Cuttack - 3 November 2009

I was up at 5:30 in the morning for I wanted to see the sunrise at the Puri beach. The hotel was on the road parallel to the beach and in 10 minutes I was at the sea shore.

 Just a couple of fishermen getting ready to take their boat out in to the waters, and a couple of tourists at the beach.

The cool breeze in the morning was refreshing, but the venture was a bit of a failure as the sky was filled with clouds making the sunrise over the horizon a missed treat.

Nevertheless, the breeze was refreshing. When the sun did peek out from the clouds, it was almost 6:30 and it was quite a long way up in the sky. Nevertheless, you have to be there to witness the black and orange shades that the sunlight makes on the surface of the sea at this time, a long dark pattern, covering the lone boat that has entered on its daily business.

After breakfast, i settled the hotel account and headed 3 km off to the bus stand. Now Sanjog (the chap I met on the train and who graciously had offered to play host in Orissa) had asked me to meet him so that he would show me around the place. After a nice 1.25 hr ride in the bus, I reached the Cuttack, Puri and Bhubaneshwar junction (forgot the name of the place, poor memory). From here we began in Sanjog’s car as he proceeded to narrate the various stories of the land and the historical significance of the culture here. We made a stop at Mayfair, the posh place in Bhubaneshwar (so I was told) for a quick bite. Here my dear friend told me would be the venue of his marriage, when that happens. Nice place, a few pubs, eating joints and a small pond, didn’t have time to visit the entire place.

We started towards the vegetation, with hills appearing on either side after we had left the city behind. Strange how similar the fields seem whether it be north or south India, maybe not in terms of the exact shrubbery, just the feeling of vastness and minuscule existence at the same time that it arises inside you.

 This is what its supposed to be in all these travels, be there and not at the same time, enjoy it fully while forgetting the self!

First up on the itinerary – Manglajodi bird sanctuary. With scarcely any signboards on the road to guide us, we took a couple of wrong turns before we ended up on the correct road. The small village leading up to the sanctuary had some religious procession going on which almost blocked up the entirety of the small road we were on. Nevertheless, forward we went onto the narrow lane of the bird sanctuary. The road is sufficient for just one vehicle, and is sandwiched by water bodies. But the water here is visible only in very narrow streams, on which you can see the sleek boats navigate. The weeds and other water plants are so thickly arranged that it almost gives an illusion of the boat rolling along on plants, almost.

As luck would have it, the birds are there, but its afternoon; not the best of time for them to be entertaining tourists, so we had to really squint under the sun to see the groups of birds hiding in the thick undergrowth. Here we met an XLRI passout, who was working on the conservation and awareness about the small sanctuary which is largely unnoticed next to the bigger Chilka lake nearby. The small channels from here join the Chilka lake, and we were tempted to try it with the few boats going that way, but have to keep to the schedule.

Lunch at a roadside dhaba, long time since I last ate sitting next to another human, maybe 4 months. Next, Sanjog took me to his ancestral village. Apparently, his grandfather has been quite instrumental in the upliftment of the small village and is a respected figure. Got to eat homemade kheer prepared by his grandmother, which provided some relief to my pining sweet tooth. I took the grand tour given by the grandmother, the small granary, the old storage room, the hall where the villagefolk would assemble to watch TV, and the ‘gaushala’. Though the last one now houses only 1 cow. Its beautiful here, fresh air, stand at the terrace, and just gaze at the village.

Time to push further, but it started raining heavily, so we had to curtail our march forth for the day. Instead we headed back to Cuttack. Its amazing how every weather in the countryside seems to have its own charm, even the dark skies and the downpour accompanied by the strong winds seemed beautiful.

Now, I normally would never accept an invitation from a stranger to stay at his/her place. Strangely this was the first time that I was offered a chance to do so, and I said yes. You don’t usually invite a stranger to your home either, unless you are the Texas chainsaw hacker or maybe Mother Teresa. Turns out, Sanjog is neither, much to my relief, on both counts!

So we hit Cuttack in the evening and after freshening up at this place he took me out to see the city. First we stopped at the famous club where his father was playing snooker to park the bike. From here on we proceeded to the fair – ‘Ballijatra’ to be precise.

Fortunately, I had landed up at the time of the festivities, celebrations relating to the trade between India and Bali in yesteryears (citation needed, poor memory again, pretty sure Sanjog had told me the entire story). We were in time to catch the procession of the exquisitely made pavilions, various deities in so many colors and the bright light, along with the deafening music, all completed the festive mood.

 Apparently, most of the shops in Cuttack set up a stall here for the festival; I saw stall of food items, right next to mobile phone and Reebok stalls! We enjoyed the ‘maut ka kuan’ – the first time I was seeing it in person, and this one was really nice. 3 maruti cars (yes cars), and 3 motorcyclists simultaneously doing circles in the 2 storey high wooden frame. Standing there, I could feel the frame shake considerably as the performers went on with their show. They even took money from outstretched arms of the audience while circling near the edge, steering the car with the feet with the upper half out of the window! Now that was some show.

The stalls are incidentally right next to Mahanadi river bank. Sanjog told me that the river that looked so immensely wide in the night time swelled up even more in the monsoons, engulfing the area where the stalls currently stood. Nighttime, standing next to the dark waters of the Mahanadi, barely able to see the opposite bank, with the lights shingling on my back from the stalls behind me, and I forgot all that I might have missed due to the rain in the day.

And the day ended with homecooked food, some sabzi that Sanjog’s mom had made, delicious. Surprisingly, all moms seem to be brilliant cooks, and his parents were so hospitable putting up a stranger at their place.
 Lights out at around midnight, day well spent at Cuttack.

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.