My roommates and I wanted to do something in the Thanksgiving holiday. We all unanimously decided on going to Pittsburgh Sri Venkateswara temple. Arjun, Srivats and Yash were the three other people, with Anand joining in later. So that makes 5 of us, all geared up for the long winding road trip ! We were contemplating between a rental car and my car. In the end, we decided to take my car, as the rental car proved to be quite expensive.
This is my Toyota Camry. I bought this on September 15th 2006. It is the same day as my parent's wedding day, which makes this lovely sedan even more special. It turned out that she is quite a stunning machine, for she behaved extremely well during the entire trip, enduring all the obstacles which came her way with a huge grin.
The car was packed full with all our luggage and eatables for the long journey. We left on 24th November 2006, Black Friday ,at about 10 am. The plan was to spend Saturday morning in temple, then visit Arjun's relative house and then leave Pittsburgh by noon. Pittsburgh is about 550 miles from Raleigh, and would take about 9 hrs. Our first stop was somewhere in Virginia. We had lunch in Subway and we stopped for about 30 min.
This was one of the many tunnels that we came across. I think there were about 3 or 4 in the entire journey. I must admit the route between Virginia and West Virginia is one of the beautiful roads I have ever seen. Since the road is paved through the mountains, the roads were winding, and guess what the speed limit was? It was 70mph, which makes it a very thrilling experience to drive. I think we stopped once at about 3 pm to stretch for a bit. I guess we bought potato wedges in walmart. Then our final pit stop was somewhere in West Virginia,for fueling. It was about 5.30 pm and our body was craving for caffeine. We decided it was time for a photo !
So, finally we made it, reached the Holiday Inn, at about 8.30 pm. I was dead tired and all I wanted to do was sleep to glory. I would have very well done that, but for my tummy !!!! We had decided where we would dine even before we left Raleigh. After all we deserved a king's meal after the arduous journey. So what we thought was a simple drive to the restaurant turned out to be quite a treasure hunt, thanks to the confusing downtown and infinitesimally small letters on the sign posts. But we managed to reach the place just in time to be let in. I enjoyed the food at Tamarind, especially the lamb curry. We spent the night watching Varalaru, a tamil film featuring Ajith, Asin and others. In fact, I must admit that I 'listened' to the entire film, rather than watch it.
We awoke next morning, thanks to the ever watchful Arjun, who made sure that we all got up from the bed on time. It was a bright sunny day, but very cold and windy outside. But that did not stop the shutter bug inside us from cranking few photos.
We decided to have our breakfast in the temple. After bidding farewell to the hotel, we finally started our journey to the temple. We did not realize that we had a 'slightly' wrong address at this point of time. Slightly because, we missed the word South when we looked up the address. But for a lovely old American couple, we might have as well spent the whole day driving around trying to locate the temple. After all we did not even make an appointment with Mr. Balaji, so it is not going to be easy to get his darshan. We had to earn it. At the end, it was worth the wait. All the enthusiasm which was already waning, came gushing out, the moment we set our feet inside the temple. It was very clean and beautiful inside. I was quite surprised to see a lot of tamilians inside. Right from the management people to the priests, many of them were tamilians. Given a chance we could have easily spent the entire weekend there.
The temple is known for the tasty prasadham. So we were definitely not gonna miss it. Technically speaking the prasadham is free, but then you can make donations if you want, which most people do anyways. But we had to limit our eating because we had promised Arjun's relatives that we will have lunch at their place. So finally the time came when we had to leave, which we did very reluctantly.
We went to Arjun's relative's house from the temple. We were treated with a sumptuous meal, consisting of dosas, rice, pickles, and sweets. I actually started looking at the aunty with awe when she told us, that she did her PhD in maths from IIT. Anyway, so finally we bid adieu to Pittsburgh at about 12pm. By this time, I was way too tired to even move a muscle, so Arjun got behind the wheel on our return journey. I think we reached Raleigh finally, at about 9.30 pm. It was definitely a fun filled, exhilarating, tiring, two day journey. I will never forget this wonderful experience and it is one of my best trips ever.
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