I Went to Bengaluru to Finish a Thriller. Somehow, I Found Peace Instead at The Art of Living International Centre
Sometimes the best journeys are the ones that were never part of the plan.
I had travelled to Bengaluru with a mission.
A serious mission.
To complete a thriller novel.
I boarded the UDAY Express with my unfinished story, my characters, their secrets, a few murders perhaps, and all the suspense that comes with trying to figure out what happens next. 😄
The plan was simple: get away from my regular surroundings, travel to Bengaluru, find a different atmosphere and give my mind the space it needed to finish the novel.
Visiting an ashram was nowhere on the itinerary.
But then, some journeys have a habit of rewriting themselves.
It was afternoon when a thought suddenly appeared in my mind:
Why not visit The Art of Living Ashram?
I had heard about it. I knew it was somewhere in Bengaluru. The afternoon was still young, and I thought I could reach there, spend some time sitting peacefully, perhaps watch the sunset and return by evening.
That was it.
No detailed planning.
No carefully researched route.
No cab waiting outside.
Just a thought.
And sometimes, a thought is all a traveller needs.
The Journey Begins at Majestic
From KSR Bengaluru railway station, I walked towards the Majestic bus depot.
Now came the interesting part.
I didn’t speak the local language, and I wasn’t sure whether the people I approached would be comfortable speaking Hindi or English.
So I did what travellers have probably been doing since long before translation apps existed.
I used keywords. 😄
“Art of Living?”
“Ashram?”
“Bus?”
A little English. A little Hindi. A little hand movement. A questioning expression on my face.
The universal language of the slightly confused traveller.
Eventually, someone understood where I wanted to go and guided me towards a bus. I was told that I would have to change buses somewhere along the way.
I boarded the bus from Majestic to Banashankari.
Ticket: ₹23.
Since I had absolutely no idea where exactly I had to get down, I did what every sensible traveller in an unfamiliar city does.
I requested the conductor to please tell me when my stop arrived.
Then I sat down and allowed Bengaluru to pass outside the window.
At Banashankari, I changed buses and boarded another one towards Udipalya.
Another ₹23.
For ₹46, Bengaluru was slowly carrying me towards a place I hadn’t even planned to visit when I woke up that morning.
There is something I enjoy about travelling by public transport in an unfamiliar city. A cab takes you from Point A to Point B.
A bus gives you the city in between.
You watch people getting in and out. You hear conversations you don’t understand. You see neighbourhoods changing. Commercial streets slowly give way to quieter stretches. You don’t merely arrive at a destination.
You experience the distance.
And after more than an hour of travelling, I finally got down.
Where Is the Ashram?
I stepped off the bus and looked around.
Highway.
Vehicles.
Road.
But…
Where was the ashram?
For a moment, I wondered whether I had got down at the wrong place.
There was no grand building immediately visible. No obvious entrance in front of me. Nothing that shouted, “Congratulations, traveller. You have arrived.”
So I asked an autorickshaw driver nearby.
He simply pointed towards the opposite side of the road.
Ah.
There it was.
All I had to do was cross the road.
Sometimes the destination is not far away.
You are simply looking in the wrong direction.
I crossed the road and began walking towards the entrance.
And something changed.
It is difficult to explain exactly when a place begins to affect you. Sometimes it happens gradually. Sometimes it happens after you spend an hour there.
For me, it happened almost at the gate.
The large entrance, the greenery around it and the huge image of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar created an immediate sense that I was entering a world different from the busy road I had just crossed.
One side had traffic.
The other side seemed to say:
Come in. You don’t have to hurry here.
I stood near the large display for a while, simply taking in the atmosphere.
Of course, being a traveller in the age of smartphones, I also took a few photographs. Spirituality is spirituality, but the Travelling Professor still needs his memories. 😄
Then I walked towards the entrance.
A QR Code at the Gateway to Peace
At the gate, I was asked to register by scanning a QR code.
A rather modern doorway into tranquillity. 😄
I completed the registration, and once it was done, I was allowed inside.
And then the place opened up before me.
It was huge.
There was ample parking, broad pathways and lanes lined with trees on both sides. The greenery immediately softened the landscape. The noise of the city seemed to lose its importance.
I had no idea where I was supposed to go.
So I did something that we rarely allow ourselves to do in everyday life.
I walked without needing to know exactly where I was going.
No Google Maps.
No urgent destination.
No schedule to chase.
No anxiety about taking the wrong turn.
I simply followed the path.
And strangely, I wasn’t worried about getting lost.
Perhaps that is one of the most beautiful things about a peaceful place.
Even when you don’t know where you are going, you don’t feel lost.
First, Some Food. Enlightenment Can Wait. 😄
After travelling across Bengaluru in two buses and walking around, my stomach had begun making its own spiritual demands.
Fortunately, there was a café.
So before exploring further, I decided to sit down and have something to eat.
I ordered a bowl of chaat, served beautifully in an earthen bowl and generously topped with sev, chopped onions, tomatoes and coriander.
Now, there are many ways to experience peace.
Meditation is one.
Silence is another.
And then there is chaat surrounded by trees. 😄
I sat there eating slowly.
No hurry.
No need to finish quickly and rush somewhere else.
Later came tea and coffee, enjoyed in the open air, with trees around and people moving quietly through the space.
There was something wonderfully ordinary about it.
A small cup in your hand.
A chair under the trees.
The sound of life happening around you.
And enough time to notice it.
We often imagine that peace must arrive dramatically. Perhaps through a life-changing revelation, a retreat, a meditation session or some great philosophical insight.
But sometimes peace comes in a steel tumbler of tea.
Sometimes it arrives in a bowl of chaat.
Sometimes it simply sits beside you while you are doing absolutely nothing important.
Then I Saw the Vishalakshi Mantap
As I continued walking, the magnificent structure of the Vishalakshi Mantap came into view.
And it made me stop.
The building rises in layers, almost like a giant white lotus reaching towards the sky. Against the dramatic Bengaluru clouds, it looked even more striking.
The sky that evening was putting on its own show.
Huge white clouds floated across deep blue stretches. Sunlight slipped between them, creating changing patterns of brightness and shadow. At times, the building stood almost silhouetted against the light.
I looked up.
And kept looking.
Some buildings are impressive because of their size.
Some because of their architecture.
But certain places become beautiful because of the space around them.
The sky.
The trees.
The silence.
The light.
The way the evening sun touches the edges of the structure.
The photographs I took captured the building.
But the experience was much larger than the frame.
The Luxury of Doing Nothing
I walked deeper into the ashram.
There were green lawns, trees casting long shadows, pathways curving through the landscape and open spaces where one could simply sit.
So I sat.
That was perhaps the most important thing I did that entire afternoon.
I sat.
Not because I was waiting for someone.
Not because I had finished one task and was preparing for another.
Not because my phone needed charging.
I simply sat because I wanted to sit.
In our regular lives, even sitting has become an activity that requires justification.
We sit to work.
We sit to watch something.
We sit to scroll.
We sit while waiting for the next thing.
But how often do we sit just to watch the evening change?
I watched the sunlight slowly become softer.
The sun began its gradual journey towards the western horizon.
The trees stood quietly.
The sky changed colour almost without announcing it.
People walked around.
Some were talking.
Some were sitting.
Some, perhaps like me, had come searching for nothing in particular.
And in that moment, I realised something.
I had travelled to Bengaluru to finish a thriller novel.
My mind was supposed to be occupied with suspense, conflict, secrets and twists.
Yet here I was, doing exactly the opposite.
I was allowing my mind to become quiet.
Maybe creativity doesn’t always need more thinking.
Maybe sometimes it needs less noise.
A Sunset I Had Come to See Without Knowing It
The sun slowly moved towards the horizon.
The light became warmer.
The long shadows of the trees stretched across the green ground. Sunbeams slipped through the leaves. The sky behind the Vishalakshi Mantap became a vast canvas of blue, white and gold.
I had come hoping that I might experience the sunset.
But what I found was not merely a sunset.
It was the experience of having enough time to watch one.
There is a difference.
The sun sets every day.
Most days, we are too busy to notice.
We may be in traffic.
Inside a room.
Looking at a screen.
Thinking about tomorrow.
Worrying about yesterday.
The sunset does not wait for us to finish our work.
It simply happens.
That evening, I was there for it.
I watched the light slowly disappear behind the horizon.
No dramatic music.
No voice-over.
No motivational quote floating across the sky.
Just the sun doing what it has done for billions of years.
And me, for once, paying attention.
One Last Cup of Tea
By the time I began walking back towards the entrance, it was almost 7 p.m.
The light had faded.
The atmosphere had changed.
The ashram that had welcomed me in the afternoon now seemed to be settling gently into the evening.
Before leaving, I stopped for another cup of tea near the entrance.
Because some journeys deserve a proper full stop.
And for me, that full stop is often tea. ☕😄
I stood with the cup in my hand, looking around.
A few hours earlier, I had arrived not knowing where I was going.
I had changed buses.
Asked strangers for directions.
Crossed a highway.
Scanned a QR code.
Walked into an unfamiliar place.
Eaten chaat.
Drunk coffee.
Wandered without a plan.
Sat under the open sky.
Watched the sun disappear.
And now I was leaving.
Nothing dramatic had happened.
And perhaps that was the beauty of it.
The Journey I Hadn’t Planned
Travel is often presented as a checklist.
Places to see.
Things to do.
Photos to take.
Restaurants to try.
Top ten attractions.
Must-visit locations.
But some of my favourite travel memories have come from moments that were never on any itinerary.
This was one of them.
I had travelled to Bengaluru to complete a thriller novel.
The Art of Living Ashram was not part of the plan.
Yet somewhere in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, a voice inside me said:
“Let’s go.”
And I listened.
That decision took me from KSR Bengaluru railway station to Majestic, from Majestic to Banashankari for ₹23, from Banashankari to Udipalya for another ₹23, across a busy road and eventually into a place where, for a few hours, I stopped worrying about where I was going.
Perhaps that is what travel occasionally does.
It takes us somewhere physically so that something inside us can become still.
I entered the ashram as a traveller looking for a place to spend the afternoon.
I walked out after sunset carrying something I hadn’t gone there searching for.
A quieter mind.
The thriller novel was still waiting for me.
The characters still had their secrets.
The story still needed an ending.
But for one afternoon in Bengaluru, I allowed my own story to wander away from the plot.
And I am glad I did.
Because sometimes the best part of a journey is not reaching the place you planned to visit.
Sometimes it is listening to that little voice inside you that suddenly says:
“Why not go there?”
You take a bus.
Then another.
You ask strangers for directions.
You cross the road.
You walk through a gate.
And somewhere between a bowl of chaat, a cup of tea, a magnificent sky and a slowly setting sun…
you find a little peace you didn’t even know you were looking for. 🌿🌅☕
