Monday, December 17, 2018
Bombay
Exploring Lake Chilka and Viewing the Jaganath Temple and Dinner in a Colonial Railway Restaurant
Namaste from Puri in Orissa!
Awaking in Puri in a vast three-star hotel which overlooks the waterfront—a vast beach on the mighty Bay of Bengal—was a novel experience. After spending some time blogging and reading my Twitterfeed, I rose for a shower and got dressed. I made myself a cup of coffee with the decaf sachets of coffee that I always carry with me when I travel. I also had the good sense to eat a granola bar (which I also always carry with me—I bought a few just before leaving from Bombay) It was the only breakfast I would eat!
The weather here in Puri is chilly—certainly by Bombay standards but even in comparison with the US—I am afraid I have not carried the right clothes. In fact, I am so glad that I threw in the light down jacket from Uniqlo that comes in its own little carrying pouch which I had bought for the spring and fall in the US. It is doing yeoman service here.
Our taxi was on its way to pick us up when Nafisa, Hosefa and I were seated in the lobby of the hotel at 9.00 am—its scheduled time of arrival. It came at 9.10 and it was about 9.15 when we left for our day-long excursion to Lake Chilka—which is the largest brackish water lake in Asia.
Driving to Lake Chilka:
The drive to Lake Chilka took exactly 90 minutes. We went into the heart of rural India and rural Orissa. We passed fields—many water-logged, probably rice paddies—and villages along the way and all sorts of animals including dead dogs in the middle of the road (not a pretty sight for sure). Women with bundles of long sticks on their heads was a common sight—these are used for firewood. In many ways, I felt as if time had stood still in this part of India. Truly, there are still two Indias: The India of the glitzy metropolis and the India of the rustic village. If there is crushing poverty in these villages, it is not overt. Sadly, there were no restaurants anyway and I kept hoping we would stop for breakfast but it turns out that Hosefa had bought himself two croissants from the bakery at the hotel yesterday and ate those and Nafisa can well do without breakfast. I need a good solid breakfast to get my day started (I can well do without dinner!), hence, I was feeling the pinch of a very light meal and hoped for something better. I would be disappointed for the entire day.
Arrival at Lake Chilka:
We saw Lake Chilka from out of our windows long before we stopped at the tourist point. It is a vast body of water—so huge that you can be fooled into thinking that you are looking out on to the ocean—and indeed you would not be wrong because Lake Chilka is on the East Coast of India and there is only a narrow sand bar that separates the thundering Bay of Bengal from the sweet waters of the Lake. So close are the two bodies of water that they seep into each other. Saline water from the ocean seeps into the Lake and gives it a salt taste and the lake’s water empties into the ocean. The lake is punctuated with many islands, most of which are uninhabited. It is an active spot for the congregation of migratory birds that come south from Siberia and Russia in the winter—so it is popular with ornithologists.
Spending a Day Messin About on Boats:
Upon arrival at the embarkation point, we discovered that we needed to buy a ticket for a boat that would be ours for the next four hours. There are three packages to choose from and we bought the one that took us dolphin watching, viewing of red crabs, to Classic Beach and for lunch at a lake-side shack. It cost us Rs. 4,600 for the entire boat with boatman who would stay with us for the day. The boats were moored about a three minute walk away and as we strolled towards it, we picked up packets of chips and biscuits. It was this sort of rubbish that would basically see us thought the day, food-wise.
So what did we see on our excursion? We saw the extremely murky waters of the lake that had zero clarity. The water was so opaque that we could not see anything below the surface. It was also a ghastly yellow color. Our boat was motorized—so we kept up a good pace. We had been instructed to buy some crackers to throw at birds to ensure that we would see a whole lot of them; but all we saw were those types related to Jonathan Livingston! I.e. seagulls. Each time we threw a handful of the snacks, they followed our boat and congregated around it to give us some good photo ops. But apart from seagulls and crows, we saw no other birds at all. Apparently, you need to get to a bird sanctuary (which they told us was closed) to see them.
Dolphin-watching was very satisfying indeed as we saw so many bottle-nosed dolphins—some really close to our boat. This was the most exciting part of our boating excursion. They are black and about the size of a dog and they occasionally break the surface in the sort of graceful loop that whales do. We saw so many of them that we were able to see their split tails, their dorsal fins as well as their bottle noses. A really good time was had as we scoured the horizon trying to find them. There were several other boats on the water, filled, in similar fashion, with tourists (most of whom are from neighboring West Bengal). I sat with a life jacket on throughout and it gave me a great sense of comfort.
Following the dolphins watch, we were taken a very vast instance away to what our boatman called the Sea Mouth—the point at which the lake and ocean meet. On one of the islands, we were supposed to have lunch. Lunch consisted only of freshly caught fish—it was going to be a repeat of the sort of dinner we ate last night. When we disembarked from the boat on to the sandy shore, we were taken to a makeshift shack where a man showed us fish in various plastic basins We chose a bunch of shrimp and a pomfret after a price had been arrived at. We then moved into another shack—this offered merciful relief from the horrible wind that had played throughout our boat ride on the lake and was especially fierce on the island. The little shack was a cozy place to sit at a plastic table with plastic chairs to eat our lunch. It was prepared with onions, tomatoes and a variety of spices. No bread, chapatis or rice was available with the fish. So basically, all we ate was fish—you can just imagine how tiny a meal that was! We ate four shrimp and half a pomfret (split between Hosefa and myself) and that was it. More biscuit- eating, potato chip-eating and chocolate-eating followed. It was truly bizarre.
On this island, we were also supposed to see the so-called red crabs (for which we had paid more money). We were instructed to walk a long way across the sand bar to get to the beach where, and if we were lucky, we would spot a few. As it turned out, it was high tide and our boatman told us that our chances of seeing them were slight. We did not want to walk the distance to the beach—so we asked people who were picking their way back what they had seen and they said there was not a red crab in sight! We, therefore, decided not to take he trouble to walk there across the sand.
Back in the boat we were taken to another island where we had to listen to a con man break clams and cockles and magically produce a pearl and a shiny glass-like stone from the inside, much to our amusement. He was selling the pearl for Rs. 350 and other piece of polished multi-colored glass for Rs. 2,500. I have seen con jobs and con jobs in my time but this really took the cake! The less said the better. Luckily, our travel shave also taught us to beware of such nonsense and we made short shrift of his efforts before we set sail again.
By this time, we were just fed up with he monotony of the ride and instructed our boatman to take us back to the landing jetty. Which he did. In total, we had been out for five hours and needed to get back to civilization again because there was absolutely no toilet we could use anywhere and the day had been cold. You can just imagine the urgency levels as the evening wore on.
We were grateful to get back into our car and drive off toward Puri again. En route, we knew that we would be passing by the famed Jaganath Temple and so we decided to stop there. There was also a constant light drizzle playing which probably adds to the unpleasant chill in the air and does not make for walking.
Viewing the Jaganath Temple:
The Jaganath Temple is one of the most famous in India. Puri, in fact, is one of the four ‘dhams’ of Hinduism—the others are Dwarka, Rameswaram and Badrinath. This temple is dedicated to Lord Jaganath whose talents have led to the coinage of the English word ‘juggernaut’ which implies a tremendous force. Non-Hindus are not allowed in the temple. Conveniently, there is a library right across the road that has a terrace from which the curious can overlook the temple complex although you do not, of course, see the holiest of the holy sanctuaries that houses the idols of the gods—Jaganath, his brother Balbhadra and his sister Subhadra.
Luckily, reading my photocopied notes from Lonely Planet, told us about the library and a sales person at one of the shops told us where to find the stairs to go upstairs to the terrace. In the library, which is filled with ancient palm-leaf manuscripts that date back 400 to 500 years, we found a real character of a librarian who put us through a whole spiel of how we were part of the privileged visitors who could glimpse the temple complex from his vantage point. He made us sign a visitors book and after we parted with Rs. 200 (as a donation), we were allowed to climb the stairs up a narrow and very dark passage that led us to the top.
The Complex is huge—as are all significant temples world-wide (we saw some gigantic ones in China recently that seemed to go on forever). The main steeple is undergoing some renovation—it was clad with scaffolding on one side. Like all Oriya temples, it is constructed in layers or tiers—rather like a pyramid. There were several smaller structures all of which were painted recently—they glowed white in the fading evening light. There are four entrances to the temple and we were closest to the Elephant Gate. It is truly a grand sight and very photo-worthy. We took many pictures. As we overlooked the temple complex, we could see monkeys draped along the sides of the many little buildings that make up the holy place. The man who showed us the place had a big long stick in his hand and he told us to beware of the monkeys who are aggressive and dangerous and actually bite human beings. It appears that dignitaries such as Lord Mountbatten of Burma and the Vatican Ambassador, Cardinal Pedro Someone had also stood at the same spot and taken in a glimpse of the temple.
Light was fading as we hired cycle rickshaws to take us back to the car where we then made our way back along a very crowded and congested road past many ‘dharamshalas’ or pilgrim shelters that were clearly at least a hundred years old. Overall, it was a wonderful lesson in Cultural Studies—to find such robust worship in the heart of one of Hinduism’s holiest spots was a stirring sight.
Back in our hotel, we were able to rest and relax for at least two hours during which I called my Dad to tell him all is well. He expects me to touch base with him daily. There was also some drama about Chriselle not reaching Zurich on time—she had flown from Los Angeles en route to Bombay via Swissair and was supposed to meet my classmate Farhat in Zurich. Just out from work, Farhat began contacting me because Chriselle had not contacted her and she wondered if her plane had landed in Zurich. Turns out Chriselle’s flight was delayed by 2 hours but, eventually, she did manage to reach Farhat who took her out for dinner to a fondue restaurant and gave her a good glimpse of the snazzy city in which Chriselle will spend one night before heading to Bombay where she will arrive tomorrow night.
Dinner at Chanakya Hotel:
I was certainly ready fo a good decent dinner after all the garbage with which we had stuffed our faces all day! Good job Lonely Planet told us about the Railway Restaurant attached to the heritage hotel called Chanakya which used to be a government outpost during colonial days. It was only a short walk from our hotel to Chanakya and after dressing in three layers (yes, it was that cold!), we arrived there and were immediately charmed by the place
The Hotel belongs to the Bengal-Nagpur Railways and is maintained quite beautifully by it. It consists of a whitewashed two story building with wide corridors that have painted cement floors and a winding staircase that leads up to a gallery-balcony at the top that overlooks the Reception Area. There is a lovely gracious colonial feel about the entire place in which rooms are let out for Rs. 6,000 per night. The receptionist was kind enough to let us explore and take pictures of the establishment that was punctuated with gorgeous black and white photographs of the many train stations sprinkled around India taken at a time when the Railways were run by the British and Anglo-Indians exclusively and were India’s pride and joy. It was all completely lovely.
Dinner in the dining hall on the first floor was another one of those gracious meals that remain memorable for the combination of ambience, food and service. We were ready to eat a horse and started with fresh lime sodas and an assorted platter of tandoori meats that included children, lamb, fish, and prawns that were just delectable. We all had soup but mine was just too spicy—it was Hot and Sour Soup but it was truly lethal and I had my eyes and nose watering profusely. I actually had to leave it after only a couple of spoonfuls.
Dinner was Fish and Chips for me (I thought a colonial meal was in order in a colonial place) while Nafisa chose Chicken Mercury served over fine linguine and Hosefa chose Fish with a continental sauce. It was all delicious and so good after a day of food deprivation.
We also discovered that the hotel had a nice breakfast buffet where we will come on our last, more relaxed day.
We walked back to our hotel, picked up food from the bakery for our breakfast tomorrow and then returned to our rooms to get ready for bed.
Until tomorrow...
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