Few foreign tourists visit Orissa. The few that do go to the coastal area near the capital, Bhubaneswar. The main haunts are Puri and Konark. Some people take trips to Chilka lake about 50 km away, to nearby villages to see handicrafts, or to tribal areas. Myung and I first went to Bhubaneswar, then based ourselves in Puri. We hung out here for about a week, doing not much, going to Konark, to a nearby crafts village and to Chilka.
Bhubaneswar is one of those places where you see some Indian pilgims and tourists, but few foreigners, therefore, it’s nice and friendly. The man thing a foreigner does is to walk around town and look at temples, which is what we did. The most popular deity here is Jaganath, who is easily the cutest little god I’ve seen, with his black face and red, ear to ear smile. I don’t have a picture, but you could search it. You’d never know that even without hands he slays demons by the millions and is the source of the word “juggernaut”. He is revered as a protector by millions in Orissa. Here are some temple photographs, as if you haven’t seen enough. They are cleaning one of them up nicely, doing the whole thing with toothbrushes.
This one is of a more ancient temple from around the 9th century, as I recall.
In the south, meals are frequently served on banana leaves. These disposable plates then become animal food. Nice system.
Many tribal people live in Orissa. Not surprisingly, then, Orissa is one of the poorest states. There is constant conflict between Hindu caste members and the “scheduled class”, as they are called. I was just reading in today’s paper about a demonstation by tribals up in Guhawati which resulted in a backlash by the dominant non-tribals which left five to twenty dead (Some will probably stay missing.) and hundreds injured yesterday. Maybe some of the parades we saw up there were demostations. I never quite know what is going on with those. All this stuff is going on around me and I find out later what it was. The day after we left Kolkata, there were riots right in the area we were staying. In that case, some poor farmers successfully resisted a government plan to dislocate them and build a factory. The communist government of West Bengal sent some cadres out to kill a bunch of them and knock the snot out of hundreds more. The result of that has been a major national controversy. A curfew was imposed and the army was brought in to restore peace. The Gurkhas acted up again in Darjeeling the other day with a pitched gun battle witht the army. In Bhubaneswar this parade was going on. I’m pretty sure it was just a peaceful cultural display, but you never know. At least there hasn’t been any bad news in the last several days since I took these pictures.
Here are some more locals who were walking along in different groups.
Near Bhubaneswar are some rock cut caves. They aren’t much compared to Ellora and Ajanta, or even Elephanta Island in Mumbai, but some of them are a lot older, dating back to the first century BC.
Here in Puri is the main Jaganath temple. It like almost all the others in this area is closed to non-Hindus. I did wander in to the the temple above where they were doing the restoration, but was summarily booted out. The temples here aren’t that photogenic from the outside. The beach here isn’t anything special, so there are no pictures of that either. The brackish Chilka lake is most noted for having had deposited in it some dolphins during a severe cyclone in 1999. They still live there and we went to see them and walk around on one of the islands. I was unable to capture any of the dolphins “on film”, but here are some pics from that ride.
They raise oysters there. Here is a guy shucking them for pearls. He was asking 85 cents for a pearl, which I think is a rip. They are 50 cents sometimes elsewhere. See them in the plastic cup?
Near here is Konark, with it’s World Heritage Site temple complex. Jaded as I am, I want to say it’s a poor man’s Khajuraho, with it’s most interesting sculpture being erotic. Generally it’s not as graphic or well preserved as Khajuraho, but I thought this one of three lepers making love was interesting. The human-snake mitif reoccurs a lot. The rest of the detail is better than most of what has been largely eroded away over the centuries.
Here are a couple more. Myung even consented to a few with her in them.
  Yesterday we went to Raghurajpur, near here, which is known for it’s crafts. I bought some stuff there and in Pipili which I’m sending to the US and should get there is a month or so. Here is a picture of some boys working on palm leaf art and some shots around town and on the way back to where the road is where you can catch the bus.
So that about brings you up to speed. Tonight Myung and I are taking the overnight train to Chennai and will contunue on by bus to Mamallapuram. You can go back to my previous entry about that for pictures and my impressions at that time. Just type it into the search box. Let’s see, that would have been last January or maybe early February, if you want to do it that way.
I hope you Americans are having a good holiday season. Talk to you later.
