Dec 15th: Joyful Jayanagar

Video

How do you fit 200 people ON a footpath?

Look at the 20 pics below to see how we achieved this – over 7kms – in Jayanagar! It was the 13th walk of BLRWalkFest – over 200 walkers (yes, a record!) showed up at 7am to explore Joyful Jayanagar on foot(path), and get their 10,000 steps on a winter morning in Bengaluru.

The walk began with a VERY SPECIAL EVENT – a World 1st 100KM Solo Footpath Run by Manoj Bhat – and we will dedicate an entire post to this amazing feat that we were lucky to witness and be a part of.

The story of Jayanagar is a good metaphor for the story of urbanization in independent India – we explored the various settlements and villages that existed prior to the arrival of a large, futuristic, well-planned layout called Jayanagar in 1948. We also posed for pictures on the WIDEST FOOTPATH found to date – a 15-lane footpath on Kankanapalya Main Rd (abutting the Lalbagh Lake) – see the pics!

The walk was enriched by the presence of many life-long Jayanagar residents, who took great pride in speaking about their neighbourhood, and also had the humility to admit they were unaware of many facts and stories – like who exactly is the Madhavan of the eponymous Madhava Park!

We engaged in friendly banter of the Jayanagar vs Basavanagudi variety (with JP Nagar piping in) on things like who had more intellectuals, more Jnanpith award winners, more software startups and the like, and had a wonderfully pleasant morning walking along the tree lined boulevards and the neighbourhood parks of this throwback to Beautiful Bengaluru of the 60s & 70s. No walk in Jayanagar is complete without filter coffee, a visit to some of the education institutions that dot the area, and some of the famous landmarks and theatres (that exist only in memories).

All good things must come to an end, and the curtain was drawn on the BLRWalkFest – an emotional time for many who had come for all 13 walks.

Over 1,400 walkers walked 10,000 steps each over 13 days covering 100kms of inter-connected footpaths and totalling over 14 million (1.4 crore) steps which must surely be some sort of record. More on that in a later post.