A Day at the Holy City Puri, Orissa State in India

Recently, I was in Orissa in connection with some work. I was there in the month of December. Orissa state has many town and city which are coastal and touch the sea, so the weather here remains very pleasant during the month of December. One can say weather in December in Orissa remains neither cold nor hot. Humid level also remains very comfortable during this month. So the month of December is an ideal time to visit Orissa.

During my stay in Orissa, I could spare one day to visit a famous city called Puri. Puri is one of the coastal cities of Orissa and India as well. It is situation in the eastern side of India. Sea named 'Bay of Bengal' touches the city of Puri. Puri is well connected by road, rail and air. An important National Highway touches Puri and many trains from different parts of India touch Puri. Puri is the last rail head on that particular rail line. The nearest airport is situated at Bhubaneshwar, which is just 60 Kilometers from Puri. Incidentally, Bhubaneshwar is the capital of Orissa State.

I was in Bhubaneshwar, when I decided to visit Puri city. One of my friends was along with me. We decided to go to Puri by Taxi. We hired a taxi and started for Puri by road. On the way, we saw vast areas of land, where farming is done. The highway leading to the road was a very busy highway. Because not only many tourists go to Puri, on the way also, there are some good spots worth visiting.

We started our journey at 0900 hrs in the morning and criss crossing the traffic in the Bhubaneshwar city and town coming on the way, we could reach Puri at around 1100 hrs. It is a peaceful town, where we say cycle rickshaw, along with modern means of transport like cars, scooters and motorcycles were plying. Puri is famous for two spots, one is great grand old temple of Lord Jagannaath and second is its sea beach. Lord Jagannath temple is one of four most important pilgrimage spots in India in the east. Others are a place called Badrinath temple in North India, Somnath temple in West of India and Rameswaram temple in South of India. There are four most important temples in each major directions i.e. North, East, South and West in India, which are visited by many Indians and foreigners, as well.

We fist decided to visit to holy temple of Lord Jagannath. 'Jagannaath' is a Hindi word which means 'Lord of all world'. There were long queues outside the temple. We had to deposit all our belongings, including our mobile phone, camera and leather belt etc. outside the temple, no item is permitted in side the temple. We entered the temple bare foot. Meanwhile, we were chased by many so called priests-cum-guides, who advised and told us that it is not easy to sight the see the statues of Lord Jagannath along with two others and they would help us in peforming the rites in the temple and will also help us in comfortably visiting the sanctum sanctorum. We were told that we should not take the help of so called guides, as they are not much reliable and sometimes instead of guiding they misguide the tourists and unnecessarily ask to donate the amount to temple and at the end of visit to temple ask for a hefty fees. We entered inside, there was not much crowd, as we were expecting. There were queues where devotees were moving in an orderly manner. We offered our prayers and obeisance to the Lord Jaganaath and prayed for well being of ourselves and others and came back. We collected prasad from the temple priest and visited the rest of the temple. It is one of the oldest temple in India and lakh and lakh of tourists visit this temple.

Thereafter, we decided to move to sea beach which is the other major attraction of Puri city. The beach was nearby, it took 15 minutes for us to reach there. As we stepped on the beach, we felt spell bound with its beauty. It was vast beach and the colour of sand was orange red. The beach was full of tourists and it was crowded. But we found that it was one of the longest and most visited beach the crowd was spread to its breadth and length. People were enjoying themselves in the water. The water was appearing transparent and blue and it was really a mesmirising scene. Waves of medium height were touching the sea shore with their full glory. There was ending flow of huge waves. Waves over there were creating a rhythem and musical sound was coming with their each passing moment. Waves were rising like a big hissing snake and thereafter were falling on the ground. Waves were creating white foam on falling on the ground.

We could not resist ourselves. We took off our clothes and changed into short pants and plunged into the tempting sea waves. We enjoyed bathing on the sea beach. It was a different type of experience, we were pushed along with waves and when the waves were returning to the sea, we felt that sand below us is also moving and we were sinking in the sand. As the sun was shining over the sky brightly, it made our bathing experience more enjoyable. The water was salty and the sand kept on depositing in the pockets of our short pants. We kept on enjoying and bathing ourselves for hours together. Meanwhile, we took photographs with our digital camera and also shoot a video for our memories.

We noticed that many families and tourists were also enjoying themselves like us. Some children were stark naked and dancing on the waves. Some of the adverntrous tourists were tying to go inside the sea, as much as possible. Some were throwing water on each others, while some were helping themselves with a game of ball.

We did not feel like coming out of the sea beach. We found, it was the later afternoon, we had to move. We had our lunch in a nearby eating joint. We being north Indian, could not relish the local food as it was more suited to locals. We had fish curry and rice. It was one of the most memorable days of my life and I wish I could visit Puri beach again and again.