Odisha State: Beaches, Temples & Irrawaddy Dolphins

A lot of people ask us why we travel.  We never really have the right answer to capture all of the minute details that make the experience so rich and down right addictive.  We were thinking about this on a recent bus journey through the countryside of Odisha.  In a strikingly short amount of time we passed a host of interesting things: long mud houses with thatched roofs, a small boy playing in a large banyan tree, villagers harvesting the first rice of the season from the wet paddy fields, an overloaded rickshaw piled high with hay and people, an egret riding on a water buffalo, then the smell of burning trash fills our nostrils as the people around us speak excitedly in Odiya.  Are they arguing about the bus fare or just catching up on village gossip?  Do those huge gold ear and nose rings hurt as they stretch earlobes and nostrils?  Why does everyone chew paan if it turns your teeth so red and wears them down to nubs?  We feel crushed and hot as the bus money man loads more and more people on to the already packed bus.  Where are these people going to fit?  They crush in and join the mash of people already clamoring for space.  A bus is only full if there are five guys hanging out the door, but then again there is always space on the roof.  Traveling is like an adventure buffet for the senses.  Unexpected sights, sounds, and tastes abound, and one finds themself in interesting situations that may be uncomfortable for some (see: old bird or yuppie package tourists), but for us it's what we came for.  There's only one way to get even a glimpse of what it is like to be in a place, especially one like India, and that's to be there yourself; jammed with your nose in the armpit of the sweaty guy standing next to you and the boney legs of an old woman digging into your kneecap.


We have spent the last coupld of weeks in the Eastern state of Odisha.  We've been in and around Puri, which is one of four "dhams", the holiest Hindu sights in India, as well as a beach town.  Arriving from Calcutta, we settled into a beachside lodge to spend some days recovering from a case of Delhi Belly as well as soak up the sun.  The beach wasn't exactly pristine (trash, fecal matter, and a very unfortunate dog found washed up in the surf covered the sand), but hey, if you walked close enough to the tide line everything got washed away and you could pretend you were in a tropical paradise!

The Indian beach was a very different experience than at home.  You wouldn't find anyone in a bathing suit, oh no.  Large groups of women do wade into the surf, but dressed in full saris in all of the colors of the rainbow.  Camels and horses led by entrepreneurial Indians ply the beach for tourists hungry for good "snaps" to show their friends back at home.  Women carrying large baskets full of coconuts on their heads walk by heading toward the fishing village near our guesthouse, perfuming the air with the scent of rotting fish.  And of course women are doing laundry, the brightly colored saris laid out in the sand to dry.  We have noticed that women are always doing laundry.  It doesn't matter where they are or what they are doing otherwise.  Visiting a temple?  I'll just go ahead and wash my sari in this water tank.  Going to the beach?  Let me just scrub these shirts.

In Puri we also visited the mighty Jagganath Temple dedicated to an aspect of Vishnu, and when we say visit we mean we walked around the ten foot high wall that surrounds the compound.  Entry to this and many other temples here is permitted only to Indians, one of many ways that India makes you feel welcome and at home.  Outside the temple we saw funeral processions and thousands of pilgrims coming in and out of the narrow gate loaded with sweets and flowers for the god within.  The temple feeds about 10,000 people everyday.  The food is prepared in huge pots stacked one on top of the other and decreasing in size from the bottom to the top.  The owner of our guesthouse told us that all of the food is begun and finished at the same time, which is pretty amazing.  Rice is cooked in the bottom and largest pot, then dal, then sabji (mixed vegetables, and so on up.  It's sort of a functioning Indian food pyramid.  Unfortunately we never for the chance to try the food, but supposedly Jagganath fills it with an especially delicious flavor.

We also decided to rent bikes to visit the temples and beaches a little further afield.  I can only say (this is Amanda speaking) that it was a horrifying experience and I was scared for my life.  Colin loved it.

When we got tired of bumming around Puri, we hopped a bus up the coast to Konark.  The site is now three kilometers from the coast, but in the 14th century the amazingly carved temples grouped there were visible from the sea.  Early European merchants to India actually used the huge tower of the largest and most impressive temple to find their bearings while coming up the coast.  When the sea level moved away the temple was eventually abandoned and much of it covered in sand, until the Archaeological Survey of India dug it up again and rebuilt parts of it.  We checked into a quiet guesthouse with a nice garden and spent some time taking in the site, it's museum, and a strand of beach with much less pollution that Puri.  When we came back to our quiet little lodge we were talking about how peaceful it was there, when two tour busses filled with over 200 pilgrims from Rajasthan began to stream into the compound.  When people just kept coming, we asked the lodge owner where all of them were going to sleep.  He said that there were eight rooms free and walked off, as if that answered the question.  Needless to say, they slept everywhere, filling the guesthouse with the noise of cooking over charcoal fires, snoring coming from the strangest corners, and the ever present creak of the hand-pump for the well being worked.  It was a bit of a surprise that this happened both nights we were there, but it was very interesting to watch and talk with so many pilgrims.

Our next stop was Chilika Lake, India's largest lagoon, that lay about 100km down the coast.  We arrived in the evening and found that the only lodge in town was all booked, except for the most expensive room they had going for about $50.  It's strange how often that happens to us, we are beginning to suspect that it's a trick to get "rich" foreigners to pay up, but they held fast and we were on the street.  As we wandered the streets looking for anywhere at all to stay for the night a guy who owned a small grocery shack came out to us and said that his friend had a place.  The friend also owned a grocery shack and came out to show us a room in the building behind his spot.  It was definitely not a legit lodge, but more likely a room for visiting governmental workers to stay while in town on business, but hey, the room was sort of clean and there were two plush chairs to sit in, so we went for it.  The next morning we joined a boat tour to see some Irrawaddy dolphins that hang out around the fishing village where we stayed.  It was a great ride and we not only saw the dolphins, but also loads of other boats full of domestic tourists out for a bit of a ride, which was maybe more interesting.  There were a couple with five or six huge speakers lashed down to the narrow fishing boat and ten young Indian men dancing their hearts out to blaring Bollywood pop.  By the way, it was ten in the morning.

Back in Puri Amanda's birthday also ended up landing on a very auspicious date.  It was the day of a large festival celebrated all throughout India but different depending on the region.  The festival celebrates the first rice harvest and so the people make a type of rice pudding as an offering to the Gods. The pudding was made of dried crushed rice, nuts, coconut, milk and ghee all mixed together with cardamom and some other spices to make it taste amazing.  The owners of the hotel offered us some and told us stories of the local deity Jagganath and also about some of the local traditions in Odisa. Other than indulging in holy rice pudding we also celebrated with lots of other delicious Indian food, a walk on the beach and an Ayurvedic massage.  We found a bakery with some pretty tasty chocolate cake and cheesecake and lit of a pretty impressive flower candle that was a torch in the center and lit all the other candles on the pedals as they blossomed.  Oh, and it also sang Happy Birthday.  It's amazing the things you can find in India!

A sleeper berth from Calcutta to Puri.  You're packed like sardines in a tin box, but we've managed to sleep reasonably well.

Laundry drying in front of the fishing village in Puri.

Camel rides!!!  Too bad we couldn't find on on Amanda's birthday :(.

Masala Dosa, it's what's for breakfast.

Jagganath Temple, Puri.

Amanda staring down a street cow.

The Sun Temple, Konark.

One of seven little horses that pull the chariot shaped Sun Temple in Konark.

 

A clean and unpopulated beach, imagine that.

Sunset on Chilika Lake.  There were still lots of fishermen, although lucrative dolphin tourism has started taking over the town where we stayed.

Birthday Bug with her pyrotechnic candle.

Beautiful Bubaneshwar, our last stop in Odisha.