Ode To Orissa

Studded with sublime temples and flanked by the brilliant blue waters of the Bay of Bengal, India’s ninth-largest state is also among its least visited-and that’s half of its allure. By Jason Overdorf

From a rooftop in The Orissan Capital of Bhubaneswar, I look down into the walled grounds of the Lingaraj Temple. Built in the 11th century , it is the oldest such structure in this ‘city of temples,’ and the most majestic, with a massive central tower of red sanstone that calls to mind the shape of a bishop’s miter. Paradoxically, however, this is as close as I can get to Bhubaneswar’s chief tourist attraction: the ancient complex is off-limits to all but devout Hindus. Without the benefit of binoculars, I have to content myself with guidebook descriptions of Lingaraj’s exquisitely carved stonework, which includes bas-reliefs of lions, elephants, and the voluptuous celestial nymphs known as apsaras.

a statue of a dancing shiva in a bhubanewar workshop

What distinguishes this ‘living’ temple from the nearby ‘dead’ temples of Rajarani and Mukteshwar, which nonbelievers are welcome to enter, is that those monuments no longer enshrine a lingam, the sacred stone phallus that symbolizes Shiva. So instead of a ticket booth, I have to contend with a boy bearing a ledger and the sacred thread of a Brahman, who extorts donation from foreigners just to look over the wall. I find the experience strangely disorientating.

Konark's 13th century Sun Temple

Perhasps because of this-or maybe just because the nearest international airport is in Kolkata, several hundred kilometers to the northeast-Orissa remains off the radar for most visitors to India. ‘Orissa is a pilgrimage center, not a tourist center like Goa,’ Shyamhari Chakra, who reviews cultural performances and events for India’s The Hindu newspaper, remind me on my first night in town. But as I discover on a four-day visit to the so-called ‘golden triangle’ of Bhubaneswar, Puri, and Konark, Orissa is also one of the country’s hidden gems, with stunning natural beauty, remarkable ethnic diversity, and wonderfully nuanced cuisine. Better still, nowhere along the Orissan temple trail, which attracts tens of thousands of Indian devotees every year, does one encounter the touts and pests that plague more venerated sites such as Varanasi.

standing room only at the Udayagiri caves

Home to a Civilization that Dates Back some 5,000 years, Orissa hardly figures in most Western chronicles of India. Its most significant role in the subcontinents’s history is perhaps as the site of the Kalinga War of 261 B.C., a conflict so bloody that it prompted the victorious Mauryan emperor Ashoka to renounce violence and convert to Budhism, a religion he subsequently spread across Asia. But comparatively few visitors to the state explore the Buddhist ruins at Lalitgiri and Ratnagiri, let alone the hill-dwelling tribal communities that constitue India’s largest aboriginal population. Instead, they focus on bhubanewar’s Lingaraj Temple, Konark’s World Heritage-listed Sun Temple, and Puri’s Janganath Temple, one of the four holy places on the char dham pilgrimage circuit that every Hindu hopes to visit at least once in a lifetime.

a complex of grottoes carved out for Jain monks 2,000 years ago

In Delhi, my home for the past decade, Orissa (officially spelled Odisha) is known as one the country’s poorest states. Its vast mineral resources-iron and bauxite, predominantly-have in recent years attracted some of the world’s largest mining and steel companies, including South Korea’s Posco. Yet the promise of economic development has stagnated with the government’s inability to convince or coerce the tribes of places like the ore-rich Niyamgiri Hills to turn over their ancestral lands. And the darker corners of the state have been caught up in the simmering Maoist insurgency that cuts a ‘red corridor’ across eastern India, from Bihar to Tamil Nadu.

Strolling Puri Beach

On my visit, however, the flip side of Orissa’s reputation-the efficiency of its administration under Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, one of India’s more dynamic politicians-is more evident. Admittedly, I haven’t come here to inspect Bhubanewar’s slums. But its wide roads and orderly intersections, so unlike the teeming warrens of other Indian cities with far better public images, such as Bangalore, testify to at least some of the state’s mining revenue being put to good use. New office buildings, residences, and hotels are sprouting almost everywhere, and the road to the airport (itself in the midst of an upgrade) is being widened into a four-lane divided avenue.

fishing boats bringing in the night's catch at konarkh

At the same time, though, Bhubaneswar retains a sleepy, small-town feel. The Mayfair Lagoon-the lovely, colonial-style hotel where I’m staying-and the low-rise Trident next door offer the only top-class accommodations, as well as the city’s modest claims to nightlife. Both are situated on vast, tree-lined properties complete with jogging trails and tennis courts. I savor starting my mornings with coffee on my private terrace, watching the school of koi and family of Brahminy ducks troll the Mayfair’s sun-dappled lagoon.  Scorching hot for much of the year, Orissa is lovely in the winter.

Compared with most other places I have visited in India, parts of Bhubaneswar seem practically deserted. On the morning I visit the 11^th-century Rajarani Temple, the only sign of life outside the complex is as single, drowsy watchman. Iside, I encounter just two other tourists, a pair of New Yorkers speculalting about some arcane aspect of Hinduism as one of them presses his palms to the gingerbread-colored sandstone walls, as if to absorb the wisdom of their great age. It’s a similar scene across town at the Museum of Tribal Arts and Artefacts, where one can wander in solitude amid display cases featuring the traditional crafts, musical instruments, and hunting implements of Orissa’s 62 indigenous tribes.

‘A decade ago, there was not a single dedicated Oriya cuisine restaurant anywhere,’ Patnaik explains when he returns. ‘Not in India, not abroad, not even in Orissa. We have some exclusive dishes, but there’s no cooking school, no documentation. So many recipes were dying nout.’

Now, thanks to Dalma several emulators, Oriya restaurants are everywhere, including at the Mayfair Lagoon, whose Kanika dining room puts a five-star spin on the local larder. Some of the state’s most intriguing recipes, at least as Patnaik describes them, are only available on special occasions, such as a vegetable curry called ghanta that is made during the Dwitya Osha festival, or a slow-cooked mutton dish, poda manso, that is reserved for formal functions. But the everyday fare served at Dalma is remarkable enough, redolent of mustard oil and cumin. I particularly enjoy the kakharu phool pithou-pancakes made from pumpkin flower-and the buttery-mustard flavor of fried rohu, a type of carp. A pungent and crunchy chutney made by crushing gramflour biscuits together with garlic and spices is so good that I contemplate carting some home. I reckon if Patnaik ever finishes his book, it’ll be a best seller.

Later that day at the Udayagiri and Khandagri caves, I discover where everyone is. The system of rock-cut chambers, carved out of the hillside for Jain ascetics in the first century B.C., is overrun with chattering groups of teenagers and young couples dressed in their Sunday best. I scrambled up the rocks and clamber into the hermit holes, which are hardly bigger than the snow caves I used to dig growing up in Michigan. At the top of the hill, I Have a fine view of Bhubaneswar, which looks every bit a metropolis in the making.

Konark is a small town, hardly larger than a village, about 60  kilometers from Bhubaneswar on the Bay of Bengal coast. The drive there is pleasant enough-harrowing in an Indian taxi, of course, but unimpeded by traffic or the usual yawning potholes of Indian roads. From the moment we leave the city, there are palm trees and freshly harvested rice fields on either side, and all along the road, farmers have swept paddy onto the pavement for threshing by passing vehicles.

Outside Konark, the branches of pale-barked trees interlace over the road like a trellis until we reach the coast and shoot out of the leafy tunnel into brilliant sunshine. On one side, a sign posted amid an arid landscape of boulders and cactus scrub announces the Balukhand Konark Wildlife Sanctuary, which harbors sambar, barking deer, and more exotic species such as the striped hyena. On the other side, the sun plays off a startlingly blue sea. Apart from the Lotus Eco Village, where I’ll be lodging for the next two nights, there are few other buildings of any kind, and none much larger than a toll booth.

After checking in, I discover that my ‘room’ is a tiny but cozy cabin on the sand, Martha’s Vineyard-rustic, with pine-paneled walls and the usual amenities. From the cane chair on the thatch-roofed deck, the surf is literally a stone’s throw away across an empty beach. There are only two dozen or so other cottages here, and because it is a weekday, most of them are unoccupied. My only company is two Indian family intent on enjoying a tranquil vacation.

The next morning, I watch a trio of fishermen paddle out with an inner tube and a net to a sandbar 100 meters from my deck chair. After the tide comes in, I head down the beach in the direction of Konark to work up an appetite for lunch. I walk about a kilometer, seeing nothing in the golden sand but footprints and driftwood, before I again come upon the fishermen, who are now trying to net their lunch from the broken pilings of a collapsed highway bridge. While I watch, the man with the net calls out that he’s caught one. The other two pick their way out along the rocks to help him drag it in.

Later, squatting around their campfire in the shade of casuarinas trees as they carefully extricate strands of the fine nylon net from the fish’s scales, I venture a little Hindi.

‘Is it five kilos?’

“You hear that?” says the largest of them, a fellow with a thick mustache. “Five kilos, yes. He’s a good man!”

“What kind of fishi is it?” I ask

“This is a bhekti,” he tells me, identifying the glistening silver diamond as one of the staples of Bengali and Oriya cuisine. “Will you eat some with us?”

I won’t-a big lunch awaits me back at the resort, and I’m keen to take a dip in the ocean first. But it’s good to know that even out here, a little Hindi goes a long way.

Dusk finds me standing at the foot of the Sun Temple in Konark. The soaring stone structure is majestic, yet baffling and overwhelming, its entire surface intricately carved not only with elephants and lions and myriad mytical beasts, but also with men and women,  kings and commoners, engaged in every imaginable variety and configuration of sexual congress.

My guide, Sunil, is doing his best to point out the more amorous highlights in the resonant, rhythmic baritone employed by professional guides throughout India. “See, here: 750 years ago, people were practicing all types of sexualities,” he announces when we stop to examine the weathered sculptures on the temple’s second level. “Polyandry, polygyny,polygamy-one woman,  two man; one man, two woman; two man, two woman.” 

We move on.

“See, this one: 750 years ago, two man were also lying together on the bed.” After a pause, he adds,” Homo.”

Like the temples at Khajuraho, in Madhya Pradesh, Konark’s Sun Temple is renowned for its erotic sculptures, which hint at a medieval culture much more open about sexuality than today’s India. Though the scenes are said to be based on the Kama Sutra, sunil typically explains their presence as intended to celebrate ‘all aspects’ of ancient Konark’s presumably libidinous society. But Indian tour guides are notorious for apocryphal stories, learned from each other and treasured for their value in eliciting tips. A more persuasive theory is that the carvings symbolize the ecstatic bliss experienced by the soul when it unites with the divine.

Erotic art is not the Sun Temple’s only mystery. Built in the shape of a colossal chariot for the sun god Surya, its largest extant structure, an audience hall, is capped by a pryramidal roof that rises 40meters into the sky. Yet taller main sanctum once towered above this, until its collapse in the 16^th century. While most scholars agree that a Muslim conqueror dislodged the keystone that kept it standing, Sunil and his colleagues prefer another story. In their version, the temple’s stones-shot through with massive iron bars-were held together by a powerful, 52 ton magnet that formed the peak of the main temple and also kept an iron idol floating in midair. As legend has it, passing European sailors found that the giant lodestone interfered with their compasses. When they stormed the temple and removed the navigational hazard, the tower collapsed.

Regardless of what in fact befell the great monument, its ruins were eventually buried by sand dunes, and excavated only in the early 20^th century. One of the first visitors to the site, the Earl of Ronaldshay, then governor of Bengal, would later describe it as ‘one of the most stupendous buildings in India which rears itself aloft, a pile overwhelming grandeur even in its decay.’ And that, at least, is incontestable.

The Jagannath Temple, in nearby Puri, is another ‘living’ monument, which to me means first and foremost that I won’t be allowed inside; and second, that I will have to fight through a sea of lepers and Russian Hare Krishnas just to catch a glimpse of it through the entryway. (In addition to tis other charms, this is the place where the 16^th-century sage Chaitanya Mahaprabhu introduced the Vaishnava philosophy of devotion that, almost 500 years later, would blossom in the United States as the Hare Krishna movement).

I know what I am getting myself into. I first visited Puri a few years ago, during the Rath Yatra festival, when many thousands of devotees descend on the city to witness the construction of huge wooden chariots used to parade the temple deities through the streets. The chariots themselves, with wheels as tall as my head, were amazing to behold. And the massive idols they carried-of Lord Jagannath (the Hindu Lord of the Universe) and his siblings Balabhadra and Subhadra-left no doubt as to the origins of the English word juggernaut. Even so, I’d only been able to endure a few minutes of  the frenzy.

To be fair, for more spiritually inclined travelers, this crush can be transporting. Rickshaw wallahs can also point you to the rooftop of the nearby Raghunandan Library, where you can look down into the Jagannath complex for a modest fee. The massive white tower of the 11^th-century temple, crowned with an eight spoked wheel of Vishnu, is an impressive example of Hindu architecture. And the sic food offerings prepared each day for Lord Jagannath and his mass of devotees, in one of the world’s largest kitchens, can be a remarkable spectacle. It’s just that I prefer my temples mystical, quiet, dead.

As I straight-arm my way through the horde, the Russian Hare Krishnas crank up the volume on the amplifier they’re using to broadcast their chanting. I dip into my pocket for my trusty foam-rubber earplugs (top of the list of necessary equipment for the traveler in India) and duck right to extricate myself, slipping a 10-rupee note to one of the lepers in mid-jog.

Despite its festive atmosphere, Puri’s sweeping beach feels like an oasis of calm by comparison. Vacationing families, still clad in slacks and saris, munch on street food. Here and there, a cricket match is underway. Fishing boats bob offshore.

Now that I’ve put some distance between myself and Jagannath, I decided that you don’t need access to Orissa’s inner sanctums to appreciate its charms. Like the legendary lodestone of Konark’s Sun Temple, Orissa has a magnetic appeal that’s hard to resist-even if, like me, you’re as spiritual as a stapler.

Getting There

India’s ninth-largest state is well connected domestically, with regular flights into its capital, Bhubaneswar, from Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata, the nearest international gateway.

Where To Stay

Bhubaneswar’s top two hotels are near neighbors. The Mayfair Lagoon (8-B Jaydev Vihar; 91-674/666-0101; Mayfairhotels.com; doubles from US$198) combines a colonial inspired aesthetic with graceful Kalinga art on leafy grounds, while the Trident (CB-1 Nayapalli; 91-674/230-1010; tridenthotels.com; doubles from US$218) is as efficient and comfortable as you would expect from an outpots of India’s Oberoi hotel group. 

In Puri, the former summer palace of the Maharaja Panchkot, Fort Mahodadhi (Sea Beach Rd; fort mahodadhi.com; doubles from Us$98), is now a 12-room heritage hotel. But for escaping the crowds and basing yourself closer to Konark’s Sun Temple, Lotus Eco Village (Ramchandi Beach; 91-675/823-6161; cottages from US$118) makes a rustic but pleasant beachside option.

What To See

Lingaraj Temple one of the oldest temples in Bhubaneswar and a revered pilgrimage center, located near lake sagar in the city’s south.

Konark Sun Temple Found just off state Highway 13 in the center of Konark, this famous 13^th century temple features architecture from the Ganga dynasty and erotic sculptures. 

Jagannath Temple Non-Hindus can view this goliath of a temple from the neighboring Raghunandan Library in western Puri.

Museum of Tribal Arts and Artefacts everything you need to know about orissa’s tribal people, including traditional costumes, jewelry, and hunting equipment (91-674/246-1635; along National Highway 5, Bhbaneswar).