My journey here was more like surreal!! I set off into the night from Bodhgaya to catch the late train to Bhubaneswar. Gaya railway station at night was the most unfriendly , chilly place and the train was two hours late, and threatening to be further delayed. My ticket somehow never got off the Waitlist status and when I boarded the 2AC carriage the conductor told me I shouldn’t be on the train and there was no berth for me. I stayed cool and told him I was not leaving the train even if I had to spend the night in the corridor I was not going back on that platform. After a while he relented and said he would see what he could do, at which point (nearly midnight and my friends know I usually drop off about 9am!) my lip did start wobbling. But he came back with a berth for me and I ignored his obvious expectation of a tip, swore never to believe it when everyone says ‘ number one on waitlist, of course you will get a berth’ and gratefully curled up on Berth 12 for a bumpy night’s sleep. So to arrive after a morning of chai chai, paniwater, polish polish, get a taxi to the ‘Mayflower Hotel’ and be driven up to the lush grounds of the ‘Mayfair’ complete with grand elephant statue outside was unbelievable – I kept saying they had made a mistake, but there was a reservation in my name and somehow my dad had given me the wrong hotel name! So I entered a whole new world of family holiday, sightseeing and upperclass Orissa. I feel I have discovered the easy escape from the dusty chaos of Bihar –I spent the afternoon in fivestar solitude, taking a bath, drinking tea and booking a divine massage. My folks arrived later by plane and it has been lovely to see them and spend time here seeing the wealthy side of India - we are being hosted by local Indians who have been living in USA for thirty years. They are old friends of my parents, whose brother in law is in management at said Mayfair, and they are determined we have a wonderful time, so hotels are booked, cars are laid on, meals are ordered , an interesting itinerary is suggested and all the hassle of communication is eased. So in a week we have visited the most significant Hindi temples in this town of a thousand temples ; driven out to Dhauli where Asoka united India ( crossed over the river which flowed with blood from the final battle), converted to Buddhism and inscribed enlightened edicts on the rockface; explored the 273 Jain caves here; travelled north to the 5th-10th century Buddhist monasteries of Ratnagiri and Udaigiri – beautiful massive ruins on the hillside with a museum so poorly catalogued I could have wept; visited the local sculpture workshop, handicraft shops and dined with our friends extended families for an Orissan feast . That was the first three days and quite enough for one sentence!
Then we shifted from one Mayfair to another – heading an hour down good roads to the coast at Puri where the grand hotel was slightly older and more characterful. En route went to the 64 Yogini temple, a circular open air structure where the guide named each of the distinctive 64 female statues and identified the animal they were standing on. Clearly there was room in the Hindu pantheon for a cult of 64 goddesses in the tenth century, though it was not clear exactly how they worshipped. It seemed the temple was currently focussed on the Durga image, she was dressed up with bright materials and daubed with sandalwood, but most of the granite statues had recently been rubbed with oil as well.
The pilgrimage continued the next day with a full daytrip to Chilika lake – a massive saltwater estuary with amazing birdlife and enough fish to feed 100,000 families who live around it. We took a motor boat out for a couple of hours, past endless lines of nets, to the ‘island’ where most of the migrating birds were nesting. This area was overseen by a lighthouse to stop poachers who otherwise prey on the abundant birds. We drifted among the reeds and saw Canadian geese; Siberian ducks; many herons, snakebirds and eagles; the horizon full of pink flamingos (could have been a mirage through the binoculars? seems surreal now) and many other unidentified birds. It was lovely to be out under the clear sky with SO MUCH SPACE and only a few other boats that had ventured so far (the jetty had been crammed with daytrippers who take the short jaunt to the estuary mouth.) We had a picnic of cucumber sandwiches, crisps, aloo and paratha, followed by some of the delicious English chocolate my mum brought me for Xmas which has been much appreciated. Oh and I didn’t mention the Irrawaddy Dolphins who live in the estuary – shy snub nosed creatures who bubbled up out of the water mostly just showing a fin or two and once a very sweet face. All the publicity for Chilika has leaping dolphins, and I guess it is because these ones would be so hard to photograph, or even depict. So we returned to our AC car tired and happy. Stopped at the rundown tourist hotel for a tea and pee – Jay, our host, went to great lengths to get the manager to open his special toilet for us and make sure it was clean before my mum and dad were allowed to use it.
So final day in Orissa and the best was still to come: The Sun Temple at Konark. An hour of ‘sheer ectasy’ as the guidebook said along the marine drive past clean beaches with thundering surf. Toilet stop where I fear Jay actually booked a room for us at the Govt guesthouse so we could use the bathroom, then a very determined Hinglish-speaking guide led us round this HUGE (270 feet high) temple in the baking sun. Had a hilarious time listening to the guide who was so very precise and detailed, giving us the exact latitude and angle of the sun at equinox, and location of where each stone came from and how it was shipped. So when he got on to describing the tantric imagery he was equally precise: this position is for this fortnight of the moon and the man has to reach the middle portion of the uterus to conceive a son. In fact he gave desire for a son as the main reason for the whole kama sutra, and reckoned that Indra liked sexy images and so wouldnt strike the building with lightening if he liked the erotic carvings...I nearly exploded with laughter when he started giving the eight types of crying out that the woman must do before ejaculation - 'that's C R Y I N G madam' - so straightfaced to my dear mother. This is a vast temple, entirely covered with carving, so we had a long time standing in the hot sun enjoying his enthusiasm - 'here is the lesbian homo sir, see the women together get their hair cut off as punishment'. 'and here is a man overcoming sense desire' (by tying a rope to his penis??) We were in need of a cold Sprite by the end of the tour, and felt deeply amazed that this temple had survived the Muslim invaders considering that all the Buddha statues we have seen have had their noses chipped off. These carvings survived with all their bits, and the temple remains as a monument to yet more boggling wonderment of Indian history!
