Branded shops to foot path vendors. I’ve always loved this kind of place and I hope jayanagar remains this way.

Eating places…

Having studied in vijaya jr. for 2 years cool joint was my fav place. I still love the sandwiches they make. As I write this blog my mouth is already watering….

Cool joint:

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