Few days back I was at my maternal grandmother’s place in Shimoga and my maternal uncle had his new home built in Honnalli. The distance between Shimoga and Honnalli is 40 kilometres. We were supposed to visit Honnalli in my cousin’s 7 seater car but at the last moment my cousin canceled his attendance. Inspite his absence we still decided to visit Honnalli. Now came the question ‘Which mode of transport ?’ Shimoga being a small town doesn’t have Ola and Uber services. And bargaining with the traditional taxi dudes could be a hurdle and also the taxi prices would be high. Few of our neighbours who attended the function at Honnalli said that the taxi ride cost a lot. To our surprise we found an auto rickshaw driver who said that he would take us to our destination and also take care of the return ride. And he also quoted a price of ₹1000 for the to and fro journey. The deal was pretty amazing considering the fact that he would also wait till the function at Honnalli was over.

Now comes the rickshaw ride. Excluding the driver there were three of us in the rickshaw, which included my 75 year old maternal grandmother. We were a little hesitant at start considering the age of my grandmother, we worried whether she’d be fine with the 80 kilometre ride. So we asked her whether she’d be fine with travelling 80 kilometres and she said YES. There we go, we stepped into the auto at 9 in the morning and it took us around 1 hour to reach the destination. During the journey we witnessed some amazing mountains, water laden paddy fields, lakes, fish sellers near the lakes etc. Even though we traveled at a very low speed compared to the other vehicles on the road, the speed was enough to move my long hairs in various directions. I had to adjust my hair quite a few times due to the wind. The auto we traveled in was BS 6 version and was latest in style and other features. One interesting feature of the rickshaw was the gate at the left hand side. Just few minutes into our journey we encountered rain. The rich green fields, splendid rain, chilled weather and the distant mountains added a different vibe to the ride and it is one of the rides that is unforgettable. Coming to the road, there weren’t too many potholes or speed breakers, also the road was narrow. The narrowness of the road was the reason for us to not stop for photographs, as we feared collision. Well, those were some of the highlights of the ride. We reached our destination, attended the house warming and got ready for the return journey. The return journey was during the late noon. So we had some bright sunlight added to the aforementioned views. On reaching Shimoga we encountered more humps than the humps on the earlier part of this story. We finally reached our home 🙂