Trip to Orissa.. Day 4

Nothing was planned for the day so in the morning we decided to go to the Nandan Kanan Zoo. Its around 15 Kms from the place where we are staying in Bhubaneshwar. Nandan Kanan is well known because it’s the only place in India where breading of white tigers is done (this was told to us by the guide). The place was just like any other zoo that I have seen. It was sad to see animals in cages. The great thing about the zoo is that each animal in the zoo has been given a name, like one pair of tigers was called Madan and Mohan.

After the zoo we traveled to the other side of the city to a place called Dhauli. It is the place where king Ashoka adopted Buddhism after seeing the destruction caused due to the battle of Kalinga. There was nothing much to see at Dhauli other than the Buddhist monument depicting king Ashoka’s transformation from a king to a follower of Buddha. Interestingly it is also the place where some part of the bollywood movie Asoka was shot.

I spent the rest of the evening attending my friends wedding reception. Tomorrow plans are of visiting the Lingaraj temple in the city. It is a very old temple of lord Shiva. More about the temple in my next post. Tomorrow also happens to be my last day in Orissa, I will be leaving by the 3:30 Pm train…

Note: I had typed this on the 7th but was unable to post it.

Trip to Orissa.. Day 3

Today we had planned of visiting the Sun temple at Konark and the Jagnnath temple at Puri. At the end of the day we did manage to visit both the places. Both places are about 50 Kms away from Bhubaneshwar. We left bhubaneshwar a bit late in the morning, so we couldn’t visit the Puri beach which is supposedly very famous and always crowded.

Konark is a great place to visit if you want to see some great architecture. We had hired a guide who explained the architecture to us. There are lot of sculptures around the temple which reminded me of Khajurao and the Kamasutra. Our guide was not shy of explaining the poses and the meaning of the sculptures. One sad thing about the monument is its slowly eroding away. Our guide explained that it’s mainly because of the iron content in the stones that are used for building the temple. Since the temple is close to the sea the salt in the air causes the iron the rust and the stones erode slowly.

After Konark we headed to a small beach on our way to Puri. It was just like any other beach, white sand, lots of water but very few people. We headed to Puri and reached there in about 30 mins.

Puri is a really crowded place, well you can expect that regarding the fact that thousands of people visit the place every day. We were not allowed to carry cameras or cell phones inside the temple grounds. The Puri temple is surrounded by around 25 to 30 small temples. It takes around a hour to visit all the temples. The temple provides lunch to all pilgrims as prasad. Its called the Maha Prasad. We ha that at around 4:30 in the evening and then went for a walk to see all the temples. By the time we left the temple it was already getting dark so we dropped the plan of visiting the beach. We reached Bhubaneshwar at 8:30 and I am lazing around in the room since then. Plans for tomorrow are not finalized. We may go to visit some more temples in the city.

Trip to Orissa.. Day 2

The day began with me sitting in the waiting are of the CSI Airport Mumbai. That is where my last post had ended, so let me continue. I had to spend almost 5 hours on the airport, waiting for my flight. I almost fell asleep a couple of times while sitting. I guess I had not mentioned this earlier but I have never travelled by plane before this.

The plane was supposed to takeoff at 10:25 AM, but as with most of the flights and trains in India it was delayed by 1 hour. Well to summarize my first flying experience, really liked the view while takeoffs and landings, food was good and the air hostesses were really old. This was the only disappointing thing about flying by Indian Airlines. The flight reached Raipur, Chattisgar in about 1 hour 45 mins and then halted there for 40 mins. From Raipur it took us 45 mins to reach Bhubaneshwar.

After reaching the lodge it was time for lunch. Since I was already full with the food that I had had in the plane I chose to eat some snacks. Orissa like Bengal is known for its sweets and I thought of trying some sweet dish. I ordered the “Steam Cake”, had no idea what to expect but found it similar to a dish made in Goa, its called “Kharvs”. No time to explain about Kharvas now. After lunch I slept for a couple of hours and by the time I got up it was time to leave for my team mates baarat. Good thing is nobody forced me to dance (I cant dance). The food at the wedding was great. There were so many dishes that I had not tried earlier, and finally I had my favourite dessert, ice cream.. Yummy..

New dishes tried today – Dahi wada dum aloo, Steam cake and Rohu (Fish) fry

PS: Attached pictures of the plane that I travelled in and my team mates baarat.

Tomorrow I will be visiting the Puri temple and the Sun temple at Konark. Snaps will be uploaded on my picasa web album as soon as possible…

Trip to Orissa.. Day 1

The preparations for the trip began on the 4th of December early in the morning when I started packing for my 5 day trip to Orissa. The ocassion for the trip is my teammates (ex-teammates) wedding. In the evening after completing my work in office me and my other colleague left office in hope of catching the company shuttle to Aund (a location in Pune). We had planned of catching a bus to Mumbai from Aund since we have to catch our flight to Orissa from Mumbai airport. Unfortunately we missed the shuttle but fortunately got tickets to a volvo that was leavng for Mumbai from the Pune station area.

The journey lasted for around four hours and all the while we were totally confused about the exact location of the Mumbai domestic airport. We finally managed to reach the airport at around 1:00 AM in the morning.

Right now I am writing this post while sitting in the airport waiting area. My flight to Orissa is scheduled to leave at 10:30 AM, and I have no clue what I am going to do for the next 5 hours. May be i'll spend the time reading a book, or may be play a game on my PSP or may be watch a movie on my laptop :P. Guess I have lots of options to kill time, just hoping that I dont fall asleep while sitting here (I haven't slept the whole night :( )

One interesting thing about this airport is that there are 5 WiFi access points here (Kingfisher, Indian, Airtel, Tata Indicom and EZCOMM). Only the airtel connection is free but the credentials are sent by SMS to a cell number after registering the mobile number. I tried registering my phone but the SMS has still not reached me :(.

Hope I get to write a post tomorrow from Orissa. For now I am waiting for my flight and the SMS from airtel.

PS: Pictures attached are of the Chatrapati Shivaji international airport, Mumbai.