A village on one side; on the other, lush farmlands with mazes of water bodies criss-crossing. A little beyond, sun kissed sands and the sea. It’s a perfect day at the Buckingham Canal, as two boats make their way along its fresh waters. Fast forward to 2019, the banks of the canal are business, real estate, and IT hubs — the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) or Rajiv Gandhi IT Expressway and East Coast Road.
Even after massive reconstruction and design, the thoroughfare is home to multiple pockets of history and heritage.
The book OMR-ECR Bicycle Trails by the Cycling Yogis, a non-profit initiative founded in 2012 by Ramanujar Moulana, takes readers on a journey across historical time-lines through cycling trails. It is a compilation of 15 trails, such as Colonial, Education & Culture, Harmony, Nature, and Water Bodies trails.
The book is dedicated to the late S Muthiah, Chronicler of Madras. The fourth book from Ramanujar and his team, it highlights some unique routes. These include:
- Why did you think of writing about cycling trails in Madras?
- We started Cycling Yogis in 2012, during the Madras Week celebrations, when we were asked to arrange cycling events around the festivity. On exploring cycling trails around Mylapore and Triplicane, I found that there was some scope for me to do something with cycling and incorporate heritage within the experience.
- I then wondered about how cycling came to Madras in the first place. My first book, History of Cycling in Madras (1877-1977) traces a hundred years of cycling, the result of three years of compilation and research.
- When did you focus on area-specific trails?
- After my second book, Madras by Cycle, came out, I felt it was still unfinished. Then my friend Virajitha Chimalapati, an architect, shared that she was doing research on George Town. That got me thinking, and led to my third book, George Town Bicycle Trials, a booklet of 20 trails.
- As I keep exploring, I come across so many more landmarks and traditional spaces that I never knew existed. Of George Town, I was sure I’d given my best. I’m sure no one has scoured through George Town like we did for this book. It was a challenge for me because I wanted to establish myself as a cyclist and a historian-writer.
- When did you start working on your new book?
- We started working on this book last September. There’s a lot of heritage hidden within or scarcely known of and I needed to focus on them. OMR is quite vast with so much information, natural and built, that I made an eight-kilometre cut off from it. There’s so much natural heritage, I’d just keep going and find myself in Vandalur.
- What are your upcoming projects?
- I’m working on my next book which explores cycling trails across North Chennai from Royapuram to Pulicat.
Buckingham Canal Trail: Traces the canal right from its establishment as an inland waterway, the bridges built across it over time, and talks about how boats were an important mode of transport across it.
It also points out moments when historical figures like poet Subramania Bharathi, Annie Besant, and poet Pavendhar Bharathidasan were present in the area.
Mamallapuram Trail: Covers monuments, temples, monolith structures, rock-art, and the Pooncheri site, a protected area containing rocks of historical value.
Nature Trail: Explores the beaches of Thiruvanmiyur, Palavakkam, Uthandi, Covelong, Thiruvandandhai, and Mamallapuram, and the hills of Thiruporur, Pudupakkam, Ponmar, and Perumbakkam. Guindy National Park along with the Pallikaranai marshland, Sholinganallur and Perumbakkam marshlands and Kovalam-Kelambakkam marshlands — all home to several species of flora and fauna and locations for photography and bird watching — are also charted as trails. They are followed by reserve forests (Karanai, Sonnallur, Thaiyur, and Illalur) that extend to a maximum of eight kilometres from OMR and ECR.
En route An illustration from the cover of OMR-ECR Bicycle Trails and (below) Ramanujar Moulana special arrangement
The book has smartphone-friendly QR codes for easy identification of the locations, in addition to a map of the trails. It also serves as a guide for heritage and cycling enthusiasts ready for an adventure.
The book is available at the Odyssey Book Store, Probikers OMR, and will soon arrive at Starmark.