Mud, so what?

Hundreds of Hyderabadis woke up early on Sunday morning just to get “dirty”. Yes, they drove 25 km from the city, all the way to Lahari Resorts in Patancheru, just to go and play with mud. It was the second edition of the Hyderabad Mud Run organised by Great Hyderabad Adventure Club (GHAC). There was no prize money on offer nor was it free, with walk-ins having to shell out Rs 250 in addition to the registration fee of Rs 750. So what dragged them away from video games, luncheons, pubbing or plain lazing around?

For working professional Mithun Gupta G., it was a nice change. “I love to do something different and a mud run sounded very different, indeed!” he remarks.

The experience of crawling neck-deep through mud, jumping over tyres, and finding a way out of dangling ropes made the drive  from Banjara Hills worth it. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so much fun. It was around 2 km but there were 25 obstacles on the path,” Mithun adds.

While the mud run was spread over 2 km, participants took their own sweet time to cover it. The Burma Bridge (crossing over ropes), Commando Time (surpassing cargo nets) and Tarzan Swing (jumping into a mudpool from a tree) kept bringing the traffic of mud-lovers to a halt. Some were busy getting pictures clicked while others chose to celebrate a muddy Holi a few months earlier.

Delhi Public School student Nishanth P. tagged along with five of his relatives. He says, “It was just like childhood and once you get dirty, there’s no looking back! It’s all fun from there.”

His cousin, Avinash Manthri, adds, “What is mud, after all? It’s a part of nature. My only concern is to scrub my body clean. I hope we don’t run out of shampoos and soaps (winks).”