On to the old world charms of Georgetown, the colonial town founded in 1751 long before Washington came into being, to stare down the scary steps of 'The Exorcist', a 1973 US horror film dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl.

It is down these very steps that the possessed girl throws a priest trying to cure her, after hurling him through her bedroom window.

But the steps were well padded with thick rubber to soften the priest's tumble, we are told and the horrible stuff that the girl keeps spewing was nothing but green pea soup.

Run by 'On Location Tours' every Saturday, the tour takes one on a journey of the timeline of filming in DC from classic films of the seventies such as 'The Godfather II' to the recent 'Mission Impossible III'.

DC's top ten Oscar winner movies range from 'Mr Smith Goes to Washington' (1939), 'Born Yesterday' (1950), 'The Exorcist' (1973), 'All the President's Men' (1976) and 'Independence Day' (1996) to 'Traffic' (2000).

An HBO pilot for a set-in-Washington comedy, 'The Washingtonienne', is being filmed now in DC, and on the storyboard for production in 2010 is 'Dirty Tricks', a Paramount movie, starring and produced by Brad Pitt with Sharon Stone, Mike tells us.

Driving by the Gandhi statue, erected with Congressional approval under a law signed by then president Bill Clinton and dedicated by then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the presence of Clinton during his September 2000 state visit to the US, we head back to town.

Our tour ends at Willard Hotel, just a couple of blocks from the White House, where Lincoln stayed before his March 1861 inauguration, a favourite haunt of Bill Clinton, and still the hotel of choice for top dignitaries from India and the rest of the world.

Time to pack up, or shall we say 'lights, camera, action' for that Bollywood blockbuster we went location hunting?

(Arun Kumar lives in Washington. He can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)