The Trek

Teller of Time

Finally we reached the hill town of Maymyo after a long road of twists and turns. The coldness of the atmosphere welcomed us and all of us were tired. It is really essential now to find accommodation for the night. We asked hotel by hotel for any available rooms. Sadly all of the hotels we asked have their rooms all full. However we kept on searching and the day light was draining super fast. We continued driving where we almost reached the end of the town. "Guys, let's check this place out" Sithu exclaimed. All of our attention went to the building sitting on top a small hill. The architecture looked colonial and there were vines covering most parts of the building. Without any hesitation and as we are super tired as well, we headed directly with great hopes that it would be a hotel. I hopped off the car first and my friends followed slowly.

A tall thin and young lad came and welcomed us. We were surprised to witness someone welcoming us when this is an old creepy building. We quickly checked in for rooms and not surprised to see the hotel quite empty. The decorations and design inside are surprisingly modern but with reminders of the past here and there. There was an old fashioned telephone placed on the reception counter. I asked permission to take a look at the phone closely and found that it was produced in 1935 London. Now everyone was excited to see what this hotel has to offer. Domin as usual asked for where the restaurant is located. The hotel boy kindly showed us the way and we followed gracefully. The restaurant was quite small as I guess the building was originally not built to be an hotel. However it is more than large enough to seat all of us comfortably.

The tables and chairs are designs from the 1940s which I thought they were recreations. The hotel boy told us that they were all original furniture but restored to last this long. As tired as we were, we still did not head into our rooms to rest but continued to explore around the hotel. I checked my watch and it was already 10 pm and we still got to have dinner. It was a bit late and dark to head out and eat. We decided to just have dinner at the hotel's restaurant.

"Guys, lets check out the dairy that the Bo gave us along the way", Zack said curiously. Narnar unzipped her backpack and pulled out the diary. All of us were extremely excited to know about what this diary will reveal. The first part of the diary was all about his struggles in the army. The next part was about how he felt about the British colonials. In between these parts were daily memoirs of what he experienced during the days in war. Narnar saw a page which looked odd and was different from all the other pages. I asked her to pass the diary towards me. The dairy was very delicate so I had to handle it with extra care. One wrong move and the diary will fall out into pieces. I slowly took out the page which looked odd. It was odd because it was color printed and the material was way ahead of that time. The material was similar to today's material.

I read it out aloud so everyone could hear. It said," One who discovered this page shall seek for an inscription carved on the biggest teller of time in Maymyo." I continued reading downwards the page and it said," Please come save us, further instructions will be given once you reached the teller of time." What could be the teller of time we asked ourselves. Obviously its a clock but there are hundreds of clocks back then. Sithu pointed out the word "Big" on the page. We took a couple of minutes to think. During that time there were very few places where people could know the time. People had to go to an clocktower to know the time. We narrowed down our target, now we searched for the number of clock towers existing during that time. The Purcell clock tower in downtown is the biggest clocktower existing in Maymyo.

Thats it, we finally found out which clocktower it will be. We headed back to our rooms to have a good sleep and recharge for tomorrow. I couldn't really sleep that night as I was deeply thinking about the diary and the inscription on the clock tower. That night was such a long night however I woke up fresh as I can ever be and all my friends as well. The sun was slowly rising up and all of us were ready for the day. We had a small meeting to talk about the plans and packed our bags. I forgot the diary so I went back inside the room to go grab it. We headed to the Purcell clock tower in downtown Maymyo. The streets were busy and motorcycles buzzed around like bees. Market vendors were desperately trying to get their first sale. Local people were trying to get to work and tea shops were full of people conversing and sipping tea.

After a fifteen minute drive of passing through the busy Maymyo morning, we have reached the clock tower. The driver parked the car in front of the motel close to the clock tower. We hopped off the car and walked towards the tower. Most of us left our backpacks in the car because we will be back in a short while. I, however brought my backpack because I did not want to return to the car if we needed something. Sithu brought his backpack too as he had his camera inside. We stood in awe as we looked up the tower mesmerized by the beauty of the clock. The tower is almost four stories high and painted a soft yellow color. The year 1936 can be seen on all four sides of the clock tower and a huge "Purcell Tower" label can be seen below.

As the diary had told us, we have to look for an inscription somewhere on the tower. It also described that there will be further instructions once we reached the "teller or time". Without further ado, we started to look around the tower for the inscription. Zack pointed out a dusty metal place on the right side of the tower. It was really dusty and quite rusted. I blew the metal place to get rid of the dust. There was it finally, the inscription which we were supposed to find. We were fortunate to still be able to see the writings on the inscription.

All of us read aloud the writings on the inscription which were however quite short. The writings said, " Time is precious and is possible to return". All of a sudden the ground shook, the vision was blurred and a whistling noise came. After a few seconds, the shaking ground stopped and everything was back to normal. However, there was "some" major changes to our surroundings. Our car was gone and all the cars as well at least from our time. We saw military trucks parked on the pavement and horse carts. The buildings we saw, the motel we parked our car in was all gone.

Mia was really freaked out by this as well as everyone. "Tony, what just happened?", she asked me. She looked into my eyes with desperation to know the answer. I was quite shocked too but I gave her the honest answer which I believed. "Well Mia obviously we did the impossible and time travelled". Everyone looked at me, their eyes really widened and jaws dropped.