Vishwa | Washington DC, USA | 23-Oct-2010
It's been busy life since I came from India. Covering Niagara and New Hampshire back to back along with festive occasions running one over the other, Washington DC was decided to be the final short weekend trip. It was another Friday night when Krishna planned to have a sleepless drive with me sitting next to him chatting all the stories in the world. I left office and reached Krishna's place. After spending some time with Samhita, I wanted Krishna to listen to the album "Raman Maalai" by Illayaraja. It was only in the short past I came to know about the involvement of Krishna in Ramanar's teachings. The album was something that I thoroughly enjoyed for years now and felt Krishna would share the same feeling. So I burned the music of "Ramana Maalai" and "Guru Ramana Maalai", the next installment of the album in two CD's. Our plans were to stay in Ramya's friends place for the night and go around on Saturday. As always we pushed our starting time by a few hours due to various reasons and started from home with Krishna in-laws and Praneel.
We filled gas and hit the freeways very soon. GPS showed a destination time of 3:00 in the morning. Krishna and I planned to take only a single break if everyone fell asleep. Praneel and Krishna's father in-law dozed off very soon and we tuned to the music of "Ramana Maalai". The first song itself impressed Krishna very much and the following numbers kept up its expectations. As we enjoyed the music, Krishna's mother-in-law also slept off. We kept discussing on various things and called Sudha intermittently to join our chit chat. We also called Ramya to know what she was doing. If I remember it right, it was half past midnight and we pulled over into a service area. This was one of the best one I had seen. The primary attraction was the presence of a Starbucks there. As always, Krishna and I picked a tall coffee. After resting for about 20 minutes, we hit the roads again and resumed listening to the next album "Guru Ramana Maalai". It was about 3:30 in the morning when we reach Washington DC. Subhadra was Ramya's friend and Kailash, her hubby helped us park the car and get our things inside the house. Everyone stretched flat on bed within 15 minutes after the initial introduction formalities.
When I woke up in the morning, everyone was awake. Shruthi was Shubhadra's daughter aged about 3. She was hyper active running all around. Praneel was having a good company for play. Shubadhra had woken up early and prepared food for our lunch and breakfast too. One by one everyone took bath and got ourselves ready and had breakfast. Meanwhile we were also chatting with Shubadhra and Kailash. They were great host making you feel at home. Shubadra has been a close friend of Ramya since her schooling and that explains it all. At 11 we started and our first destination was the monument. The weather was not cold; it was pleasant with lot of sunshine. That was a very important factor to keep Krishna in-laws going. They had a tough time in Niagara and New Hampshire because of the cold. The day looked lucky for them. While everyone except Krishna walked to the monument, Krishna drove the car to find a parking spot.
The monument was giving a grand appearance. The flags around it were also brilliant. Though I knew for sure that all the tickets to climb up the monument would have been sold for the day as it is a fixed number for every day, I walked down to enquire my chances. As expected the last ticket was sold by 9:00.
Monument
I clicked photographs of the monument from various angles. Praneel engaged himself playing with a wooden stick. Seems like he had the theme of "Trees" at his school for the week. There were flights landing every few minutes and were pretty close to us. I experimented a couple of shots trying to frame the plane with the monument and flag. Apart from the aero planes, there were jets cutting across the sky all over with their white tail trails. Before the end of the day I remember seeing close to 50 jets. I was just wondering about the amount of ozone depletion they were making. All of a sudden it got noisy and in a flash of a second three choppers on vigilance crossed across the monument and vanished into distant skies. The view of Lincoln Memorial was great from where we were standing.
After about 30 minutes Krishna came to monument and promised a long walk that we need to take to reach the car in the evening. On a funny note, he said the car was parked close to Jersey trying to explain the distance. I clicked close up shots of Krishna. This was to show the effect of the hair gel that I tried applying on this hair that morning. Though it did not change his looks much, it did add up to his looks. From there we walked to the War Memorial. As I was walking slowly trying to click some pictures, rest of them walked ahead to the Lincoln Memorial. The war memorial was so beautifully constructed with pillars and water fountains. The small carvings on the walls were also appreciable. Since the day was brightly lit, I tried some high speed photography and they came out real good.
War Memorial
From there I walked down to the Lincoln Memorial, a nice place and the views of the monument from the Memorial were brilliant.
Lincoln Memorial
Inside the Lincoln memorial
The strip of water running from the Memorial building provided a clean reflection of the monument, magnificent view. There were seat in wood placed along the pathway next to the Korean Memorial. We had our food here.
View of Monument from Lincoln Memorial
Next was the Korean Memorial, a small fenced grassed area with statues of war veterans. This is a popular place which we likely encounter in many photographs. There was a wall with hundreds of faces engraved that ran next to this area. This piece of construction was very creative and impressive.
Wall engraved with various faces
There was also the small pond to place coins, to symbolize respect for the veterans. I believe the place was getting set for a celebrity to visit since the security increased and arrangements were building up with flowers and stuff.
Korean Memorial
White house was our next stop. I’ve never seen a place any secure than this. I could see more cops than visitors. Everyone had an instrument in their ears and cars tagged “United States Secret Service” were parked all around. We could feel the sense of hundreds of eyes watching you as we got close to the place. We could only have a view of the building from a distance through a fence. The purpose of such a safety was completely understandable.
The White House
It was dusk and primarily decided to walk to the Capitol Hill, but later decided to walk to the car and then go to the Capitol Hill since Krishna in-laws were already very tired of the entire walk since morning. It was a long walk to the 7th street were the car was parked and we waited in a street corner when Krishna walked further more down a few avenues to get the car. As we reached the Capitol Hill, Ramya’s mom had a headache and we had to leave her in the car.
The Capitol Hill
The light was dimming very fast which was in our advantage since we had both bright and light lit view of the building. Not just that the monument stood out as a silhouette against the sun hidden horizon. The view was shear class.
After completing all the places as planned with the Capitol Hill, nothing could get us out of the tiredness except for a hours long sleep which was long way. It will take a drive back to Jersey. We had to get a ‘Tall’, no a ‘Grande’ of coffee to get us going. Our first stop was in at a Starbucks a few streets away. People there weren’t do inviting the reason for which I’m not sure, may be racial. It was also about the time they had to close. So we grabbed the coffee and had it in the car. We entered the freeways soon and in no time all three in the back seat dozed off. Sleep was irresistible for both me and Krishna. Music played and hell a lot of caffeine had already been consumed. Nothing was helping. Finally just before midnight, we entered the same service area were we stopped when we came. Krishna took a nap for 20 minutes. From there it was a no stop drive to Jersey. Finally at about 2:00 in the morning, we got what we were craving from the evening, a nice long sleep.