Wednesday August 20, 2008 - Kolkata

This past weekend we took a trip to Orissa, the state/province just south of West Bengal, visiting Puri, Konark, and Bhubaneswar....

We returned to Kolkata at about 4:30 AM this morning after departing from Bhubaneswar at about 8 PM on Tuesday night. After leaving Kolkata this past Saturday night (the 16th), we spent the night on a train, arriving in Puri the next morning around 7 AM. We were then driven from Puri to Konark, along the country roads lining the East Indian coast looking out over the Bay of Bengal. We got to Konark after about an hour of bumpy winding roads, with all sorts of maneuvering in order to avoid hitting the many cows, goats, bicycles and people lining the roads. Konark was a pretty small place; full of arts and craft stands as well as booth after booth of vendors selling coconuts and various sweets and snacks. There were cows, goats and dogs all over the place (they really ruled the roads, much more so than any of the cars, bikes, auto-rickshaws, motos and people).

Our hotel in Konark was about a 45-minute walk from the beach, so we walked past most of the stands on one of the three main village roads, past the entrance to the famous sun temple and down a road lined with beautiful green palms and other trees that hung over the road like canopies…to the sand and muddy water. It was so beautiful. The waves at the beach were like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Definitely some of the biggest and most treacherous looking seas I have ever been near. Of course we weren’t allowed to swim (unless us women had full body suit swim wear) because of the intensely strong undercurrent. We’d been told about all kinds of horror stories about people getting swept away, but there were still a few younger men out riding the waves not too far off the shore. We even saw some boats, fishermen on long canoe type boats that looked like they would be swallowed up at any moment.

It was a bit hard to walk around Konark though. We were forever being bombarded by people wanting to take our photographs or sneaking a ‘snap’ from their cell phones. And vendors would not leave us alone, it was impossible to walk down the street without being followed by someone trying to sell us something or else being called out to; ‘hallo Madame,’ ‘please come look,’ along with all sorts of other lines to get us to buy things from their trinket filled booths. Even when we went to visit the sun temple and were walking around with a tour guide, one woman came and stood amongst us as her husband took a picture, right in the middle of our guide’s speech. Sometimes it felt like we were getting more attention than the sun temple itself, a famous world heritage site designated by UNESCO.

It was an amazing temple, built in the mid-13th century. Konark is famous for this temple and the beautiful sunlight that it gets being so close to the sea. Our guide knew all about the carvings lining its surface and even explained the entire construction process. That which remained of the original structure was over 30 meters tall; around 90 feet, and our guide told us that it had originally stood at over 40 meters. That’s enormous! He explained how they had, had to construct one level at a time, covering it with sand as they went in order to build the next, using elephants to pull and push the stone up the sand to the proper position. One of the carvings on the temple showed this process, it’s unbelievable! He also pointed out many of the erotic carvings lining the outside walls. Some of the carvings were miniature pieces at the base of the structure, but some higher up were almost life sized. And there were so many different scenes; whole sequences portraying monogamy, polygamy, and androgyny, it was pretty interesting.

Apart from it being a somewhat exhausting experience just to stand and walk around, the temple was quite a sight. The temple structure was spread out into three separate buildings, a smaller structure in the front serving for a dance hall, the largest structure in the center for prayer or sort of holding/reception chamber for devotees, and a second smaller building in the back where the Surya (sun god) deity was kept. The center structure was designed like a chariot, with twelve wheels on each side, each around nine feet in diameter. The number of wheels were said to correspond with different increments of time, twenty-four wheels in total and twenty-four hours in the day. There were also seven giant stone-carved horses (seven days of the week) pulling the chariot, only two of which were still partially intact.

Another famous Temple in Orissa (the state/province just south of West Bengal) is in Puri. We didn’t get to stop and see any of this city though, only passed through on our way to Konark. But it is home to a sister like Temple to Konark’s sun temple. Puri’s Temple is even larger than Konark's and it is dedicated to the god Jagannath, god of dance. It is called the white pagoda, whereas Konark’s sun temple is referred to as the black pagoda. Our host family told us a lot about the Jagannath temple, non-Hindus are actually not allowed inside, but it must be a pretty amazing site. I guess the temple employs some 6,000 men and a Kitchen filled with 400 cooks serves almost 20,000 people everyday. I guess it is one of the largest kitchens in the world.

We tried to catch the sunrise on our last morning in Konark, got up at 4 AM in order to try and get to the beach on time. Although we ended up getting to the beach a bit too late to see the early rays, the sky was pretty cloudy and we wouldn’t have been able to see much of the sunrise. It was still a pretty gorgeous morning though and so we sat for a while, mesmerized by the ocean trying to wake ourselves up a bit more. We ended up talking with an older man who had been hanging out as well, Baba Punda as he introduced himself. He even invited us to have tea in his ashram not far from the beach, and so the seven of us who had gone to see the sun followed and chatted with him for a while. He had a cozy little stone gazebo-like ashram that looked out onto the water and so we sat on mats and sipped tea while he told us about all sorts of different visitors whom had crossed his path. He had a whole list of names memorized, probably over forty some odd that had stayed at his ashram, along with a book filled with notes from people all over the world.

On our way back to Kolkata we stopped to see a Buddhist temple called the peace pagoda just outside of Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Orissa. It was consecrated by King Ashoka centuries ago. He was known as a very violent and war-fareing king, but one day after an especially bloody battle on the Orissan planes, he had a change of heart and converted to Buddhism and a completely nonviolent lifestyle. This temple sits on a hill that over looks the plains where Ashoka’s famous battle is said to have taken place. I don’t think I have seen green like the green that covers these fields.

We also visited some ancient Jain caves just outside of Bhubaneswar. The Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves from the 1st century BC. I was expecting a few holes in a big hill with monkeys hanging around (Arnab our advisor sort of person told us that they had been taken over by monkeys). But they were incredible, there were tons of different caves, and each was an entire chamber carved into the stone surface of a towering hill. Some were giant open spaces like the rooms of houses and others seemed just big enough for someone to sleep inside. There were different architectural designs to some of them as well (pillars and different shaped archways…) and they were all covered with ornate carvings of animals, people and other figures and images.