At 5 a.m on the morning of the 21st I took a taxi in the dark through the mostly deserted streets of Calcutta from my hotel to Howrah Railway Station. I noticed my driver treated the traffic lights as no more than suggestive. There was considerably more traffic on the approach to and on the massive Howrah Bridge over the Hooghly River. It took only about 10 minutes to reach the station, a trip that cost me more than the fare for my almost eight hour upcoming train trip. In the cavernous station, already crammed with people, many of them sleeping on the floor, at that early hour, I eventually found my train. The crowded train left shortly after 6, with the sun rising shortly before 6. The train headed southwest, paralleling the coast, through West Bengal and Odisha (renamed from Orissa in 2010) states to Bhubaneshwar, about 275 miles away. We passed lots of rice fields, many green, many already brown, with some of the latter being harvested by men and women both, all under the typically hazy Indian sky. I saw a line of men carrying big bundles of rice straw on their heads. The air was cool in the morning and there were lots of trees along the way, and many ponds, one filled with scores of purple lotus flowers. I also saw many birds, mostly egrets. The terrain was flat until we passed some hills towards the end of the trip, and there were some huge steel mills off in the distance. We crossed several rivers, including the very wide Mahanadi just before we reached the city of Cuttack. I talked with a friendly man from Calcutta for a while and we arrived shortly before 2, about an hour late. It took me about an hour to get a hotel and that was pretty much it for the day. I went to bed about 8.
I was up early the next day and about 6:30 was at Lingaraj Mandir, Bhubaneshwar's tallest temple at about 180 feet. Non-Hindus are not allowed inside this thousand year old stone temple, a policy dating from the Moslem depredations of the city's temples, but you can get a look over the walls of the compound from a viewing platform on the north side. I enjoyed just walking around the area and seeing the pilgrims, the beggars, the cows, the commercial stands, and all the other temple area activity. I went to several other temples in the area. At one the priests were preparing food, with cut up vegetables placed in clay pots and ready for the smoky fires. There was also a group of chanting, parading pilgrims in that temple. Another temple, a small one dating from the 8th century, had a friendly priest who showed me how he washed and dressed the resident deity. I passed by the local water tank, the Bindu Sagar, said to contain nectar, wine and water from holy rivers all over India (and from the look of it, many other less salubrious ingredients) and visited three other stone temples, two of them beautifully decorated with sculpture. Odishan temples have a standard form, with a tall sanctuary tower called a deul and a lower entry hall called a jagamohana. Sometime after noon I made a lunch stop and had an Odishan thali, which was very good, and then visited another two well decorated ancient temples after lunch before heading back to the hotel.
I was up early again the next morning and after breakfast at the train station took an autorickshaw to the Udaigiri and Kandagiri Caves about six miles away. These man-made caves, carved out by Jains over 2000 years ago, are situated on two small hills separated by a road. There must be about 30 caves in all, most fairly simple but some with interesting sculpture. The low cells are sloped up from the openings, supposedly so the monks who slept in them had a sort of pillow at the far end. In one cave there is a long inscription in Brahmi script, dating from the 2nd century B.C. I spent about two and a half hours there and then took an autorickshaw to the Tribal Museum back in town. Odisha's population of over 40 million people is almost one quarter tribal (62 different tribes), in the inland hills and jungles. This is a terrific museum, the best tribal museum I've been to by far, with clothing, ornaments, tools, weapons, musical instruments and much else on display. I spent about four hours there. There were some wonderful audio-visual displays. For over an hour in the museum I was followed around by a guy until I realized he was the driver who had brought me and was hoping for an additional fare. I finally told him to go.
I was up again before dawn the next morning and after breakfast took an autorickshaw out of town to Dhauli, with a long Ashoka inscription on a big rock. This is near the battlefield where Ashoka defeated the Kalingas in 261 B.C., a bloodbath so terrible it is said to have caused Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism. (His remorse apparently did not extend to restoring the Kalinga's independence from his empire.) The rock with the inscription is now protected by an ugly building. On the hill nearby is a gleaming white stupa built by the Japanese in the 1970's. I went back to town, packed my bag and walked to the State Museum, which opened at 10. It was fairly interesting. Oddly, it had a "Special Toilet for Foreigners," with a combination lock opened by a code given to me at the ticket window.
About 12:30 I caught a crowded bus to Konark, a small town on the coast about 40 miles away. Arriving about two hours later, I got a hotel and then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the enclosure of the 13th century Sun Temple. There are great views of this giant temple as you walked around it. It was once on the coast, but the coast has receded about two miles, and was visible out to sea, known to sailors as the Black Pagoda. At some point it was sacked and then abandoned. The deul, the main tower, thought to have been 200-230 feet high, collapsed and much of the rest was buried in sand. The British began restoration soon after 1900. It's no longer a working temple, but there were lots of visitors until it closed at 8 p.m. It was lit up at night, an impressive sight.
I entered the Sun Temple compound soon after it opened at 6 the next morning and spent about four hours there. There were already lots of people there and within half an hour on that Sunday morning they were pouring in by the hundreds, almost all Indian. I think I saw about five other Westerners. The surviving jagomohana, the entry hall in front of the wrecked deul, is itself 130 feet high and covered with sculpture. The stone platform upon which the jagomohana and deul rest is maybe 400 or 500 feet long and maybe ten fight high and sculpted to resemble the chariot of Surya the Sun God, with twelve wheels (maybe seven feet in diameter) carved on each side. There were seven horses in front. Now only one remains. The sculpture on the platform, jagamohana and deul is very interesting, much of it erotic, but also with musicians and gods and animals. A procession of something like 1700 elephants decorates the lowest band of sculpture ringing the base of the platform. The place was packed, but I enjoyed it. I must have refused 20 or 30 photo requests, though I did agree to a few.
I had a late breakfast, checked out of my hotel, and then visited the museum (with some interesting photos of the temple at the time of restoration in the early 1900's) before catching a very crowded bus along the coast to Puri, 20 miles away. I had to stand and couldn't stand up straight because of the low bus ceiling. Needless to say, I was happy to reach Puri after an hour or so and get off that bus. Puri is right on the beach, a wide beach with big waves, and I got a room in a somewhat run-down but still clean and comfortable hotel that once was the mansion of the Raja of Serampore, with windows facing the Bay of Bengal. I had a great fish dinner with a British couple and slept well on a comfortable bed under a mosquito net to the sound of the waves. With the ocean breezes, it is cool here at night, in the low 60's, I think.
I was out on the beach the next morning just after six, in time to see the sun rise through the haze over the sea. There is a fishing village just up the beach and fishing boats were leaving and returning. It was interesting to see them navigating the big waves while launching or returning. The beach was crowded with boats, boatmen and villagers, and of course with men and boys having their morning craps along the ocean. You really had to be very careful where you stepped. Pretty disgusting. Nonetheless, I stayed and watched all the fisherman activity for an hour and a half. Fish were off loaded onto the sand and then apparently sold and carted off by women in metal basins. I saw several types of fish, including hammerhead sharks but only about three or four feet in length, and even crabs and lots of eels. Primitive winches operated by eight to ten men hauled up the boats after they had ridden the waves onto the beach. The village itself was filthy, with paper and plastic garbage everywhere. The houses were both brick structures and grass huts.
I came back and had a big fruit salad and curd for breakfast and ended up spending most of the day in a little restaurant. I met, among others, a 73 year old man there named Hamish Kane who was born in Calcutta (his father was in the colonial service and after independence with the British High Commission) and lived there until he was 16. He comes back to India every year now, spending much time in Puri. He had great stories of Calcutta, Darjeeling (where he went to school starting at age 11) and Puri in the '40's and early '50's. He remembers the horrific Hindu-Moslem carnage of 1947, having seen people killed from the veranda of his home. An interesting guy, he later became a disc jockey for radio stations in the U.K., eventually making it from pirate radio stations to the BBC.
In the late afternoon, I walked down the road to the restored, old railroad hotel, where Hamish remembers staying with his parents in the late '40's. It has photos of Jackie Kennedy from her tour of India in 1962 and Leonid Brezhnev from his tour in 1961. Neither visited Puri. I walked to the "Bengali Beach," the nicer stretch of the wide beach fronted by many hotels, some quite big, catering to people from Calcutta. There were some Bengalis in the surf, the women fully clothed. I got back just after dark.
I slept in a bit later the next morning, had breakfast, and then took a cycle richshaw about 8:30 to the Jagannath Temple, one of the holiest sites in India. In fact, Puri is one of the four holy abodes of India. It is the easternmost, with the others being Badrinath in the north (which I visited in November 2010), Dwarka in the west (which I visited in February of 2012), and Rameshwaram in the south.
An incarnation of Vishnu, Jagannath means "Lord of the Universe," and abides in the temple with his brother Balabhandra and his sister Subandhra. Non-Hindus are not allowed into the large temple compound, with the 215 foot high temple, dating from about 1200, in the center. You can get a glimpse into the compound and a good view of the deul, jagamohana and other buildings from a roof top just east of the compound. The deul was once whitewashed, but has now been restored to its natural stone color. I walked around, observing all the temple activity. The three temple deities are pictured everywhere and are quite distinctive looking, with short bodies, big round heads and big round white eyes. In fact, they remind me of the South Park characters. Cartman as a god. Each June or July, the three deities are taken in huge wooden carts (Lord Jagannath's is the largest, 42 feet tall with sixteen wheels seven feet in diameter), on a procession about two miles in length, each cart pulled by about 4000 men. The English word "juggernaut" comes from this procession, as devotees apparently used to throw themselves under the wheels, an auspicious death. Some still do die, apparently, perhaps from accident. Highly decorated elephants and the Raja of Puri also make up the procession, attended by maybe a half million people.
From the temple I walked through the narrow lanes to a water tank flanked by more temples, then walked back to the Jagannath Temple in part along the very wide street taken by the deities on their yearly progression. I then walked to the cremation grounds near the sea. There were only two burning piles of wood and a few smouldering remains of fires. I didn't see any bodies. I walked along the wide beach full of Bengalis for a while and then took a cycle rickshaw back to my hotel and had lunch before spending the rest of the afternoon in an internet cafe.
I spent a good part of the next day trying to decide on my route for the next part of my journey, as I am heading to the tribal areas of Odisha and Chhattisgarh and want to time my visits to see weekly markets. I didn't do much else that day, though just before sunset I went down to the beach and watched the sun set over the sea down the coast. Puri is on India's east coast, but because of the curve of the coast here, in the winter the sun both rises and sets over the ocean. I've enjoyed Puri, with its sea breezes and congenial fellow travelers, quite a few who are spending a lot of time here.
I was up early the next day and about 6:30 was at Lingaraj Mandir, Bhubaneshwar's tallest temple at about 180 feet. Non-Hindus are not allowed inside this thousand year old stone temple, a policy dating from the Moslem depredations of the city's temples, but you can get a look over the walls of the compound from a viewing platform on the north side. I enjoyed just walking around the area and seeing the pilgrims, the beggars, the cows, the commercial stands, and all the other temple area activity. I went to several other temples in the area. At one the priests were preparing food, with cut up vegetables placed in clay pots and ready for the smoky fires. There was also a group of chanting, parading pilgrims in that temple. Another temple, a small one dating from the 8th century, had a friendly priest who showed me how he washed and dressed the resident deity. I passed by the local water tank, the Bindu Sagar, said to contain nectar, wine and water from holy rivers all over India (and from the look of it, many other less salubrious ingredients) and visited three other stone temples, two of them beautifully decorated with sculpture. Odishan temples have a standard form, with a tall sanctuary tower called a deul and a lower entry hall called a jagamohana. Sometime after noon I made a lunch stop and had an Odishan thali, which was very good, and then visited another two well decorated ancient temples after lunch before heading back to the hotel.
I was up early again the next morning and after breakfast at the train station took an autorickshaw to the Udaigiri and Kandagiri Caves about six miles away. These man-made caves, carved out by Jains over 2000 years ago, are situated on two small hills separated by a road. There must be about 30 caves in all, most fairly simple but some with interesting sculpture. The low cells are sloped up from the openings, supposedly so the monks who slept in them had a sort of pillow at the far end. In one cave there is a long inscription in Brahmi script, dating from the 2nd century B.C. I spent about two and a half hours there and then took an autorickshaw to the Tribal Museum back in town. Odisha's population of over 40 million people is almost one quarter tribal (62 different tribes), in the inland hills and jungles. This is a terrific museum, the best tribal museum I've been to by far, with clothing, ornaments, tools, weapons, musical instruments and much else on display. I spent about four hours there. There were some wonderful audio-visual displays. For over an hour in the museum I was followed around by a guy until I realized he was the driver who had brought me and was hoping for an additional fare. I finally told him to go.
I was up again before dawn the next morning and after breakfast took an autorickshaw out of town to Dhauli, with a long Ashoka inscription on a big rock. This is near the battlefield where Ashoka defeated the Kalingas in 261 B.C., a bloodbath so terrible it is said to have caused Ashoka's conversion to Buddhism. (His remorse apparently did not extend to restoring the Kalinga's independence from his empire.) The rock with the inscription is now protected by an ugly building. On the hill nearby is a gleaming white stupa built by the Japanese in the 1970's. I went back to town, packed my bag and walked to the State Museum, which opened at 10. It was fairly interesting. Oddly, it had a "Special Toilet for Foreigners," with a combination lock opened by a code given to me at the ticket window.
About 12:30 I caught a crowded bus to Konark, a small town on the coast about 40 miles away. Arriving about two hours later, I got a hotel and then spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the enclosure of the 13th century Sun Temple. There are great views of this giant temple as you walked around it. It was once on the coast, but the coast has receded about two miles, and was visible out to sea, known to sailors as the Black Pagoda. At some point it was sacked and then abandoned. The deul, the main tower, thought to have been 200-230 feet high, collapsed and much of the rest was buried in sand. The British began restoration soon after 1900. It's no longer a working temple, but there were lots of visitors until it closed at 8 p.m. It was lit up at night, an impressive sight.
I entered the Sun Temple compound soon after it opened at 6 the next morning and spent about four hours there. There were already lots of people there and within half an hour on that Sunday morning they were pouring in by the hundreds, almost all Indian. I think I saw about five other Westerners. The surviving jagomohana, the entry hall in front of the wrecked deul, is itself 130 feet high and covered with sculpture. The stone platform upon which the jagomohana and deul rest is maybe 400 or 500 feet long and maybe ten fight high and sculpted to resemble the chariot of Surya the Sun God, with twelve wheels (maybe seven feet in diameter) carved on each side. There were seven horses in front. Now only one remains. The sculpture on the platform, jagamohana and deul is very interesting, much of it erotic, but also with musicians and gods and animals. A procession of something like 1700 elephants decorates the lowest band of sculpture ringing the base of the platform. The place was packed, but I enjoyed it. I must have refused 20 or 30 photo requests, though I did agree to a few.
I had a late breakfast, checked out of my hotel, and then visited the museum (with some interesting photos of the temple at the time of restoration in the early 1900's) before catching a very crowded bus along the coast to Puri, 20 miles away. I had to stand and couldn't stand up straight because of the low bus ceiling. Needless to say, I was happy to reach Puri after an hour or so and get off that bus. Puri is right on the beach, a wide beach with big waves, and I got a room in a somewhat run-down but still clean and comfortable hotel that once was the mansion of the Raja of Serampore, with windows facing the Bay of Bengal. I had a great fish dinner with a British couple and slept well on a comfortable bed under a mosquito net to the sound of the waves. With the ocean breezes, it is cool here at night, in the low 60's, I think.
I was out on the beach the next morning just after six, in time to see the sun rise through the haze over the sea. There is a fishing village just up the beach and fishing boats were leaving and returning. It was interesting to see them navigating the big waves while launching or returning. The beach was crowded with boats, boatmen and villagers, and of course with men and boys having their morning craps along the ocean. You really had to be very careful where you stepped. Pretty disgusting. Nonetheless, I stayed and watched all the fisherman activity for an hour and a half. Fish were off loaded onto the sand and then apparently sold and carted off by women in metal basins. I saw several types of fish, including hammerhead sharks but only about three or four feet in length, and even crabs and lots of eels. Primitive winches operated by eight to ten men hauled up the boats after they had ridden the waves onto the beach. The village itself was filthy, with paper and plastic garbage everywhere. The houses were both brick structures and grass huts.
I came back and had a big fruit salad and curd for breakfast and ended up spending most of the day in a little restaurant. I met, among others, a 73 year old man there named Hamish Kane who was born in Calcutta (his father was in the colonial service and after independence with the British High Commission) and lived there until he was 16. He comes back to India every year now, spending much time in Puri. He had great stories of Calcutta, Darjeeling (where he went to school starting at age 11) and Puri in the '40's and early '50's. He remembers the horrific Hindu-Moslem carnage of 1947, having seen people killed from the veranda of his home. An interesting guy, he later became a disc jockey for radio stations in the U.K., eventually making it from pirate radio stations to the BBC.
In the late afternoon, I walked down the road to the restored, old railroad hotel, where Hamish remembers staying with his parents in the late '40's. It has photos of Jackie Kennedy from her tour of India in 1962 and Leonid Brezhnev from his tour in 1961. Neither visited Puri. I walked to the "Bengali Beach," the nicer stretch of the wide beach fronted by many hotels, some quite big, catering to people from Calcutta. There were some Bengalis in the surf, the women fully clothed. I got back just after dark.
I slept in a bit later the next morning, had breakfast, and then took a cycle richshaw about 8:30 to the Jagannath Temple, one of the holiest sites in India. In fact, Puri is one of the four holy abodes of India. It is the easternmost, with the others being Badrinath in the north (which I visited in November 2010), Dwarka in the west (which I visited in February of 2012), and Rameshwaram in the south.
An incarnation of Vishnu, Jagannath means "Lord of the Universe," and abides in the temple with his brother Balabhandra and his sister Subandhra. Non-Hindus are not allowed into the large temple compound, with the 215 foot high temple, dating from about 1200, in the center. You can get a glimpse into the compound and a good view of the deul, jagamohana and other buildings from a roof top just east of the compound. The deul was once whitewashed, but has now been restored to its natural stone color. I walked around, observing all the temple activity. The three temple deities are pictured everywhere and are quite distinctive looking, with short bodies, big round heads and big round white eyes. In fact, they remind me of the South Park characters. Cartman as a god. Each June or July, the three deities are taken in huge wooden carts (Lord Jagannath's is the largest, 42 feet tall with sixteen wheels seven feet in diameter), on a procession about two miles in length, each cart pulled by about 4000 men. The English word "juggernaut" comes from this procession, as devotees apparently used to throw themselves under the wheels, an auspicious death. Some still do die, apparently, perhaps from accident. Highly decorated elephants and the Raja of Puri also make up the procession, attended by maybe a half million people.
From the temple I walked through the narrow lanes to a water tank flanked by more temples, then walked back to the Jagannath Temple in part along the very wide street taken by the deities on their yearly progression. I then walked to the cremation grounds near the sea. There were only two burning piles of wood and a few smouldering remains of fires. I didn't see any bodies. I walked along the wide beach full of Bengalis for a while and then took a cycle rickshaw back to my hotel and had lunch before spending the rest of the afternoon in an internet cafe.
I spent a good part of the next day trying to decide on my route for the next part of my journey, as I am heading to the tribal areas of Odisha and Chhattisgarh and want to time my visits to see weekly markets. I didn't do much else that day, though just before sunset I went down to the beach and watched the sun set over the sea down the coast. Puri is on India's east coast, but because of the curve of the coast here, in the winter the sun both rises and sets over the ocean. I've enjoyed Puri, with its sea breezes and congenial fellow travelers, quite a few who are spending a lot of time here.
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