Postal Heritage Trail

This was an initiative jointly organized by India Post and Heritage Beku to commemorate the rich Heritage India Post has in Bangalore. 

As part of this initiative, a cycling trail was organized on 31st Oct 2023 at 6:30 am. We got to know about this initiative from social media handles (Facebook, Instagram) of Heritage Beku.  We reached there on time even though we didn’t have cycles. But cycles were already arranged for us. Dress code was white so that cyclists who are part of this event could be identified easily. So few lucky ones who were not in white, got T-shirts from India Post. After a small briefing, we cyclists then set off along this postal heritage trail covering 5 places which I will be explaining in my blog now.
 
Sandesha Museum of Communication

This is a museum which takes us back in time and explains the story of evolving communication channels in India. I have already covered this in my blog earlier (link). This was our meet up point for the event and we kick started our cycling trail from here.

Please note - The credit for all the pictures shared in this blog goes to my friend Arun Bharadwaj (instagram handle - thelight baggage). 
 
O/o Chief Post Master General – Beaulieu

The name Beaulieu is derived from two Latin words “Bellius” and “Locus” which means beautiful place. The architecture of this building is worth admiring with decorative parapets and projecting windows with small embellished brackets at the first floor. George Lancelot Rickets was the creator of this building. In 1990, Royal Family of Mysore took the ownership of this building and in 1966 the ownership was transferred to Department of Post. It stands firm as an administrative building taking care of Karnataka state’s postal affairs.

 
Taj West End

We parked our cycles at the parking area and were curious to know what part of India Post we would be uncovering in this hotel. Here we saw a Post Box which is one of the country’s oldest letter box.  It is said to be one of the 100 postboxes that were shipped to India from Britain to initiate the Indian Postal Service. The postbox is painted bright red and is located at the entrance of the Hotel lobby. The mail is religiously picked up by a letter box attendant every day except Sundays. Also as a reminder of simpler times, the postbox is still used by the guests of the hotel to send postcards to their family and friends.

 
MMS (Mail Motor Service)

This is a heritage building belonging to India Post and a functioning postal service that uses red vans to transport mails between post offices. The MMS building in Vasanthnagar has its roots in the late 1920s when it was part of Castle Grace. The building was rented to MMS in 1976 and was eventually acquired by the Central government in 1989.

We could see that team had arranged for drinking water facility at every milestone for the cyclists.
 
GPO (General Post Office)

This was the last stop of our trail which is located adjacent to the Bangalore High Court. The first British Post office in Bangalore is said to have been established in 1800.
GPO was constructed in 1985. Although this is not a heritage building, but it has ben designed to be harmonious with the nearby Vidhana Soudha.

Breakfast was arranged for us on the 5^th floor of GPO. It was really a sweet gesture by the team of India Post and Heritage Beku for arranging all this without charging us for this event.

 

This postal heritage trail helped us to understand the rich captivating postal history etched in city’s important landmarks.