I am not the one to be explorer kind and its on very rare occasions that I venture out and definitely not to shopping malls or theatres. I am more of a walker and would prefer walking hours at a stretch with no particular destination ( my friends who naively accompanied me for a short walk would vouch for that :P ).
So when my driver asked whether I would be interested to come for a walk on sunday morning , I am more than happy to accept despite the fact that I need to wake up at 6 Am. It would be the first time I would get to explore the city apart from every day visit to Ambassoder and ITC Kuningan malls which I do almost every day and also get lost every day trying to find the exit ( would save that for another post).
I slept at around 1 Am yesterday night having spent the entire day watching TV and thought may be the driver might have asked it as a formality and he might not actually turn up. But there he is ,at 6:30 waiting at entrance to take me to the Sudhirman street .
Jakarta roads on weekdays are very crowdy and it would be a feet if one manages to cross the street. They even convinced me that our Mumbai traffic is not as much as we think it is ....and Jakarta roads are walkers night mare. Though all the roads which I have travelled so far are pretty good , there are hardly any pavements any where making it very unsafe for pedestrians.
But the same is not true on sunday. The roads are comparatively free and best part is that one of the important streets "sudhirman street" stretching around 5 kms is off limits for motor vehicles. I call it an important street for presidential house, office and other minister's offices and other high rise commercial office buildings were present in the same street.
I reached the place by 7 Am and pleasantly surprised that entire place is quite crowded. Its pleasant because there is space for every one . Seems today there is a 10KMs run planned and entire area looked quite colourful with Indonesian flags flying every where. There is a park ( not sure of the name--National park it seems) right next to presidential house and its quite huge .
we ( me and Dasavan, a very good friend and driver with our company) started our walk . I didn't even remotely think cycling is taken seriously at Jakarta considering the kind of traffic here , but I am wrong , There are Giants, Bianchis of cycling world racing with each other on sudhirman street. There are atleast a few hundred cyclists if not thousands having a fun sunday ride.
The participation to the 10K run should be a few thousand people and entire area looks quite cheerful. The only sour point is that I have not taken my camera to capture few moments. You don't feel out of place while walking on Indonesian streets as know one particularly stares at u , at max all u get is a few cheerful smiles when u look at them
After walking for 6 kms , what actually looked like a short walk , I returned to my hotel with a promise that I would visit the place again next week with a camera
So when my driver asked whether I would be interested to come for a walk on sunday morning , I am more than happy to accept despite the fact that I need to wake up at 6 Am. It would be the first time I would get to explore the city apart from every day visit to Ambassoder and ITC Kuningan malls which I do almost every day and also get lost every day trying to find the exit ( would save that for another post).
I slept at around 1 Am yesterday night having spent the entire day watching TV and thought may be the driver might have asked it as a formality and he might not actually turn up. But there he is ,at 6:30 waiting at entrance to take me to the Sudhirman street .
Jakarta roads on weekdays are very crowdy and it would be a feet if one manages to cross the street. They even convinced me that our Mumbai traffic is not as much as we think it is ....and Jakarta roads are walkers night mare. Though all the roads which I have travelled so far are pretty good , there are hardly any pavements any where making it very unsafe for pedestrians.
But the same is not true on sunday. The roads are comparatively free and best part is that one of the important streets "sudhirman street" stretching around 5 kms is off limits for motor vehicles. I call it an important street for presidential house, office and other minister's offices and other high rise commercial office buildings were present in the same street.
I reached the place by 7 Am and pleasantly surprised that entire place is quite crowded. Its pleasant because there is space for every one . Seems today there is a 10KMs run planned and entire area looked quite colourful with Indonesian flags flying every where. There is a park ( not sure of the name--National park it seems) right next to presidential house and its quite huge .
we ( me and Dasavan, a very good friend and driver with our company) started our walk . I didn't even remotely think cycling is taken seriously at Jakarta considering the kind of traffic here , but I am wrong , There are Giants, Bianchis of cycling world racing with each other on sudhirman street. There are atleast a few hundred cyclists if not thousands having a fun sunday ride.
The participation to the 10K run should be a few thousand people and entire area looks quite cheerful. The only sour point is that I have not taken my camera to capture few moments. You don't feel out of place while walking on Indonesian streets as know one particularly stares at u , at max all u get is a few cheerful smiles when u look at them
After walking for 6 kms , what actually looked like a short walk , I returned to my hotel with a promise that I would visit the place again next week with a camera
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