“A son’s true success is measured not by what he achieves, but by what he gives back to the hands that raised him.” While many senior citizens are ending up at old age homes in India, Krishna Kumar took his mother on a pilgrimage spanning four countries – without international flight tickets. He rode his late father’s old scooter with his mother sitting behind him for over 93,000 kilometers. His devotion and duty that go beyond any child’s basic responsibility of looking after his/her mother has earned him the moniker – a modern-day Shravan Kumar.
The story of Krishna Kumar and his mother’s epic pilgrimage started in January 2018. Once his mother casually mentioned she had never seen the temples of Hampi and Halebeedu. This made him realize that she had never traveled beyond Mysuru. “How small her world has been for so many years! She spent her whole life serving the joint family.” After his father passed away in 2015, she hardly stepped out of home. With this thought lying heavy on his mind, Krishna took a vow to take her to the places that she had ever dreamed of visiting.
Krishna Kumar, an engineer, quit his corporate job in Bengaluru, dusted off his late father’s 2001 model Bajaj scooter, and set out with his mother on a countrywide pilgrimage that extended to Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar. To make her see the outer world, taste freedom, and live a carefree life became his life’s only mission. He named it ‘Matru Seva Sankalpa Yatra’, meaning a pledge to serve mother. While even traveling to religious places has become a leisure or luxury, this Shravana Kumar transformed it into a diving offering.
Their journey began on 18 January 2018 when he kick-started the nearly two-decade-old scooter after modifying it for his mother’s comfort. To make the road journey comfortable for her against uneven surfaces, he got the scooter upgraded with extra cushions and a backrest. For almost 6 years (excluding two years of the pandemic), they had been on road travelling more than 93,000 kilometers, from several states of India to Nepal, Bhutan, and Myanmar.
“I was just the charioteer. My parents were the pilgrims,” Krishna said, feeling his father’s presence with them at every step of the pilgrimage. “The sooter is not just a piece of my father’s legacy, it is his blessing for me,” he added.
You might wonder how they managed to live on the road for so long. Krishna and his mother kept things simple. They never checked in at hotels; instead, they took shelter at temples, ashrams, and dharmshalas along the way. Most of the time, temple prasad kept them on the go. Sometimes, their fulfilling meal was a most humble staple like rice and dal cooked on a small stove they carried.
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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they got stranded near the Bhutan border for almost two months. Krishna made sure his mother stayed safe and healthy, relying on the kindness of local people who treated them like their own. “We never felt alone, wherever we went, people became our family.” Krishna said in media interviews. Even in the most uncertain times, his focus remained clear: protecting his mother and continuing their sacred journey.
In the first year of their pilgrimage, their travel story became an inspiration for many. Even Anand Mahindra, the Chairman of the Mahindra Group, was deeply touched by it. He could not help but express his admiration through a social media post and offered him a brand-new Mahindra SUV. Krishna Kumar gratefully accepted the gesture but made sure that the SUV was not going to replace his father’s Bajaj scooter. “My journey is complete. I wanted to give my mother the experience she missed. That scooter gave us more than any SUV ever could,” he said.
Throughout their travels, Krishna never took donations, nor he turned their yatra into a social media campaign. His motivation was simple and pure: to give his mother the dignity, happiness and freedom that she deserved. His mother, who is now 75 years old, would hesitate to travel even to a relative’s house. Today, she is a travel inspiration for many. She bathed in the Ganga, climbed sacred hills, visited historic places she had only heard about in stories, and met people from various cultural backgrounds.
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