5 year Completed journey in Bangalore#ArvindVishnoi

 

What an incredible ride it has been. I relocated to Bangalore leaving behind Hyderabad, the only city where I spent more than 5 years. The city where I spent my teenage years, which transformed me from a carefree child to a responsible adult, the city where I understood and experienced the meaning of life, struggle, happiness, friendship, hard work, failure & success and the place where I eventually wanted to settle down in the long term.

Although, since my father served in Army, I have had experience of relocating after every few years leaving behind everything we build. However, this time it was different as I’ve entered into those impressionable years when you get emotionally attached to the place, relationships, home and much more. And leaving all these behind was unimaginable.

Therefore, I convinced myself that stay in Bangalore is temporary and I’ll return to Hyderabad at the earliest possible. With this thought in mind and with a heavy heart, here I was in a new city trying to make a temporary place for myself. Fast forward to today and I’m deeply in love with this place, people, cosmopolitan culture.

During initial days, my mind always used to wander off from the job I was doing. I wanted to explore other career opportunities; however I didn’t have the discipline and risk capability to change the industry and re-start from the scratch in other field. Moreover, over a period of time I started loving sales and account management roles, and thus continued in the same field.

When I finally settled my accommodation and career interest, I started getting a nagging feeling that I was missing something in my life. One day I just woke up early in the morning and ran from Domlur (my house) to Cubbon park, a distance of around 6K. That was the best feeling I had after a long time and there was no looking back since then.

After a month of practice, I registered for my first hill run half marathon in the outskirts of Bangalore where I secured 2^nd place. Then came my first major challenging hill trail run in Coorg where I secured 4^th place in 30K with ~2000 M elevation. It was this run which paved my entry into the mountain trail ultra running community. I met many professional and seasoned runners from all over India and other countries. Listening to their ultra run experiences and stories of grit, determination and passion gave goose bumps. This further fueled my passion to pursue ultra trail running. In last 4 years, I’ve successfully completed 10 professional mountain/ hill trail run’s across the country with distance ranging from 50K to 100K with elevation of 2000 to 4000 meters. In between, I also got the opportunity to travel to Hyderabad to successfully complete my 1st half-triathlon (1.8K Swim, 90K Cycle and 21K Run in 7:20 Hrs).

Bangalore is strategically located from where we can explore the entire south India. This gave me the opportunity to explore and experience places using different modes of transport – train, bus, drive especially bike rides. I travelled to beautiful hill stations such as Ooty, Coorg, Wayanad, Chickmangaluru, Munnar, Yercaud; amazing beaches in Kanyakumari, Pondicherry, Karaikal, Goa; Historical places with famous temples having intricate architecture located in Madurai, Thanjavur, Kumbakonam, Thiruvarur, and Hampi. The thrill of exploring new places especially hill stations on the bike ride trips, trekking have been my most memorable moments so far.

I feel gratitude to all the people, friends, family and colleague who have helped and supported me in this journey. With so many things from my bucket list yet to be ticked, I’m looking ahead for the exciting times.    

Thanks you!

Arvind Vishnoi

arvindkumarvishnoi@gmail.com