Pseudo camel ride in a dry river

 

Hi friends. This time, I introduce to you my friend Rama Krishna, who has laid his stepping stone into blogging. I welcome him as a guest blogger on ‘Fabeln Meines Lebens’ with his very first blog and wish him all the best for his blogging ahead. Over to you RK.

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I’m always passionate about exploring new places. This passion has driven me to take up a job which keeps me changing places from time to time. And during free time, I keep exploring all the nearby places. This is one of such expeditions of mine.

 

I have recently moved to a place near Vijayawada in AP. After a long time, we got a day off work and I planned to visit Kanaka Durga temple and Amaravati. The first part of the journey was as usual, changing of buses and visiting temple at Vijayawada. Later I went to Amaravati. For my way back to hotel, one of my cousins advised me to take the river route to cut down the journey time by around 2 hours. Well, I have done some boating as an activity, however, never on a real journey, so I thought I may try. After visiting the Shiva temple and the world famous Buddha Stupa and the related museum by Archeological Society of India at Amaravati, I went to the Boarding point on the banks of river Krishna. I had no clue about the journey ahead or the places lay ahead of me. I waited for 15 min till the boat came back from the other shore and the travellers get down. Then we boarded the boat and crossed the river. I am always excited about boat rides despite my quite a few rides in the past. And after getting down from the boat, I was expecting to find an auto rickshaw on the shore to the nearby bus stand. And then I had one of the biggest pleasant surprises/shocks in my life.

 

After getting down the boat, in the scorching mid-day heat, I could not find any means of transport except for few tractors. I was wondering how 30-40 people can go to go to the nearest bus stand. Then, on close observation, I found the tractors bit oddly customized. They have a kind of dash board on the front and an even bigger one on the rear of it. This gave tractor a look of something like a giant monster from the famous LOTR. This makes each tractor capable of carrying about 15 people at once. One tractor came in front of us and was ready to carry us. I was shocked to see the driver. He was a kid of 14-15 yrs. He would probably be not taller than the rear wheel of the tractor. I was very scared but since there was no other go, I got into the tractor along with others. I sat in the front board along with 4 others right ahead of the front wheel to the Right. I started wondering why there weren’t any auto rickshaws or any other vehicles and started ‘DAMN’ing people for encouraging this dangerous way of travel. And Of course, I was praying at the same time for the safe journey.

 

After filling about 15 people, the tractor started moving. After we moved around 100 meters, I found that the road was not good and the tractor was giving bumps. It was bit dangerous but quite amusing for me. It gave me a new feel of travelling because I was sitting in the front of the vehicle that too in open with the behind me. I looked forward and to my surprise I saw very huge sand dunes left by the drying of the river Krishna. The dunes were almost 2-3m high from the road level. They actually resembled like those of the desert dunes shown in Magadheera (It’s a famous telugu movie). Then I began to understand the reason for the usage of the tractors. They give a better grip and prevent the vehicle from toppling in the sand.

 

We started climbing the sand dunes one after the other and we were getting bumps like that of the travelling on camel. The vehicle was progressing like a snake. This probably may be to provide a better grip so that the vehicle doesn’t sink into the sand. I was wondering how the kid was able to drive and looked back in curiosity. I was shocked to see the kid looking down at the front wheel and driving accordingly. I looked at him 2 or 3 times in between and found him still looking at the wheel and driving. I then realized that he could not look at the road ahead for being very short and was scared to hell. Whenever we had a bump the person sitting next to me was yelling loudly. We were terrified for some time. Later on, as the journey progressed, we were feeling excited. The sand dunes seemed never ending. And they kept increasing in height with time.

 

As we were crossing this (so called) DESERT, we came across a small channel of water flowing in the middle of these sand dunes. And as we crossed it the same way our feet got wet and water splashed on to us, we sitting at a very low level in the front. This thrilled us and we continued the journey. The sand dunes covered a length of about 3-4 Kms and it took us about 20 min to cross them. Finally we reached a nearby village where we could get an auto rickshaw. I looked at the kid who was driving. He was feeling very shy (or probably scared) to collect money from us and was signaling his uncle at the bank who was waiting there already to collect the money.

 

Though the temperature was very high it being mid-day, there was a cheer on the faces of all the people travelled because of a very new kind of experience (thanks to the journey, which ended in no mishap). This might be a daily affair for the people staying in the nearby villages but it was really a memorable experience for an explorer like me. This 20 min journey gave me a really wonderful experience for my life. I felt like having ridden on a camel in the deserts of Rajasthan, while being in the middle of a very prosperous river of Andhra Pradesh, the “Krishna”.

 

I got into the rickshaw and then bus after bus to reach the hotel with the memories of the special journey still ringing around in my mind.

Hope you all liked reading this experience of mine. Will be eagerly waiting for the comments.

 

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About Rama Krishna