India Tour - Bhubaneshwar/Puri/Konark

21 June - Bhubaneshwar 

The whole night the cabin was a waiting room. People kept coming in and going out till morning. Such a disturbance. Neither Papa nor I could sleep all night. Both of us are also getting a little sick….our throats are gone and we are coughing and sneezing.  Don’t know if all this traveling is catching up with us. The train ride to Bhubaneshwar was uneventful except for 30 mins of pretty coast line. Arrived at Bhubaneshwar at 1 pm. Got an AC retiring room. The coolie was really a nice guy for a change. He was honest and seemed hardworking.  The room was very comfortable and the AC was working! 

We got ready and went to make our reservations for Varanasi. I got some information for the Konark temple. The guide advised to go to Konark first and then to Puri. Puri is where Jagannath temple is (one of the four dhams).  And Konark is about 2 hrs. from Bhubaneshwar and closes at 5:30 pm, so we may either want to leave right now or go tomorrow. 

Since it was 2:30 pm I told Papa we should go tomorrow. But Papa wanted to go today. So okay…we took the bus to Neempara and from there to Konark. The bus was packed and it was really hard to get seats. I got stuck in the middle of a 3 people seat. Terrible! From Neempara there was no bus, so we had to take a jeep to Konark. I sat on the edge – scary. It was a very strange transportation, people kept getting off and on whichever way and squeezing in etc. At one point a man very confidently put his 5 or 6 year child on my lap while he got on the jeep from the other side. The child seemed to be very comfortable too with this arrangement.  Weird! 

We reached Konark at 5:30 pm. Super! I knew it. At least we caught the last bus leaving for Puri. Another awful ride. The bus was packed. Reached Puri at 7 pm, went to the temple, did darshan, had Prasad. Found a pundit who gave us a nice tour. The temple was very nice, there was a line and we did get to have nice darshan. Went to Bhubaneshwar by train, luckily an AC one. Got back to the room by 10 pm. Had a glass of milk and slept. I was exhausted after all the terrible bus rides. 

22 June- Bhubaneshwar and Konark and Puri

Not a good awakening today. The power went off at 6:30 am…no fun. I had to get up and get ready. Had breakfast, just bread and butter, at the railway canteen. We hired an auto to see the temples in Bhubaneshwar. First we passed Bindusaagar, a temple in a lake, then stopped at Lingeshwar temple. It is a huge Shiv temple. The architecture here is really different.  After being in South India and seeing all the gopurams, this was a real nice change. The temple was still big but very differently carved. It was all red and really high. 

We took some flowers and went for darshan. After that walked around the compound, took some pictures. Started taking some video but then was told by a security guard to give Rs 101 for video. What?? I kept the video away. Just money making schemes, there was nothing written outside.  After that went to Mukhteshwar temple – also similar to Lingeshwar in its architecture. We missed seeing the Rajarani temple (darn auto guy!). We got back to the station and got the auto walla to take us to Udaygiri and Khandagiri caves, which were outside the city. He took us for Rs 100 – awesome! 

25 mins later we were at the caves. The caves were really high and were far away from the road; really interesting looking. Maybe if Bhaiya was here I would have gone up immediately.  We did go up eventually. Papa stopped half way and the auto walla and I went all the way up. Most caves were locked and looked just like living quarters. There were no carvings, just simple stone caves. We passed a place that had all stones and the auto walla said, if one kept stones on certain rocks, then people’s wishes come true. Of course I would keep the stone – I am a sucker for these things. There was a Jain temple at the end, small but clean. Very nice. 

Went back to the station and checked on our reservation. Good thing we did, there was some information they needed. The poor auto walla wanted to take us to Konark, but we declined. It was too far for auto. We negotiated with a taxi driver to take us for a round trip – all for Rs 650. Good deal! On the way to Konark, the driver stopped at Pipli. There were some really good handicraft shops there.  I bought some crafts there. The next stop was Neempara where our driver got us excellent rasgulla and gulabjamun.  

Konark was smaller than I expected. The main thing in Konark is the sun temple. The road was lined with vendors. A guide attached himself to us as soon as we got there. He turned to be helpful as he helped us get our cameras inside and he was a good photographer for me!  

The entrance of the temple was two lions and it seemed they were pulling this great chariot. In the front of lion was a man who was crushed by the lions. So it turns out that it means that man is crushed by Shakti (elephant) and money (lion). 

 

 The entire temple itself is a chariot. It has 24 wheels which has 8 spokes indicating each pahar (one time span). In the spokes are carvings indicating what people should be doing at that time.  The pahar is further divided into minutes by divisions.  Really very accurate time division and it is the same on each wheel. All these wheels are around the temple so at any time, the sun falls on them and one can tell the time. For the night it’s a different way of looking at the wheel. Amazing science!

The temple itself is very erotic. There are many suggestive carvings on it everywhere. There were layers and layers of carving from bottom to top. The bottom lines had animals, middle layers were the erotic images and the top one was god. This was related to people’s age: the kid’s love animals, adults get into different interests and then the top, God one was for the senior citizens. Behind the Surya temple was his wife, Chaya Devi’s temple. Small – but still very nice.

Majority of the main temple had been destroyed by Portuguese when they came by sea. They thought it was a fort and bombed it. There was still a lot of stones lying around. There was some restoration work, but not enough work was being done. 

There was also the three statues of Surya: one young (morning), older (afternoon) with full chariot and full glory with his two wives; and then old Surya (evening) looking tired and old. It was really a beautiful temple. I could easily spend a whole day there. Even now I tried to walk around and see as much as possible on my own. Papa would come slower. It was a little hot, so I don’t blame him. 

We left after we had seen it all, and went to Jagannath again in Puri. Papa did not want to go in, so I just waited a while for the temple to open at 5 pm.  Again, very nice darshan. 

We had to go to the station to see if could board from Bhubaneshwar, as that his where our luggage was, instead of Puri. Those are some issues of train travel, but anyway we got on at Bhubaneshwar. Found some Punjabi women sitting in our seats. They left such a mess on our seats. After they left, we found out the whole bogie was full of them! All 780 of them! What a noisy bunch. We could not sleep.