Everything’s a little more laid back in this relatively quiet fishing village. Rickshaws hardly hassle us and we have to look really hard to find other tourists. Locals say the tourism industry dried up four or five years ago. Nevertheless, Aaron and I found a nice bakery catering to the foreign crowd, complete with muesli, newspapers and air conditioning. It’s like a vacation from vacation.
[muesli]
Headed over to the Jagganath temple (enormous, also closed to non-hindus) in downtown Puri before catching an incredibly crowded bus up to Konark, the sun temple.
[jagannath]
The temple consists of a huge (38m) porch/hall (jagamohana) leading up to the 70m deul tower, now collapsed. In front is a now roofless dance hall where ceremonies were held. The whole temple is fashioned as a solar chariot, with seven horses and twelve wheels, all with symbols to the relationship of minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years. Word has it that once they were completing the enormous stone roof on the jagamohana, they needed extra structural support and had to add 10m long iron beams(!). Judging by the size of the fragments, the grains must have had a long time to develop. Correct me if I’m mistaken, materials engineers.
[overall temple, wheel, and iron beams]
We also ran into a couple very friendly fishermen who invited their coworkers over. We buy them beer, they hang out with us for a little, give us a couple excellent spiced fish caught that day, invite us back to their village, feed us a little more, ask us for money to buy a handle of Indian whiskey, and we quickly realize that we are funding alcoholism and not friendship.
We retire to our hotel and endure mosquitoes until we decide that another night is unacceptable and that it is time to head up to Darjeeling and Sikkim.
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