Konark Sun temple & Jagannanath temple at Puri - 2 Nov, 2009

I made it to the Konark express with time to spare, and as usual with a guy traveling alone; I had the side upper berth. The guy further down asked to see my book (it was Enneagram by Richard Ruso and Hudson), a book I had been trying to read for the last 2 months. Turns out he was a recent law Graduate from SIBM who was traveling home to Cuttack. Surprisingly, I struck up a chat with Sanjog, which carried on till past midnight, from the time the train started at 9:30 from Vizag.

The young chap seemed quite wise for his age, he had a clear notion on almost everything (though I’m sure he’d argue vehemently on this point), ranging from his personal life, his job, studies, future, the environment, whatnot! Strange, I’m a full blooded introvert, all my MBTIs have affirmed that fact, and I ended up in this long conversation, on a train, with a complete stranger. To be fair, though, I was the one doing most of the listening, as he explained to me his aspirations for anthropology. I was quite taken in by the effort he was putting in to get to a good institute, a few articles published in the newspaper, had assisted in tribal projects in Orissa, was in touch with people in different institutes he wanted to get to, even gone to meet a dean of one German institute in Bombay! And the young lad was quite passionate about the culture in Orissa, the natural beauty that was being deteriorated, lack of proper representation of the state people in the political environment, et al. He even pointed out a couple of hills in the darkness of the night as the train entered Orissa.

My entire 3 day itinerary was changed by him as he even volunteered to show me around the next day. I would’ve gotten down at Khurda junction at 3:50 am, looking for something to get to Konark (he informed me that most buses do pass through Bhubaneshwar only, so I better get down there itself). At Bhubaneshwar he dropped me off at the bus stand, even went to the effort of getting me into the right bus for Puri, which I’d have been unable to locate in the early morning and with the language handicap.

I bid him goodbye for the day here, promising to meet him the next day, as the bus started off on the 60 km road to Puri. I could make out the white lotuses at 5 in the morning, as the Oriya folk dvd blared off in the bus. Not that I don’t appreciate music, but I can’t bloody well bear this after a train ride, this early in the morning. At around 6:30 the bus dropped me off at the Puri bus stand. The autos are their usual self, 40 bucks for 4 km to the beach road, where I had to dish out 700 bucks for a room, one of the cheaper ones I could find. A lot of hotels on this road, which runs parallel to the Puri beach.

After a bath and breakfast, I headed out to the bus stand. Surprisingly, there are no bus services to Konark as I found out, the ones that go are the small tourist tempos. The auto chaps ask for a fortune for the 36 km travel here. So I asked around till I got to the end of the road, opposite from the main bus stand where most of the tempos are; they should really put some signs or something here, the small shops on the road hide away the tempos from the road. About 1 tempo in 30 minutes, and the conductors are the king. They make you wait 15 minutes before letting you into the carrier, or even give a ticket. I jostled in, the place was absolutely crammed, with no place to sit now. The bus was up to 350% seating capacity, no kidding, I was almost standing on my toes here, and covered the 36 km in a leisurely 1 hour.
Now I had high hopes from the temple, but even in this late morning heat, it was thronging with visitors, a lot of Bengalis and a few foreigners thrown in.

The 400 meter long street from the main road to the temple gates is laced with small shops, most of them selling cloth bags, lampshades, and the rock and wood replicas of the temple. The colors and the vibrancy here remind one of Delhi’s Janpath market. The temple is huge, I’ll give it that, you can quite easily fathom the magnitude of effort that’d have gone in the construction.

At the front of the temple you get to see the ubiquitous lions guarding the gates, and a small pillared structure before one enters the main temple.

I visited each of the 24 wheels on the walls of the main structure, 12 on each of the 2 sides, completing the chariot which was supposedly made to travel to the gods’ abode. It’s a pity that I couldn’t capture 12 in one snapshot, the wide angle is not enough here, so you can get the horses and a few of the wheels.

 Each of the 12 wheels is intricately carved out, and there are a lot of different designs that you can keep on admiring for a long time.

The temple interior is blocked away, which I later came to know was to support the structure after excavation. So I proceeded on up the flight of stairs to the first level of the temple where you can see 3 big statues at the sides and the back of the temple, resembling Buddha, not sure what it was.

The garden surrounding the main temple has a couple of other structures as well, some with little crocodile and other strange carvings.

The carvings on the walls of the temple are quite good, some in pretty good condition still, but there seems to be some big renovation work going on one side of the temple, which spoils the view.

 And if you thought that you had to go to Khajuraho to see naughty carvings, well you were wrong, these were here in plenty. Even on the spokes of the wheels, you could see that the poor stone carvers had only one thing on their minds, jeez!

But at some places, you have to feel for the condition of the temple, where the carvings had to be cut down in order to repair the entire structure, thus rendering it a bit weird.
I finally took a long walk on the border wall of the temple compound, and beneath the trees you can still see some of the remains of the pillars of the temple, which seem to have been discarded now, and took a snap of the entire temple one last time.

The bus, ahem, tempo back was as uncomfortable as it was at the onward journey, and I wasn’t able to see much of the Konark beach that the road was running parallel to. I’m a guy with average Indian height, but it was weird, I seemed to be the only person having trouble standing upright, with my head stuck to the roof of the tempo. Nevertheless I made it back to Puri in one piece and after catching some cricket action on the television and a sumptuous meal, I headed out for the Jagannanath temple at 6:30 pm.

I was told by the hotel staff that since it was a full moon, there’d be a lot of visitors. No kidding, the rickshaw chap had to stop 200 meters before the temple entrance on the main road. Seems that the police had set up barricades and had stopped traffic for a stretch on the main road itself due to the pujas. Well, I got to the temple, deposited my camera, phone and shoes outside, pity no photos inside. I seemed to have come at the lull time, for by the time I got out an hour later, around 7:45, the line at the entrance had gotten huge, almost 150 people waiting and a lot more on the streets. Inside the temple you go up the wet steps and there are a lot of people, the pandas (the pujaris here) who cajole you for some pujas. I passed all and proceeded to the temple compound, there are a lot of different deities here, and I cannot for the life in me remember even a couple. The structures here might not be as flattering as at a few other places, you are simply left in awe of the devotion that the people have, waiting for a glimpse of the almighty’s idol, prostrating at the steps, mumbling prayers all the way, just sitting in the compound gazing forth.

I really did want to see the main deity, but there seemed to be a mad rush of people wanting to do the same, with the cops trying to keep some order. I decided to give it a miss instead of waiting an hour to take a glimpse of the deity, not at all religious am I? but I did take with me the Prasad offered here, called ‘Abhada’, they give you some sweet rice, some daals, some vegetables in mud handis, and quite a lot of people I watched it eat right there. Normally, I don’t take the Prasad at temples, but Sanjog had told me to try it, as I wouldn’t find it anywhere else, so I paid 20 bucks and took the smallest of the ones, there were big handis worth a lot more, but I just wanted a taste. Not bad at all on the tongue, and I finished it off in a couple of minutes, the sweet flavor mixed well with the salty pulse and other stuff.

With the evening waning off, I proceeded to take a couple of snaps of the temple from the road, and headed back to my hotel bed for some well earned rest.