A Kalinga Tale: Day 1 - The tell-tale trail!

Well this odyssey was always on the cards only the destination was not. But as Bhai's hunt for his match got hot, the dream changed into reality. "Orissa - A dream destination" ... Don't youthink that I am using a hyperbole here. With mom rejecting my Darjeeling dream, Dad trashing our Uttaranchal sojourn, Bhai against a south India tour, and Nature spilling water on all other tourist spots, the plan of a trip to Orissa looked surreal to me. The fact that we would be hitting the road for this trip took me off, but the icing on the cake was that I was promised my share of driving on the way (which btw came after a lot of protest from me).

The route had been chalked out, the stopovers highlighted, car checked, route rechecked. And finally with all the prayers in place we left. The plan was to leave home at 6 o'clock in the morning. We left at 0700 hrs (with an army captain on our back, this was a great achievement). The route took us through pot holes ridden Ghatshila, the never ending truck queue at Jamsola, the "Baba-da-Dhaba" at Baripada, the "Guess-where-is-the-road" highway near Balasore, the "diversion ahead" Bhadrak, the four lane golden rectangle to Cuttack and finally to Bhubaneswar-the temple City!

I could lay my hands on the wheel for some 125 Kms between Baripada and Bhadrak. Mind you this was my first hands-on the four legged monster and I tamed it well!! The only problem was that my share of the road included finding my way through the under-construction bypass to Balasore city. May the fact that there was no road to drive on will give you a clear picture. They say its not easy to concentrate in a noisy envioronment. With Mom praying aloud (with her shrieks on every giving a particular tune to it); Bhai giving tips on when to change to which gear and to drive at what speed and to give what signal in which direction and to .........; dad on the font seat clutching the seat belt tight, constantly trying to take the steering from me, jumping before the bumps, and making faces which can even scare the sh*t out of people with a nerve of steel; You might just get a feel of my plight.

To cut the long story short, we reached Bbsr at 1700 hrs in the evening, checked in the Bubaneswar Hotel. Mom Dad went to visit the girl of Bhai's dream , we had our dinner, watched a rerun of evergreen "Hum Panch", got the news of the land and then closed the day.