“The feeling of having finished the very first gruelling MBA exam was absolutely amazing. And we were all flying in seventh heaven. Home beckoned once again, but the itinerary said it wasnt before 7th. So off we went to Chandipur.
Chandipur is a beach about 180 kms from Kharagpur. Its basically a three-state journey. Kharagpur being in Bengal and Chandipur in Orissa, Jharkhand comes along the way. And we cursed Jharkhand and its government to the limit for the extremely crappy road. And still we call it a national highway (NH).
We had hired a Tata Sumo for the two days. Before starting the journey we decided to pick up a few pints of beer to be gulped along the way. And then it was beer all along. And NH has one plus point. Every few kms theres one liquor shop
Its strange how people stick to the Indian Standard Time here because the evening falls much earlier than you would normally expect. At about 6:00 pm its usually pitch dark in these parts.
I listen to my words but
They fall far below
I let my music take me where
My heart wants to go
The cool winter wind was slapping against the face as I heard the soft strains of “”Wind of my Soul”” from the Almost Famous Soundtrack. The NH passes through a dense 5 km. forest and there’s a particular code before entering that particular stretch. The border police let the vehicles line up in lots of about 20-25. And then they are allowed to enter it. As we led the entire motorcade, the road ahead was dark and quiet. All you have is the pair of your headlights and its pitch dark otherwise. Lined up with grotesque old trees, it draws an eerie picture. Quite an amazing experience.
We reached at about 11:00 pm and the night was still young. We checked into our hotel, arranged for the night’s stock of beer and cigarettes and off we were to the beach. Y’know its really something sitting under the moonlight, drinking cold beer and talking about things you never had the time for.
We were up till 4:00 AM drinking beer and having a blast sitting in the chilly silver sand. We trotted back to the hotel, while one of us had almost passed out (no it wasn’t me 
) And well, we went back only to finish off the rest of the beer that was left
At 6:00 AM, we went to see the beautiful sunrise. For the first time I was watching the sun rise from the sea. And the night before I argued that I had seen the sunrise from the Juhu Beach (which is in Bombay, he he
All in all it was one hell of a trip and now I’m glad that I couldn’t get my tickets earlier than 6th