Arrived at the seaside town of Puri on the Bay of Bengal last night and checked into the Mayfair Beach Resort. After looking over our itinerary, which had been designed to include leisure time, we decided that we might have added in a bit too much. At least at this point in the beginning of trip we weren’t ready to spend much time poolside. So we rejiggered things and came up with a new plan that would enable us to do all the sightseeing in one day that had originally been scheduled over several and fly to Delhi early. That will give us time to visit museums before catching an 8pm flight on Sunday to Jaipur. Spirit of India, our outfitter, was extremely accommodating in making all these spur of the moment arrangements and we compliment them highly.
One note about the Mayfair Beach Resort in Puri…there is no resemblance whatsoever between it and its sister hotel the Mayfair Lagoon in Bhubaneswar. The Bhubaneswar hotel is luxurious and the Puri hotel is well…not. As we had a glass of wine at the bar, for example, I noticed something small and dark with four legs and a tail scamper by. From then on keep feet strictly off the floor. Dinner was in a restaurant call the “Aquarium” that had the brightest lights I’ve ever seen outside of a Japanese pharmacy. As in Bhubaneswar there seem to be no foreign tourists anywhere to be found, but there are plenty of Indian travelers.
So this morning we loaded our bags and set off early. The first stop was a pottery village where clay vessels are made for use at the famous Jagannath Temple in Puri (more about this in a minute). What I had feared would be an uninteresting stop turned out to be a great one. The village was very different from others we’ve seen. Houses had clay walls and thatched roofs and each house was painted a different color. There were attractive decorations painted next to the entry door on either side; motifs that include clay pots, palm trees and coconuts which by looking at they as you enter and exit the home are meant to bring good luck. Also charming were words painted on the front of house such as “Puspa Weds Krusna” or “Sonia Weds Purna”. We probably saw 10 small temples in this tiny village and watched a priest chant, bow his head in prayer and wave a lighted oil lamp. There was a steady flow of villagers to these small Shiva or Kali temples, stopping briefly to touch their foreheads to the ground.
Then to a spot we’d all been waiting for because we’ve seen images of these gods since our arrival in Orissa. The Jagaannath Temple in Puri is one of the four most important Hindu temples in India. The others are in the south, west and north areas of the country. The Jagaannath is the eastern-most temple. The name Jagannath means “lord of the universe”. Jagannath is the 9th reincarnation of the god Vishnu.
The temple was built in the 12th century (Kalinga style architecture) and is a four temple complex. The 1st temple is for offerings to the priest, the 2nd is the dance temple (there is still one lady in her 70s who dances each night to the gods!), the 3rd is the prayer temple and the 4th is 65 meters tall and is the temple to the gods. On top of the 4th temple is the symbol of Vishnu, the wheel. One of India’s most famous events happens in July of each year when the gods are removed from the temple and are drawn through the streets for 3 km. The “king” of Orissa sweeps in front of the chariot with a golden broom.
Despite being the god for all people, non-Hindu are not allowed inside so we were limited to exterior views only. But what we did see was amazing – up there with the Varanasi experience of last year. We exited our van nowhere near the temple and walked through a teeming crowd under broiling sun along a wide main street in town. There were people going in every direction, vendors selling food or religious objects, beggars without hands or feet, busses, tuk-tuks, bicycles, cows. Eventually we reached what was called a “library”, another room full of brown, crumbling papers, and climbed a winding stone stairway to a rooftop. From there we had the most unbelievable view of the street we had just navigated as well as a view of people walking up the 22 steps to enter the temple, and the entire temple complex. To me the vista with thousands of people in it looked like something out of a Cecil B Deville move. I took a movie with my camera and when I get back to New York I will try to upload it to YouTube. Baadal told us that the temple’s 700 ovens serve 56 kinds of food to any pilgrims who wish to have a meal. Then we walked around the perimeter of the temple complex and purchased small souvenirs.
As if that weren’t enough, we headed on to a craft village called Raghurajpur that specializes in palm leaf and other kinds of beautiful painting. The entire village came out to greet us and everyone tried to lure us into their home “just to look”. We finally acquiesced and entered the home of a long-time painting family who demonstrated various techniques. The palm leaf technique was especially interesting. They carve into the leaf and then rub waterproof ink into the etched marks and then wipe the ink away. What’s left appears to be an ink drawing.
And then for something completely different…we turned to two things Buddhist. We stopped at the Shanti Stupa (aka the Peace Pagoda) built in the 1970s by a Japanese monk to promote world peace. And at Cathy’s favorite stop of the day, the place where King Ashoka issued his edicts, carved on stone tablets in 260 BC, that decreed that the principles of Buddhism should be followed in India.
So we had a very full day, as we had had yesterday. One thing about traveling in fairly remote or primitive rural areas is there’s no place to stop for lunch and certainly no place other than behind a tree to stop for other matters. At one point we asked Baadel what villagers who have no running water and no village facility do in this regard. He told us that there is a field to which the women go once in the morning and once in the evening. I have great sympathy for them because for the past several days we too have been on this same schedule, although not trekking to a field.
Around 5pm we checked back into the Mayfair Lagoon Hotel in Bhubaneswar, a place that now seems like home. My room wasn’t quite ready so I waited in the lobby until 6 or so. When I finally got to room I discovered that my bathroom had a rather strange shower. There was a showerhead hanging from in the ceiling but it was obvious that the shower wasn’t supposed to be a huge open area, it simply wasn’t finished. When I rejoined C&C later they said their shower door had fallen off and I should ask the front desk to put shower doors on mine. I did so and was told it would be fixed straightaway. When we went back to C&C’s room to retrieve a package and we found the repairmen busily at work on their shower and no one at all working on mine. Oh well, I was happy to have running water and we all had a good laugh. Dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant. Tomorrow we catch a flight to Delhi at 9:55am.
