Odisha, a land, so calm, so peaceful, and more known for the temples, has totally another side for the people willing to explore it. There hasnt been much of exploring for
Odisha except showcase in some movies here and there. To whomever I had said that I'm going to
Odisha, people just had one question: Whats there in
Odisha? I just had no answers to them. But after returning from
Odisha, I can definitely say, Odisha has life, tradition, color, and more importantly an in-exhaustive list of places which are waiting to be explored.
So, once me and my friends finished finalizing
Odisha, we just booked flight ticket. There was absolutely no planning involved in this trip, apart from the flight tickets. And to our rescue, we had our one friend, who had been staying in
Odisha for quite sometime for now, and he was our torch bearer. We however, decided to explore this not so explored land, and we were really astonished when we found some of the incredible things hidden inside
Odisha.
Our trip to
Odisha took place somewhat in this order:
Day 1:
Nov 21, we were all set to fly to
Odisha. Our flight was in the early morning from
Bengaluru International Airport. After having a free buffet breakfast at lounges of airport, we boarded the flight and reached
Biju International Airport,
Bhubaneshwar. We had half day remaining and our friend, the light bearer, was supposed to meet us in the evening. So we decided to explore Bhubaneshwar. We booked a self drive car, and started roaming
Bhubaneshwar.
As a lesson learnt from previous trips, the first place we visited was
Ram Mandir. However the temple was closed at 12, and scheduled to reopen only at 16:30. Hence we couldnt go inside the temple, but we admired the temple and the structure from the outside.
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| Famous Ram Mandir of Bhubaneshwar |
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| Main Temple of Ram Mandir |
After having roadside food, near the temple, we headed to
Khandagiri & Udayagiri caves. The caves are astonishingly built, given the location of caves.The caves are situated on two adjacent hills,
Udayagiri and
Khandagiri, mentioned as
Kumari Parvata . It is believed that most of these caves were carved out as residential blocks for Jain monks during the reign of
King Kharavela.
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| Udayagiri caves |
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| Rani Gumpha in Udayagiri Caves |
When in Udayagiri, dont forget to visit the
Rani Gumpha, its a double storeyed cave, and is usually found in statuses of people 😉 (just kidding) There are more than 15 caves in both Udayagiri and
Khandagiri .
Khandagiri also has a Jain temple, located on top of the hill, which provides a good panaromic view of the entire city. One can see planes landing and taking off from run way from here.
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| Jain temple of Khandagiri caves as seen from Udayagiri |
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| Monkey posing for a candid photo somewhere inside Udayagiri caves |
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| Udayagiri caves as seen from Khandagiri Caves |
Next we headed to
Dhauli.
Dhauli has a famous
Stupa, called
Shanti Stupa, along with carvings by Ashoka reign. The
stupa is located on top of hill, whereas the cravings are on the bottom of the hill. On top of the cravings is a elephant, which is carved on top of stone. Also, when visiting
Dhauli, dont forget to see the light and music show , in the evening, post sunset, which is held on the
Shanti Stupa, This shows held daily, with timings changing from season to season.
With
Dhauli, we were done for the day, and meanwhile 2 of our other friends also joined us. We then headed to
Daringbadi, also known as Kashmir of
Odisha.
Day 2:
The next day we spent in
Daringbadi, also called as
Kashmir of Odisha is supposedly the coolest place in entire
Odisha. In winter the temperature reaches around-5°c and also sometimes there are instances of snow fall in winter. We had already reached half the distance yesterday night, and today morning we woke up in the morning, got freshened up and started again towards
Daringbadi.
Daringbadi was another 3-4 hours from here majorly cos of the route we took. There also in one more route which takes from
Bhubaneswar to
Daringbadi , but the view isn't that great. That's the only reason we decided to take up the other road. We managed to reach
Daringbadi by somewhere around 11 or so.
Daringbadi boasts many tourist places. Some of the ones which we visited were: Doluri River falls, Hill view point, lovers point, sunset point.
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| Dolluri River Falls, Daringbadi |
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| Pine Forest, Daringbadi |
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| Sunset, somewhere near the fields of Lovers point, Darignbadi |
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| Sunset as seen from the sunset hill, Daringbadi |
By the time we were done with these places, the sun had already set. Since we didn't have anything else to do for the day, we decided to head to next destination.
Chilka.
Chilka is a beautiful lake along the costal Odisha with rich fauna and flora. The place is also famous for the migratory birds which come during the winter and the
Irrawady Dolphin sightings.
Chilka was around 4 hours drive from
Daringbadi. We managed to reach
Chilka by around 10 in night and called of the day
Having spent the night in
Chilka, we were short of time to explore
chilka. We had to cover
Puri on Day3 as one of our friend was to head back from
Bhubaneshwar, after coming to
Odisha one must definitely visiting
Puri.
Chilka, a huge water lagoon, is best known for its migratory birds, which come in the winter season. Apart from these birds there are also
Irrawady Dolphins, which are considered very rare and are endangered. Apart from these the area is so vastly spread, with lakes, and water swarms, which provide a mesmerizing view. Since we could not afford to go to the Dolphin boat ride in morning, we hatched a plan to cover both the dolphin and travel. We decided to take ferry, and put our car inside ferry so that we can cover some distance by this beautiful
Chilka lake and still not loose much on time. This was a very worth decision we took. The
ferry starts from
Janhikuda and reaches
Satapada, in somewhere around half an hour. Inquiring on the prior day, we got to know that the first ferry from
Janhikuda was somewhere at 7 in the morning. But
Janhikuda was 1 hour drive from the place where we stayed. Though we had planned to vacate by 6 in the morning, due to the cold weather, we could only vacate by 6:30. But the drive was very very amazing and worth it. Wherever one turns he/she could only see swarms of water and lake, with a beautiful sunrise over water and birds ready to begin their day. We managed to reach
Janhikuda by 7:30, but the ferry hadnt come yet. The delay was majorly due to the fact that the ferry was supposed to start at 7 from the other side, managing to reach here by around 8 or so. There were already some vehicles waiting to barge in, and we just added one to the queue. Finally we were all set on barge and managed to reach the other side.
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| Our transport, ferry, to cross the river |
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| View from atop of the ferry, with our car jam packed |
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| Early morning fishing over the amazing river |
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| Birds somewhere near Chilka lake |
Puri was around 1 hour from
Satapada. Since it was
Karthik Purnima on this day, we were expecting huge rush in temple. We could manage to get darshan in some 1.5 hours given the huge crowd. After having the meals from temple, we headed to
Konark.
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| Karthika Purnima celebrations at a local pond by localites |
Puri to Konark is another beautiful drive, with a continuous stretch of beach on side.
Konark too was very fully filled, may be coz of the peak season. We headed first to the
Konark museum, located right in front of the
Konark Sun temple. The museum hosts a 20 min video session explaining the history and story behind the
Sun temple. And anyone visiting sun temple must visit this museum to understand about its history.
Also, there is this beautiful light and sound show played at Sun temple almost everyday post sunset. One visiting Sun temple, can also plan to see this light and sound show.
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| Famous Konark Sun temple, being renovated |
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| Pillar Art, Sun Temple, Konark |
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| The sun wheel, Konark |
By now we were almost running out of time. Our friend had a flight to catch by 21:00 , and hence we headed back to
Bhubaneshwar to drop him off.
After dropping him off, we decided to explore the hidden side of
Puri. Whenever we thought of "hidden side of
Puri " we had an impression like
Gokarana/
Hampi. But the other side of Puri isnt as colorful as either of these. After searching for long, we finally found the hidden side of
Puri. Its basically area around the famous
CT road. Against our expectations ,we couldnt find much foreigners over here, but the place was pretty cool. We checked in to one of the good resorts by the beach, and the rest is a History 😈
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| Gigantic Waves over the Puri beach |
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| Puri Beach |
Day 4:
This was our last but one day in
Odisha. As per the initial plan of morning, we were to visit one or two tourist spot near Puri, then head to the famous
Ratnagiri/
Udayagiri ranges.
After this, one of our friend wanted to buy a painting. Hence we thought well go and visit authentic traditional
Odissa art and handicrafts. And to our shock, its not just one shop or a building, its a whole village in itself.
Raghurajpur, a village around 12kms from
Puri, boasts of so many paintings artists. One can witness their beautiful creations in arts and painting. We were initially to spend a max of half an hour and come out of this place, but even after 3 hours, we were still shopping. The art forms they have here is very amazing and its all natural. And where the person who initially wanted painting was only one amongst us, after reaching this place, we all ended up buying painting and other art forms.
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| Traditional art , Raghurajpur |
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| An artist at work, Raghurajpur |
Little did we notice that time had flew so fast. It was already 3 in the noon, and even if we head to
Ratnagiri/Udayagiri ranges now, by the time we reach there it would have been closed.
Hence we decided to visit the famous
Lingaraj temple in Bhubaneshwar. We had already covered major attractions in
Bhubaneshwar previously, only temple and zoo was remaining. Due to timing restriction, we had to drop zoo, but we headed to temples, whose amazing architecture left us spellbound.
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| Lingraj temple, Bhubaneshwar |
By now it was already late evening, sun had already set off, and we hadnt covered what we actually wanted to cover on this day, but still we were all happy of visiting
Raghurajpur. In order to cover the remaining places, we decided to extend our car booking, which was supposed to end by tonight.
This was our last day in
Odisha and we were on a tight schedule on this day. We had to cover
Udayagiri/Ratnagiri/Lalitagiri. All the 3 are basically monasteries, of the religious, natural historical village in
Odisha.
Since we were running out of time we could cover only
Ratnagiri and
Lalitagiri. It was already 11 , and
Bhubaneshwar was 2.5 hour drive from here, moreover our flight was at 14:00
Hence we had to hurry up.
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| Entrance at Ratnagiri caves |
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| Some ruined monuments, Ratnagiri |
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| Ruined monuments, Lalitagiri |
Finally we managed to reach
Bhubaneshwar well on time, and after giving back the car, we headed to airport to see that our flight has been delayed by 1 hour. :P
Odisha, is an amazing land in itself, with its diverse environment, tradition, livestock and people.
Odisha, a mysterious land in itself, always gives a lot to explore to travelers. But our trip had come to and end today, and we had to return back. We left
Bhubaneshwar with loads and loads of memories to cherish upon all our life in the future ahead. We would always look forward to come back to explore more and more of
Odisha.
Flight expenses : 6k(to and fro from
Bengaluru )
Approx Room range : 500-800/night for a double bed room
Total trip expenditure : ~15,000 Rs.
Janikhuda - Satapada ferry timings :
Link
