Remember the Titans

The thing that I am going to write has nothing to do with the Movie, so all Denzel Washington fans don’t be disappointed. Instead of that I will tell you another story which every child learns as they grow up in Orissa. Still I believe there are few Oriyas who might have never heard of it.

Recently I went to visit my sister at Puri. As usual I felt restless after a while and wanted to visit some place. The proposal came immediately from my father to go to Konark. We left in a while to see the sunset over the Sun Temple. I don’t even remember how many times I have been to the place, but this time there was something special. After traveling in a foreign country, seeing some real good things will make you appreciate how good it is to have a monument like “Black Pagoda” near your home. Apart from that there was greed to get few good snaps also.

After taking few photographs, suddenly the story of “Dharmapada” (meaning: Someone who chooses the right path) came to mind, which I didn’t try to remember for last 15years or more. “Dharmapada” was son of “Bisu Maharana”, the chief architect of the temple. The king of that time was “Langula Narasimha Deva”, who hired Bisu Maharana and his twelve hundred carpenters to make the temple on the middle of the sea. The temple took 12 years to complete. The completion was supposed to happen after keeping a giant magnet on the top. The 1200 carpenters were unable to do it. The King gave them the ultimatum. Dharmapada was only one year old when his father left the house. Twelve years have passed by and Dharma mastered all the carpentry by the time. When he heard the trouble of his father, he set off to help him. After arriving he did something which twelve hundred skilled people couldn’t do. He completed the chuda (top) of the temple.

Well the story didn’t end happily. When his father learnt what his son has done, he was happy beyond imagination. This didn’t last long as he realized, king will hang all the carpenters if he will learn that a boy of 12years old has done something which most others were not able to do it. He ordered his son to jump from the temple top into the sea to save his fellow workers.

The story is not a fable, it’s a historical fact and its root lies during the time when our culture was at pick and people sacrificed their son for a better cause and twelve year old boy died saving twelve hundreed people. Well, we can do one thing and that is being proud of the culture to which we belong. It is just a though.

Cave City and Gatlinburg

The Preparation

People don't find how much this thing is necessary before a travel unless they find on the next morning that they have forgotten to bring their toothpaste. It didn't happen to us luckily, but somehow we managed to be late by five hours. Not to forget Arvind's last moment hair cut and my quest for a duracell battery charger in the whole Ft. Lauderdale. huh!!!

Till Tampa

The adventure dominated the anticipation till Tampa city. We were lost in the University Drive within 10mins of our start from home, shouting for the directions without noticing thee compass which was glowing on the roof of the posh van. I knew bigger things are yet to come...And believe me they came also. After hitting I-75, we relaxed and Arvind started putting his heavy foot on the gas (There is a metaphor here which you can't realize until you will see him and ofcourse if you know that accelerator is called gas in the US). Suddenly everyone realized there was some blue light on the back of the car. COP!!!!! oh hell....a ticket/few dollars!!! But he had some more important things to do, it didn't occur to us that he was asking for space until he crossed us at 100miles per hour and moved on. Good start..Manish cried. Saral took the wheels after tampa and I don't remember anything except the outside temperature which was dropping below zero.

Lost in the New City

I guess I woke up earlier than others when I saw Jitesh and Manish were discussing to bypass Atlanta, to avoid traffic. I realized within a few minutes that they are too late and we are already in Atlanta. I was happy :). To add nobody had a clue where we were moving. Oh God !!! we are lost again. Its a fact that hungry stomach is worse than empty brain. Since every one there had a brain its was decided that its time for breakfast. Oh what place is better than "Waffle Hose" in these trips.

The start of my alternative career

Within these 3 months of stay in the US , thing I liked best was driving on the highways. But I admit that my fear was dominating my eagerness to drive on highways at that time untill Jitesh gave the wheel to me after Atlanta. While driving on highways there is one thing that matters most is discipline which now a days I seem to be losing :-) But I had bits and pieces of it left on me which made me care about the five lifes who were happily enjoying "American Pie" on the DVD player of the Van. I was too scared to drive at 70miles/hr in the ghat roads when a cop came and asked me to speed up. What a shame, me scared of speeding !!!! :( Few more innocent mistakes and we landed at Nashville, a small city to have our lunch.

Cave City

There is not much to write about the rest of the journey and after taking a nights sleep inside a warm cozy room, we were ready to explore the "Great Mammoth Caves". The vastness a

mazed me, well to add I didn't find much beauty in it. The trip was over in couple of hours. But we all have already decided that we need to go to some other place also to satisfy our hunger. So we again were on the van this time the destination was Gatlinberg, the city on "Great Smokey Mountains".

Gatlinberg on Chrismas

Though we were tired, after a good meal at Subway, me and Manish went to explore the city. The small stores and the decorating light reminded me of our own "Massori" a small city on the laps of Himalayas. There was nothing specific to mention right here but seeing a city like this on christmas eve was quite a fortune. However the exiting thing was yet to come "Driving around the Smokey Mountains in the daytime".

The Great Smokey Mountains

Map :

We drove around mountains and tried every road that didn't have no entry sign . The place was amazing but the weather wasn't that cheerful. It was little dark and misty making every effort to make our photos look dull. Still we made a lot of stops in between and took loads of photos. We went on a small narrow road to the hill top which had excellent spots to see the mountains. It called "The Park Way". We found a nice trail there which led us to the top most tower of Smokey. Bad luck we couldn't take a decent photo due to low hanging clouds.

There we heard from a local person about something called "The tail of dragon" which had 318 curves in 11 miles making it one of the most challenging road to drive on. By the time we got out of it, it was already afternoon and Saral was crying for food. As if Murphy's law was intended for us, we didn't get a place to eat until it was evening. We realized if we will try to reach Gatlinburg it will be night and there was no way we could have again gone through that "Tail of dragon" again. So we searched for the nearest place called "Fontana Village". We marched into the village like crusaders for food. There were beautiful hotels and houses but not a single people to be seen. We found all the house and hotel deserted and . We were so hungry that we left the cameras in the Van and now I can't show you a photo as a proof of what happened. So we had to satisfy ourself with chocolates and chips which was available in the vending machine.

Murphy's Law

"If something can go wrong !!!! it will go wrong."

We had already seen it and more was to come. After having a nice dinner at 6 o'clock we left for Gatlinburg in the only road possible. After few miles we found that the road has been closed due to heavy snow fall. How to get back was a big question and we fought a lot deciding whether to catch I-75 or I-95 to get back to Florida. We started towads I-95 and found heavy Fog around us . With great care Arvind was driving and snow fall started, we knew Murphy was laughing. However we got out of that Mountain range to valleys and we heard once again Cop siren. It was not long before everyone started laughing at eachother. It was Dil Chahta Hai movie which started with an ambulance siren. We thought what else is there.

We reached home safely the nextday morning without any more adventure.

Well I don't know how to conclude it and I don'twant it to sound like an essay. However the journey was a great adventure and I tried to share my experience. This is for the first time I am writing something outside my diary, so may not sound that good. Hope my next blog will sound even better.