A random weekend on the coast, part II

On Saturday we travelled from Bhubaneswar to Konark on a local bus. The 65km journey which cost 45p saw a bus, which comfortably would carry 30 passengers, heave 80+ locals plus us 4 white girls along the country roads. No exaggeration. The bus conductor affectionately referred to us as mousey for the duration of the trip, apparently translating to “Mother’s sister”. We’re going to check this with a local before we start shouting it in the streets.... The conductor spent a lot of his journey shouting over the many heads “Mousey, mousey. Good?” A thumbs up from me and the basic Hindi words “Chella, Chella”, translating to “Go. Go.” got the seal of approval from the other passengers. I dealt relatively well with the heat and continuous crushing bodily contact; the moment the bus slowed to watch a husband and wife knock seven bells out of each other was extremely uncomfortable and one of those sobering moments I’m grateful to be born into the society I am.

Alice squashed on the bus, and Georgie in the back ground. "Mousey Mousey!"

Konark is home to the incredibly impressive sun temple, constructed in the 13^th century incorporating engineering way ahead of its time. A guide led us around the spectacular site for 2 hours, divulging lots of stories and legends whilst also doubling as our protection from the many requests we received for photos. The temple was again littered with thousands of karma sutra carvings, including some along the theme of zoophillia. I won't quote our guide completely but the sentence started, "here is woman standing, here is dog.....".
A short 3km tuk tuk drive down the road led us to the coast and a completely unspoilt seaside village. The whole village were playing their role: men returned from the day’s fishing and heaved the boats onto the shore; women carried the fish from the boats to the small trucks on top of their heads; children collected the discarded fish. I say fish but there was an array of different species which could have easily competed with a fish market counter. Shrimps of all sizes, eels, sword fish to name a few. The sun was setting and so we took a rather uncomfortable 23km tuk tuk journey along the coastal path twisting through conservation areas.

Puri was out final destination. Initially a small fishing village, it is now one of India’s four most holy pilgrim sites in India. We watched the sun rise before heading to the town’s main attraction, the huge Jagannath temple. Being a foreigner we weren’t able to enter the temple but instead were able to view it from an arguably better vantage point which used to be a library. Old book shelves and the crumbling architecture show signs of its previous life. We could have stayed there all day, proving an excellent people watching spot from where very few locals noticed us, and, as such, went about daily life unchanged. One distressing sight was an old lady laid out in the middle of the road begging, obviously suffering from starvation. There is no escape from the poverty.

Looking out over Puri in the Library. I'm on the left, Alice centre, and Georgie right.

We checked out all the other major tourist sites before retiring to the beach. Camels replaced the traditional British seaside donkey rides and locals played cricket using anything they could for wickets and bats. Georgie and I decided to take full advantage of the Bay of Bengal and went swimming, fully clothed I hasten to add. We are still in India after all. This attracted much curiosity, particularly when my top went see through – luckily I had a swimsuit on underneath!

We enjoyed an evening of cards and tasty food, caught fresh from the sea before jumping on our return sleeper train back to the smog of the city.

We’ve already started planning our next weekend away. One exciting trip I've got on the horizon is a 14 day trip with 6 of the pupils from Future Hope which is taking place over Christmas and NYE. We're trekking around Darjeeling and the Nepalese boarder mountains. It means I'm unlikely to get phone signal over the holidays but hey, when in India....