Hi!, If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Long gone are the days when we used to do fun things with friends. Things like spending time racing each other and bumping into rubber tyres. You guessed right, I’m talking about karting. Karting was the “in-thing” a few years ago, but not anymore. Now people are more caught up doing the rounds of newly cropped up ultra-hep malls. Ahem!! I’m part of the herd that goes to the ultra-hep city malls too, but I don’t know what took over me and my friends last weekend, we decided to do something different. After much thought we decided to go to Beach Kart - a karting track just before War Memorial. It comes on the left hand side while going from Santhome to Parrys. Look out for the banner, its quite hard to miss.

Though I was nervous, I decided to go along with them coz I didn’t have much of a choice. It has been a while since I went karting and I definitely wasn’t very good at it even the previous time. I made up my mind to give it a shot and not chicken out as I normally do. How bad could it be? Its like driving around in a toy car. When we finally got there, I was all geared, yes you heard me right “all geared” to hit the track and give it my best shot. There were not many people at the karting zone. Obviously, coz the whole of Chennai was in the mall. I was quite happy, coz the lesser the people, the lesser the chances of me making a fool of myself.

The prices were much lesser compared to what they were a few years back. They charge Rs 50 for 2 laps, Rs 100 for 5 laps and Rs 150 for 10 laps. They also have an option for single or double seater. I decided to risk only my life, so I opted for the single seater, and coaxed myself to settle for 10 laps. The track is not as big as the ones that I have seen in Hyderabad, but big enough. There were around seven men or should I say, “trained professionals” who are ready to come to your rescue when you hit against the lined up rubber tyres or when you just go haywire. Their presence didn’t make me feel very secure, but it at least gave me the peace of mind that if something were to go wrong, there are people to help.

The race started, everyone zoomed ahead of me. Me being an avid believer of the moral “Slow and steady wins the race”; went slowly and steadily. At the end of 10 laps I realized that I was racing all by myself. LOL! That really was a huge blow to my ego. I decided to be part of the next race as well, and this time I forgot all about the moral and raced like there was no tomorrow. I finished second last this time, but I felt better than the previous time. At the end of the race, I wanted to race more, but our need to eat took over and we decided to head towards the mall coz the restaurant there didn’t look very appealing. I guess they should do something about it. If they have a decent restaurant, then the crowd will stick around for a longer time.

We blew up 300 bucks per head in a matter of 1hr, but we felt elevated. The high that you get after racing is something that you wouldn’t experience while doing the rounds of city malls. Overall, the evening was well spent, so was our money.