Day 8 - Puri & Jamshedpur

07.10.2022

Day 8

Today is fulltanker NP’s birthday! The team wished NP a fantastic day and happiness and good health. We recorded a video of the team singing Happy Birthday inside the car using our Insta 360 cam.

After checking out from Sterling Puri, we went straight to the famous Lord Jagannatha temple of Puri. We had to drive through some extremely narrow lanes (even Google got confused !) and had to park our car at some distance from the temple premises . Final 500 meters is on foot or by auto. 

The Jagannath temple is one of the Char Dham’s (four holiest pilgrim sites for Hindus in India). The four Dhams are Badrinath, Dwaraka, Puri and Rameswaram. It is believed that visiting these sites helps one to achieve moksha (salvation). We viewed the temple and precinct from some distance. In our tour of India, this is the second Dham we visited.

The temple is famous for its annual chariot festival.

We continued our journey to Jamshedpur, home of TISCO, India’s first steel factory and XLRI the country’s first B-school. The drive of approx 400 kms took us over 8 hours. We had the taste of rural India - literally and figuratively. We drove through some lush green countryside and had breakfast at a dharna and stopped for lunch at a roadside hotel in Mayurbhanj district. Our President Draupadi Murmu is from Uparbeda village in this district about 45 kms from here. 

As we progressed from East Coast to Central India, it was interesting to note the subtle change in architectural style. 

We reached Jamshedpur at 5.00 pm and went to XLRI first - we were allowed to take our car inside and go around the campus. For security reasons we were unable to gain entry to TISCO.

Ramada Wyndham Jamshedpur welcomed #fulltanker NP (who is a director of Ramada, Kochi) with a bouquet and all of us with refreshments. The hotel had arranged for a birthday cake - so the formal birthday cake cutting ceremony was in our rooms with #fulltankers singing “Happy Birthday” once again!

We had dinner and rested for the long journey to Varanasi.

At end of day eight - 3448 kms on our tracker.

#fulltankers