Orissa - Some cherished moments

When we booked our year end trip to Orissa, many people had similar question - "What's there in Orissa"? We had a ready-made answer for this question - "We are going to explore what's there & let you know" :-) Well, here we are, back from a week long trip to Orissa, with lot of nice memories to cherish.

We visited Bhubhaneshwar, Puri & Konark. Here are some our experience:

Bhubaneshwar:

City of Bhubhaneshwar is beautiful with wide roads, big footpaths & some main roads even having Cyclist's path ! Almost all the common walls in the city are having nice handwritten paintings (something which we can see in Bangalore also these days).

Some of the must visit places in Bhubneshwar include "Nandan Kanan zoo", "Khandagiri caves" and a lot of temples like Lingaraj temple, Mukteshwar temple, Raja-Rani temple etc. Although I skipped visiting Lingaraj temple, Veena & Vidya had all praise for the architecture & beauty of this temple. Nandan Kanan zoo/sanctury has some nice white tigers, tiger & lion safari, apart from host of other animals. It looked like our Bannerghatta national park, with much less crowd.

Puri:

Puri is about 60 Kms from Bhubhneshwar. On the way to Puri, we visited Ashoka's Shanti Stup in Dhauli, a shopping place called "Pipli", where you get nice bags, umbrellas, bedspreads with lot of artwork on them. 

Highlight of our stay in Puri was "Toshali resort", which had a private beach of its own amidst jungle. This beach was exclusive to Toshali resort guests & offered complete privacy & relaxation. It was a great experience to just lay down on the beach & get a nice massage. It was just the sound of waves, clear sky and unspoilt beach. Uh, it felt like heaven for 2 days on this beach.

Jagannath temple in Puri is quite in-famous for the Pandas & I (alongwith Poorvi) decided to skip this temple for the same reason. They did not allow sub-5 year olds into the temple as well. 

Konark:

Konark is about 40 KMs from Puri. Drive from Puri to Konark was a beautiful one with sea on one side, trees on the other side. Roads also had trees on both sides (remember that Ashoka's achievements as king? :-)).

Konark is really majestic. The sun temple is amazing, with such rich stone carvings. We spent almost half a day listening to so many stories from the guide we hired. Hiring a guide here was worth it, as he turned out to be a great photographer also.

We also visited Chilka lake, supposedly the largest salt-water lake in India.

It was a vacation with a difference. People visit Puri to go to Jagannath temple, but I decided to skip it & enjoy at the beach :-) It was also nice walking around in the City of Bhubhaneshwar in those nice walk paths, with cool breeze of the night. Overall, it was a nice break from Bangalore & if you want to visit a place that is not a high rated tourist destination but yet want to have lots of fun, you know where you need to go :-)