Recently I need to travel to Yavatmal from Hyderabad. We were a group of extended family including children & senior citizen grand parent.

We were exploring multiple travel options. We found the following

1. Self drive – Google showed 7.5 hrs travel to Yavatmal by road.
2. Sleeper bus – Starts at around 9pm and reaches by 7am.
3. Train – There is a train station – Sevagram that is at around 75 kms. SC-ngr express (12771) trains mon-wed-fri in night 10 pm and takes around 9 hours. There are more trains but this train was available for our day of travel.

After deliberation, we felt the train to be better option primarily because of the following reason

1. Senior citizen, children may need personal break anytime during the night.
2. Personal break does require climb down/up in bus whereas in train it is comfortable. In fact, during travel my son went on his own for the breaks (in train). I did not have to accompany him.
3. Movement during travel is much easier in the train.
4. Travel air sickness during train travel is comparatively less during train travel.
5. Car travel will have fatigue penalty to pay for the people driving the car and senior citizens.

Having done the trip, I do see train travel was comfortable for the family. It does require booking in advance. Return journey we did not get reservation for everyone & was not as comfortable as onward journey. Further it does cost extra for the car travel between Sevagram & yavatmal.

Recently I had traveled by train from Secunderabad to Sevagram (near Nagpur). I had decided to travel by MMTS local train service from lingampally to Secunderabad station. Cab takes order of hour to 1.5 hr and travel by car is painful during peak traffic hours and also cost you 1.5x to 2x on uber/ola. I thought to experiment with the MMTS local travel.

I looked at the MMTS timings online & ensured to reach in time as I was traveling with family & children. Train was delayed and not on schedule. Since I had kept 1 hour buffer in schedule, it did not cause any issue. Lingampally station has 5 platforms. The train may arrive at platform 1 or 5. We were at platform 5 when the announcement for the train arrival on platform 1 came. Traveling with senior citizens is less viable in such scenarios if they can not climb the skywalks between plafforms comfortably.

Since train starts from Lingampally, we could manage to find the seats for all of us with little push to board as soon as the train arrived on the platform. Train had lot of passengers travelling standing and got reasonable traffic especially from Borabanda, Hitec city stations. It seems to be popularly used transport in this part of the city. Away from pollution, travel did not generate any fatigue. There is congestion during morning hours on the return route (Secunderabad to Lingampally) and train has to wait for signal clearance. It adds couple of minutes on the return journey from Secunderabad to Lingampally. MMTS travel cost you INR 10 per passenger. Lingampally to your destination can cost you depending on your distance starting from INR 150+.

Overall, nice experience. but requires sufficient planned time. Train may not be on schedule. You don’t save much time but do avoid the traffic & road pollution when traveling by MMTS.

We were passing by the newly opened cycling park today morning after the breakfast. We were looking for a stroll in Botanical garden. Instead decided to do it in the newly opened cycling park right next/opposite to Botanical garden. Once we entered the park, we came to know that the park is pure cycling park & running/walking inside the park is not prohibited.

We rented two bicycles for INR 100. Cycul supports the bicycle station for the park. You can pay using Paytm. We started our ride. The track is not very long and comfortable for a new rider. You just need to know to ride a bicycle. It takes order of 10-15 minutes to take a round the park. There are few slopes but they are not very steep. The track is neat & not littered. There are signs beside the track. It is quite & part of the track is next to a water body where I could hear the bird chirping. The park is considered a reserved forest area. It has tall trees & dry leaves cover the bed giving a fill of the forest. It is too small a park though to consider it a forest area. Nevertheless, it is a savior for the urban dweller. Given the access to citizens, the park will now be protected from public encroachment. This along with botanical garden is one of the biggest green area in this part of the city.

Another school had organized a field trip for children. Children were taking the ride on the rented bicycles. Few of them could not manage the balance & were hurt when they fell down. Due caution is desired. We had gone on a Saturday late morning around 10 pm. The staff mentioned that there is more crowd on a Sunday. We did not mind the children crowd.

We did see a man parking the cycle & taking a run in the park though it is prohibited in the park. Actually prohibition to walk/run is a savior for the park. Otherwise, we would find the same nuisance that you would see in botanical gardens. Couples dwelling in corners which add to the unpleasant taste in the public gardens. The cycling park should make walk/running strictly prohibited in the park to maintain its attraction. It also saves it from littering. You cannot litter much while taking a ride!

Overall, a pleasant hour in the park. Look forward to be there again.