When many of the vehicles on the highway were ready to help. TTTT 28

I could have written about this post earlier too, but my goal to reach 100 posts for the year 2016 is making me to write newer shorter posts.

Today morning after being stranded on the highway, we planned to stop on going vehicles asking for help. I tried to stop few vehicles on the road around 6 30 am. Believe me, most yellow board/commercial vehicles stopped and were ready to help, but owing to non availability of jumper cable they could do nothing.

The reason why I am writing about this is, its only once in a while, I have encountered so many vehicles ready to stop. In general, I myself do not stop owing to the fear of getting robbed,but over here, even vehicles with single owner/driver stopped and asked what has gone wrong.

One such good day it was!

Cheers,

When being stranded on highway taught us a lesson - TTTT 27

Traveling teaches us lots of life lessons. Being stranded or unexpected situations while on travel teaches us even more. But the helping hand who bails us out also teaches us a bit more too.

It was my second time this year, I was stranded on the highway with no help or option. When help came it was a local gentleman who came with a tractor and jumper cable. He himself brought the cable which was a great deal in itself.

We were 12 fully grown up guys we could not manage to start the vehicle by pushing, could not get help from the highway anywhere. The guy who came with the tractor had lost one of his leg in an accident. He was so brave that he drove a tractor despite his condition and on top of that, came to help us.

Sometimes, I feel pity myself for the way, I behave with people, over here, this person early morning, despite his condition came to help us, to bail us out.

What more a better life lesson, I could learn other than being humble to others. I agree, we need to be better equipped while being on highway, but believe me, being humble tops the list.

We do belittle people for being fat, for being overweight, looking ugly, but yes, when the time comes, being fat, being ugly and other characteristics take a back seat. what matters most is humility and the ability to get things done and I am sure none of the characteristics we consider or make fun of are even close to getting things done.

I hope this incident lingers in my mind again and again, so that I can help do whatever I can to others, I will always regret not being a doctor or a soldier, but I will try to help!

Cheers,

When fellow travelers were Ravichandran fans - TTTT 26

Its been a year since I had written about a radio program on big 92.7 FM. It was Straight hits with V Ravichandran. The show no longer is aired. It used to have repeated songs from movies of Ravichandran but we were so adjusted to the songs, to the voice of the host V Ravichandran that Silkboard traffic was never an issue because we felt it was over shadowed by this radio program.

Ever since this program is off air lots of things have changed, our company no longer sponsors an AC transport / Innova, so our cab got split plus few members of our organization left, couple of others were laid off. So with no options left, we just manage to crib while passing through silkboard.

The reason why I am writing this is because, yesterday, we had a bunch of folks on board our vehicle who were fans of Ravichandran including the driver.  They were asking for Ravichandran songs to be played repeatedly. Almost many songs from his movies were being played yesterday, which reminded me of the golden period of 80's and of course golden period of our company where in we had AC transport, good funding.

But yes things change, people grow older, people move apart, organizations split up, fall apart, all that remains is memories,

Cheers,

PS - I think some of the best movies/music used to come out prior to this decade or two! I agree there were only love stories, no complicated plots, but with advancement of technology, things no longer are simpler, so are movies and their plots, so are lyrics and music!

When I was stranded on a highway, in a leopard / bear territory - TTTT 25

I could have written this as a part of the previous post, but surely its an interesting encounter to write about it in a new post.

Be it a myth or be it truth, this one surely counts as one spooky episode.

I was stranded on a highway at 2.30 in the morning and by the time we got to move from that place it was 8 30 am. Meanwhile, at around 7 30 am the only small shop on the highway opened. The village was  a kilometer from the main road and this was the only shop which was around.

We had spent the entire night roaming around the main road, sleeping inside the van and then sitting in front of campfire waiting for help to arrive.

So when the shop opened, they asked us how did we manage to spend time in the night, we told them about campfire etc etc, they gave us a big surprise.

They told the area was a bear territory, also recently a leopard had given birth and was roaming around in this place, surely, this gave goosebumps, but considering we had campfire we thought we were lucky enough.

But rest of the time, when I was roaming around the highway along the night before we setup the campfire, we were just plain lucky not to encounter any animals!

Cheers,

When I was stranded on a highway - TTTT 24

There are many such tales, about which I can write, but I tend to skip them owing to laziness, lesser time. But this one happened today morning at 2 am and I am still fresh enough to write this.

I had traveled to Gokarna over the weekend to take part in the beach trek. Before we reached Gokarna our vehicle (Tempo traveller) tyre just burst out, leaving us with one tyre to spare only.

When the we saw the spare tyre which we had, I was doubtful, if something went wrong, we would be stranded on the highway and believe me it happened. The driver was careless and overconfident enough not go have got the tyre fixed over the weekend!

Today morning at 2:30 am, we were 3 hours from Bangalore and somewhere near Nittur our vehicle tyre just got flat again.

In the middle of the road at 2:30 am in the morning, we had no option but to park the vehicle to the side. The driver took out the wheel looking out for a puncture shop at 2 am in the morning.

All the while, we were waiting for him to come back, we had managed to setup a campfire somewhere next to our vehicle and few of us managed to sleep of just to pass time.

The driver eventually came back around 6 30 am with a used 15 inch wheel instead of the usual 16 inch wheel. The old wheel was just unusable.

Meanwhile, due to usage of parking lights plus few other bulbs (to warn on coming traffic of our parked vehicle) the vehicle battery completely went dry. We tried to push the vehicle and get it running but it just refused to start.

We tried to stop few oncoming vehicles and ask them for jumper cable, but no one on the highway had a big jumper cable, finally, we got hold of a number of a gentleman, who would bring on his tractor and bring a jumper cable to start our TT.

We got our vehicle up and running by around 8 30 am, all in all we were stranded on the highway for a good 6 hours from 2 30 am to 8 30 am in the morning.

Had to skip office but never mind, one more experience!