A different kind of bike trip
06-Feb-2012
Last weekend, on January 28th, the 10th class of CFL, together with Ram and Amit, went on a two day bike trip to Mulugu, a village outside of Hyderabad and home to Praveen, one of the students. The conditions: no phones, no money, no food.
Basically the idea is to go to a place, find some work to do, do it and get food and/or shelter in return. As often with these kinds of things, not everything went according to plan, but read for yourselves what the kids have to tell:
Wesley, 16, writes: "We planned to go for a trip by cycle. it is called Cycle Yatra. The main thing about this trip is that we should not take any money, but our teacher had some money for emergencies.
This idea was of Amit and my teacher Ram Anna. We decided to take 8th class children also, but their parents didn't allow them to come. We had to go and find some work and ask for some food to eat. Main thing was to know how we can survive without money.
On Saturday morning at 5:30 am we met at AWHO colony, but it was still dark, then we moved at 6:15 am from there. Near Alwal there was an accident, the lorry was crashed and it was lying on the road, the police were standing there.
Then we went little near Akimpate, Ram Anna's cycle was punctured. We had tools and we went to Akimpate and there was a cycle shop, we repaired it by ourselves. Then we filled air and the shopkeeper asked for money. We said that we don't have money. Then he scold us and we ignored it and started going.
At 9:15 am we reached Shamirpate. There was a lake, the water was very dirty. It was called Catta Misama. There we sat and had some food like chapati, aloo curry and bread with cheese. After eating we moved.
By 10:15 am we reached Praveen's village. There we took rest for half an hour and we drunk tea. Then we took our bags and took rice, some vessels, some chili powder, salt and oil. Then we reached Praveen's farm. We kept our bags aside and sat under the tamarind tree. Then Ram and Amit went to bring water and we made fire with firewood and we cooked rice.
We didn't have onions so Leo and I went in the village and asked for onions. There was a woman, we went to her and told that we are from Hyderabad and to cook curry, we need two onions. Then she went in and brought four onions. Then we both went to farm and shouted that we got onions. Ram Anna started calling me uliraju. Then we cooked rasam and we ate food and Ram and Amit slept and we were playing.
At 5:00 pm we went to other village called Wargle by cycle. There was a temple. Praveen said they will give food in temple and we all went to eat and come, but there were lots of people and we didn't go in. Then we went to another village. There, some children were playing kabaddi and we played and enjoyed with them. Ram Anna got one small hurt.
Then we stopped playing kabaddi and they sang cinema songs. The one boy gave us tomatoes and we went back to the farm. By 7:00 pm it was little dark. Instead of cooking rasam and rice, we cut tomatoes and we were done with food and on that day it was Leo's birthday. Praveen and Mahesh went and brought sweet. Leo was surprised, then he cut the sweet.
We ate our food and all of them went to sleep. To scare me, suddenly all of them ran like ghosts in one by one. I was scared and I cought Praveen and didn't let him run.
We slept and woke up at 4:30 am. We bunt some wood and some grass. At 5:00 am, everyone went to sleep, but I was sitting near fire and burning the grass. Then, at morning, we ate food and packed all bedsheets and vessels, and went to Praveen's house and washed the vessels, then we started coming back to home. All of us were tired. Then we saw a temple, Ratnalayam. We went there and ate pulao. By 1:30 pm we reached home.
The main thing I learnt is if we go in any village without money and how we can get food and find some work. To know what is hungry and how it comes. Now I know how to survive without money."
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Mahesh, 17, writes: "On the weekend we all planned to go cycle trip for one night, about 80-100 kilometers. The idea is that we should travel without any money or prepared food. We should earn food by ourselves by doing some work somewhere. And there is also no arrangement work, we have to find that work by ourselves and do it. In that trip mobiles are also not allowed. But we took some emergency things like we took some money and one mobile. Except one mobile and some money we didn't take any thing.
Actually the idea was suggested by Amit Anna. He did something like this trip before, somewhere in the northern part of India. So he told us about that trip, then we all liked the idea of that trip and we decided to go. And also wanted to see weather we can survive without money or not.
On Saturday, the 28th, we started at 6:15 in the morning. After traveling a little distance, Ram Anna's cycle got punctured, then everyone seemed like little worried. Then Leo sat behind my cycle on the carrier holding Ram Anna's cycle. While going I drove the cycle. Like that we drove about 3 or 4 km. Then we reached one village, in that village we could find the puncture shop and went in to that shop. Then we told him about that trip. We told him that our cycle got punctured, we will repair our selves only. So can you give us some water for puncture this cycle? Then he said ok, take how much water you want. Then we got cycle repaired by ourselves.
As soon as we got the cycle repaired we started from there. At 10.15 or something we reached one village called Mulugu. That village was Praveen's village; he was part of our group. There we searched for some work but we couldn't find the work. Then Praveen said that his uncle's farm has some work. We took some rice and some other things from Praveen's house and then we went to his uncle's farm. Unfortunately there was also no work. Then every one got little bored. After little while we started to preparing lunch. For cooking we collected fire wood from different places and we cut them and put them into fire. After we done that, we had lunch, but that food was so nice.
After lunch we had rest for some time. At 4 pm we had to start for roaming the villages beside that village. Then we went about 20-25 km. On the way we had seen different beautiful places and also some children was playing Kabaddi near the road, we saw them and we were also tempted to play that game. Then we went to join them. We played that game for some time. While playing that game Ram Anna fell down and got little hurt, when he was trying to catch Amit Anna.
After that we sang some song with that children and they also sang some songs. We enjoyed a lot there and the children were very amazing and also very cheerful. When we were going back then the children gave some tomatoes for dinner.
After we came back from there, we all planned to give a one surprise birthday party to Leo. That day was his birthday. He was also part of our group. Then two people went into the village for bringing the cake with some emergency money, without him knowing. But they couldn't find the cake there, so they brought some sweets. In that night we celebrated Leo's birthday, he was very happy with that party. After birthday party we had started to cook the food for dinner.
That night we cooked mix rice like we putted rice and vegetables and every thing in it. That food was very tasty to eat. Before eating we thought that we will sing some songs after eating but we couldn't sing songs because that night was very cold, so we covered ourselves with some bed sheets which we took from home and slept. Before sleeping, one of our teachers told us about some ghost story. Then one person got very scared about that story. That person name was Wesley.
While sleeping, everyone planned to scare Wesley. We all ran one after the other by making some sounds, then that person got very scared and he was trying to catch Praveen. Like this we did some tricks in that night. In the morning everyone got up at 4 am and lighted the fire for cold. Then every got around the fire. After that we all started from there to Praveen's home for keeping all those vessels and some other things. From Praveen's home we started at 8.30 or some thing. We reached Hyderabad at about 12.30 or something. But we all so tired.
That cycle trip was so amazing. I couldn't realize that we can do that so easily. We drove smoothly without tired when we were going but we get tired while we coming back to Hyderabad. We all enjoyed a lot in that trip and also very interesting to me and I felt that it's useful. I think we learnt some from it. In this trip I learnt that we can survive without money also. I think this trip idea was very good and also again I want to go for these kinds of trips. That trip was very fun trip. I think we can learn so many things from it. I felt only one thing was bad was we didn't get any work to do. If we would have gotten work, I think we would have enjoyed more than that."
