Odishaaah!! 2

Puri-fication

I only just made it to my overnight bus. Michael and I got distracted, and then, for the life of me, I couldn’t get a rickshaw or cab. It was peak cabhour, being Saturday night and all, and being very close to New Year’s Eve. Luckily I managed to get a car on Ola, the Indian Uber. Well, Michael did. I got to the bus just in time, boarded, and was asleep before we took off.

When we arrived in Puri I rickshawed it to the beach area, knowing that, back in the day, that was where the hippies used to hang out and jam on the beach, smoke Shiva’s medicine, and stay in cheap little homestays.

Well, those definitely were the days, and are definitely not the days now. Chatting to a few locals here I’ve discovered that the rise of the Indian middle class, with their higher salaries and new-found disposable income, has led to the interminable construction of whole suburbs of new hotels for Indian tourists in Puri. The place is now completely different.

The hippies and backpackers have gone, completely priced out of the market.

And the same movie has been running in many places in India.

Rickying around

Bovine brekky

Yes! It’s New Year’s Eve tonight! But this party wasn’t too interesting - I checked it out later in the night.

Unfortunately, precisely because it’s New Year’s Eve, the place is completely packed, pretty much the busiest it gets here, besides during the Ratha Yatra festival, one of the most auspicious festivals in all of India.

So I couldn’t get a room.

I walked into guest house after guest house, hotel after hotel, and was met with the same sideways shake of the head. No, no room. Pull!

I tried at least 20 places, same response. But somehow I wasn’t too worried, I’ve learnt that things eventually happen in India, even if it takes a while. I finally found somewhere, a guest house where a bunch of guests were just checking out at the very moment I arrived.

And the room price? Rs 2000 per night! They weren’t prepared to bargain, and, in fact, could have asked me for more, as I had few options. That’s about 40 Oz dollars per night btw, nearly 4 times more than I would usually pay for a room in India, and double the most expensive room I’ve had in the country so far this trip.

But hey, who cares. It’s only money. And the room’s big, and quirky, and nice. And it has a bathroom (but not hot water, as usual). And the woman running it is the sweetest and most devoted woman of all time. There’s shrines everywhere in there, and she keeps grabbing my hands and bowing and putting my hands to her forehead, as a sign of respect.

My room

Buddha’s over my bed

The view out my window

Guest house shrines and art works.

These are the three holy deities who live in Jagannath Temple, a hugely auspicious site in India, which is right here in Puri. Lord Jagannath, the Lord of the Universe, is a manifestation of Vishnu, and is the black-skinned guy on the right, his white-skinned brother is Balabhadra, and their yellow coloured sister is Subhadra, she’s in the middle.

You see these images all over the state of Odisha.

Once I was settled it was time to hit the beach, it was so good, as it was the first time I’d actually seen an ocean coastline, from the ground, for six whole months, since way back in central Vietnam.

A whole lifetime away.

A wide sandy and not-so-clean beach. No one ever really comes to India just for the beaches, I gotta say. Not any more.

But it’s still a beach. There were a few swimmers, I had a dip, but wasn’t inclined to hang around, there was no shade, and I was hungry.

And then I headed towards the big attraction in the town, the Jagannath Mandir.

There were so many interesting things to see on the way, as usual.

Hanuman temple

There’s temples everywhere in this town actually

More beautiful kolams

This puppy was about the size of my foot

Finally found her sibs

Public art in the making

Loads of sweets shops, making traditional Odishan sweets, including khajaa.

Eating one feels like eating a sweet corn chip. All the layers break off.

Cute little fam.

You see the randomest stuff around here.

Nevertheless, Puri is one of the holiest places in India.

Well, not Puri itself, but the Jagannath Mandir, the temple dedicated to Lord Jagannath. The temple is one of the sacred Char Dham in India, which are each situated in four distant corners of the country. The four Dham are Badrinath-Kedarnath (north, in the Himalaya), Rameshwaram (south, close to the bottom of Tamil Nadu), Puri (east, here in Odisha state), and Dwarke (west, on the coast of Gujarat).

The thing to do, if you happen to be a Hindu, is to try and visit them all.

So shitloads of pilgrims come here to Puri, every single day, which adds up to millions every year.

But at the time of the Ratha Yatra Festival, those numbers rise exponentially, the place goes nuts, and a million devotees come here, to see the wild procession of the three holy deities, statues of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra, who are pulled on huge decorative chariots from the Jagannath Mandir, along the wide main avenue of Bada Danda, to Gundicha Mandir, where they reside for a week, and then, after their little holiday, get pulled back home.

What the place looks like during the Yatra

Unfortunately for me, because I’m not a Hindu, I’m not actually allowed inside the Jagannath Temple itself. Bummer. It looks super interesting

And it’s pretty much impossible to see what exactly is going on in there, because it’s walled for a huge distance all around, and it’s a long way inside to where the action is.

My first glimpse of Jagannath Mandir

The huge parade boulevarde of Bada Danda.

I was flabbergasted by the fact that the queue railings to get into the temple grounds went for at least a kilometre, with about 10 queues within each section. It gave me an idea of the huge number of people that need to be accommodated at certain times.

There’s so many beautiful temples on that main drag.

Even a mosque. One part of the Ratha Yatra parade involves the chariots stopping to pay respects at a shrine for a great devotee of Jagannath’s, whose father was actually a Mughal. Nice huh.

Looks a bit overblown to me

As opposed to? I guess there are river beaches (but not around here).

Good luck with that

There were five passengers on this one cycle rickshaw.

My driver got a good deal with skinny me, but he still had to walk me up the hill. I know what that feels like, when you can't pedal your loaded bike up a hill and you have to push.

Jhoti chita is a style of traditional Odisha art, and is painted on walls and floors around the place. It’s particularly popular in rural areas, and is quite beautiful.

I have to admit that I didn’t do much for New Year’s Eve. There was the option of going out onto the streets and getting drunk with young Indian guys, none of whom spoke a word of English, and then dancing around with them to some pretty doof-ish Hindi techno. Or having dinner on the beach and then just roaming the streets, and then listening to the fireworks bombs from my guesthouse rooftop. I went for the latter option.

It was beautiful. Chilled and mellow.