A fourth journey to Puri, but my first one alone, from a Vande Bharat morning to Konark, Chilika, Raghurajpur and an evening listening to the sea from my hotel veranda.
The first time I went to Puri, I was a schoolgirl travelling with my parents and my brother, and the world still possessed the capacity to astonish me simply by being somewhere I had not been before. I remember Konark most vividly from that journey. The temple seemed enormous, improbable, almost beyond anything I had encountered in books, and the sculptures appeared less worn than they are now. I remember climbing and looking into parts of the structure that are no longer accessible, though what I understood of the temple then was very different from what I understand now. I was a teenager and did not yet know how to separate history from wonder. The surrounding area was less developed too: fewer hotels, fewer vehicles, fewer arrangements for turning every attraction into an organised experience. I did not know then that I was seeing Puri and Konark for the first time in what would become a series of four visits, each belonging to a different version of myself.
The second visit came after my marriage, when my son was barely three. I went with friends and members of his family, and Puri had little to do with temples or architecture. We spent much of our time on the beach, bathing, laughing, eating, talking, keeping an eye on a small child who seemed to have discovered that the sea was the greatest playground imaginable. There was a companionship that made the trip memorable long after the details of the sightseeing had faded. One of the people who made those days particularly lively was our friend Dr Aniruddha Ghosh, jovial and witty, full of an appetite for life. He died young. Returning to Puri years later, I found myself remembering not only what we had done but the particular pleasure of being with someone who could make an ordinary afternoon feel worth keeping. Some places preserve people for us in this way. We return to them and discover that we have not come back alone.
My third visit was different again. I had gone to Bhubaneswar to visit the house of a classmate's brother, and from there we travelled to Puri together. By then I was no longer the schoolgirl seeing a new world for the first time, nor the young mother whose attention was divided between a small child, friends and the beach. I was travelling with someone who knew me from an earlier part of my life, and the journey carried its own quiet familiarity. I do not remember every place we visited or every conversation we had. What I remember is the feeling of being between past and present, moving through a city I knew but did not know in quite the same way anymore.
A Fourth Puri, This Time Alone
This fourth visit was different from all the others because, for the first time, I went to Puri alone. On 24 August 2026, I boarded the Vande Bharat at 6:05 in the morning from Kolkata, travelling in the Executive Chair Car. For readers planning a similar journey, you can check train schedules and booking options [Book your Vande Bharat journey as per your date convenience].
There was something particularly pleasant about beginning the journey so early. The city was waking up while I was already on my way out of it, and once the train settled into its rhythm, I could sit back and watch the changing landscape through the window. I had travelled to Puri before, so I was not setting out with the excitement of discovering an entirely unfamiliar destination, but travelling alone altered the experience from the beginning. There was nobody beside me whose plans I had to consider and nobody waiting for me to finish looking at something before moving on. I could observe, think, read, write or simply look out of the window. I reached Puri at around 1 p.m., and from the station I hired a toto to take me to my hotel, Hotel Vijoya International.
I was welcomed at the hotel with a welcome drink and allotted a room on the uppermost floor. One of the first things I noticed, and one of the things that made the stay especially enjoyable for me, was that the rooms are sea-view rooms with verandas. My room looked towards the sea, so the Bay of Bengal was not something I had to schedule into my day. I could see it from my room and sit on the veranda whenever I wanted. For readers looking for accommodation in Puri, Check Puri hotels and stays as per need may be useful.
Hotel Vijoya International is in the 4-star category and has facilities including a swimming pool, conference hall and the multicuisine restaurant Kaveri. The hotel became a comfortable base for my solo journey, particularly because I did not feel compelled to go out simply to feel that I was experiencing Puri. The sea was already there, waiting outside my room. Interestingly, the television in my room was not working, but I hardly minded. I had not travelled to Puri to watch television, and the sea was considerably more interesting.
During my stay, I also met the hotel's General Manager, Mr Sunil Kumar Hota, who was warm and forthcoming in telling me about the hotel and its history, and that it was the second-oldest star-category hotel in Puri. A staff member showed me photographs of celebrities who had visited and stayed there over the years, including Rachana Banerjee and others, and I was told that Banerjee had stayed in the room next to mine. Something was amusing and oddly intimate about hearing that. A room that was simply my room for a few days had once belonged to another traveller whose life had nothing to do with mine. Hotels collect these little stories because people arrive, stay and leave while the building remains. I took a photograph with Mr Hota, and that photograph has become another small part of my Puri memories.
Writing Before Reaching Puri
Perhaps because I was travelling alone, I found myself writing almost from the beginning of the journey. While travelling towards Puri in the Vande Bharat, with the monsoon landscape passing outside the window, I wrote a Bengali poem called “নবীন আশার শ্রাবণ”. The poem grew out of the green freshness of Shravan, the dark clouds gathering in the sky and the sense of renewal that often accompanies rain. I wrote about grass becoming wet in the first light of Shravan, green exuberance emerging from the earth, and tiredness being washed away. The clouds were dark, but somewhere within them I imagined a rim of light, and the mind began to spread its wings towards new possibilities.
নবীন আশার শ্রাবণ
শ্রাবণের নবারুণে ভিজে যায় ঘাস,
মাটির বুক চিরে আসে শ্যামল উচ্ছ্বাস।
বর্ষার আঙিনায় মন আজ সবুজ ও নবীন,
মুছে যায় ক্লান্তি, যত ধূসর মলিন।আকাশের কোণে ঐ ঘন মেঘের আঁধার,
তারই মাঝে খুঁজে পাই এক ঝলক আলোর কিনার।
আশার ডানা মেলে মন ওড়ে সুদূরে,
নতুন ভাবনা জাগে মেঘের মাদল সুরে।চিরন্তন আলো আলোকের অঙ্কুর ফোটে,
সৃষ্টির ব্যাকুলতায় হৃদয় যে ওঠে!
ঝরে পড়া বৃষ্টিতে প্রাণের স্পন্দন,
নবীন চিন্তায় আজ ঘুচুক সব বন্ধন।মেঘের অন্তরালে যে রবি হাসে লুকিয়ে,
সেই দ্যুতি ছড়িয়ে পড়ুক মনন সাজিয়ে।
The English translation:
Shravan of New Hope
In Shravan’s tender dawn, the grass is drenched,
and from the earth’s opened breast rises a green delight.
In the courtyard of rain, the heart feels green and new;
weariness falls away, along with all that is grey and worn.
There, in the corner of the sky, gathers the darkness of heavy clouds,
yet within it I find a slender edge of light.
The wings of hope unfold, and the heart flies far away;
new thoughts awaken to the drumbeat of the clouds.
Eternal light sends forth its first small shoots,
and the heart rises, restless with the urge to create.
In the rain that falls, life finds its pulse;
may every bond that holds us back dissolve in new thought.
Behind the veil of clouds, the sun smiles unseen;
may that radiance spread through the chambers of the mind.
I wrote the poem before I even reached the sea. Looking back, I find that significant. I had not planned to write anything on the journey. It simply happened. There is a certain freedom in travelling alone that makes such unexpected things possible. Nobody is asking what you are doing, where you are going next or why you have suddenly stopped looking at the scenery and started writing. You can simply follow the thought wherever it goes.
Meeting Konark Again
My first major outing took me towards Konark, although before reaching the Sun Temple I stopped at the Sudam Sand Art Museum. Sand is an unusual material for making art because it carries its own impermanence. An artist may spend hours creating an elaborate figure or scene, knowing that the work will eventually be altered or disappear. Konark, built in stone, appears to belong to the opposite world: a monument created to endure across centuries. Yet when I returned after so many years, I could see that even stone is vulnerable to time.
The Sun Temple was conceived as the chariot of Surya and is famous for its twenty-four elaborately carved wheels and seven horses. Its sculptures encompass far more than religious imagery. Musicians, dancers, animals, divine figures, scenes of courtly and everyday life and erotic sculptures occupy the surfaces, creating a remarkably comprehensive vision of existence. The wheels fascinated me most. Their design has long been associated with the passage of time and the movement of the sun, and standing beside one of them made the familiar image on the Indian ten-rupee note suddenly look very different.
I actually took a ten-rupee note from my wallet and held it up against one of the enormous stone wheels. I have handled that note many times over the years without giving much thought to the little Konark wheel printed on its reverse. It has been used to buy ordinary things, passed across counters and folded into wallets, but suddenly the small image on the paper was standing before me in its full scale and physical presence. I took a photograph of myself holding the note with the actual wheel behind me. It was a playful moment, but it also made me think about how familiarity can make us stop seeing things. Sometimes a journey makes us look properly at something we have been carrying around for years.
Returning to Konark after several decades was also an encounter between two versions of myself. As a schoolgirl, I had simply thought the monument magnificent. I had not thought about conservation or structural vulnerability, and I remembered being able to approach areas that visitors can no longer access. This time I saw steel structures around portions of the temple and engineers supervising conservation work. The monument had changed, but so had I. When I was young, I assumed that the world I was seeing would remain available to me. Age teaches us otherwise. Places change, bodies change, access changes, and even our memories of places change.
From Konark, I travelled towards Chandrabhaga Beach. Chandrabhaga Beach has a story of its own. According to legend, Samba, the son of Lord Krishna, came here to worship the Sun God and performed penance on the banks of the Chandrabhaga River, seeking relief from a terrible affliction. The river that once met the sea here was therefore associated with Surya worship, and over time Chandrabhaga became an important sacred site in the landscape around Konark. Standing on the beach after revisiting the Sun Temple, I found the connection intriguing: the great stone chariot of the Sun God behind me, and before me the sea and the shore that had been part of an older sacred geography. The monsoon had given the coast a restless beauty, and the place felt less like a stop on a sightseeing route and more like another chapter in the long story of Konark.
There were camel rides and motor rides for visitors, and the beach had a broad, picturesque sweep. I had gone out expecting to encounter history and architecture, but the coast reminded me that Puri and its surroundings are also places where people simply come to enjoy themselves. Sacred places, beaches, shops, roads and tourist attractions coexist here without needing to explain the contradiction.
Nearby stands the Panchamukhi Hanuman Temple, associated with another local legend. It is believed that Hanuman stayed here for a while while searching for Sita and had planned to set out for Lanka from this coast. According to the legend, Maa Ramachandi guided him towards the southern route, which was more accessible. Whether one accepts the story as legend or simply enjoys it as part of the living folklore of the coast, it adds another layer to the journey. I found myself thinking about how mythology in Odisha is rarely confined to temples alone; it seems to travel with the rivers, forests, beaches and roads, giving the landscape stories that have survived across generations.
If you are planning to explore Puri, Konark and Chilika together, organised itineraries can also be an option, particularly if you are visiting for the first time. Explore Puri travel packages
Chilika in the Monsoon
The next day I travelled to Chilika Lake. I had always associated Chilika particularly with migratory birds during winter, so seeing it during the monsoon offered a different experience. The lake looked expansive and full of movement, and at one point I watched local boats carrying villagers, bicycles and even motorbikes. The sight made me nervous because the boats seemed heavily loaded, but the passengers appeared entirely at ease. They were not on a sightseeing excursion. They were simply travelling. That distinction stayed with me because the same stretch of water can have completely different meanings for people depending on why they are there.
My own motorboat journey towards Rajhans Island and the beach on the Bay of Bengal was very much a tourist experience. The boat cost ₹5,800, which immediately placed my journey in a different category from the everyday transport I had just watched. Tourism creates these parallel economies on the same water: one person pays for a boat ride as an experience, while another depends on the boat to get somewhere necessary. Rajhans gave me a remarkably clean and relatively isolated beach, without the crowds I had encountered elsewhere. There were coconut sellers, and for a while I simply stood looking at the water and enjoying the quiet.
Then came the dolphins. I had not expected much wildlife in the monsoon, and I certainly had not expected to see Irrawaddy dolphins. They surfaced briefly and disappeared before I could settle my eyes on them, then appeared again somewhere else. There was no opportunity to examine them at leisure as one might in a photograph or documentary. I had to watch the water carefully and be ready for the sudden movement. That made the sighting all the more exciting. A dolphin appears when it chooses; if you are looking in the wrong direction, you miss it. I was fortunate enough to see them, and the brief sightings became one of the most delightful memories of the entire journey.
After returning to shore, I had lunch with Soumitra, my driver, at a nearby eatery. We ordered a large masala crab curry, Chilika Special Fish, dal and aloo bhaja, and the bill came to around ₹2,800 for the two of us. After the boat ride and the dolphins, lunch brought the day down to something wonderfully ordinary. There was no sightseeing left to do and nothing to photograph. We simply sat together, ate and talked about food. Such moments can become surprisingly memorable because they are not planned as attractions.
Raghurajpur and the People Behind the Art
I bought a small Pattachitra painting framed in Tussar and a beautifully crafted wooden Jagannath shrine containing the three deities. I was careful with it during the rest of my journey because it was small enough to carry but precious enough that I did not want it damaged. When I returned to Kolkata, I placed it on my study table. I did not know then that this tiny representation of Jagannath would acquire a particular significance after I visited the main temple.
Jagannath: Devotion and Disappointment
The next day, my experience inside the main Jagannath Temple, however, was difficult and disappointing. The panda arranged through the hotel took me inside, but the crowd was heavy, and I found the jostling particularly uncomfortable. Because I have mobility limitations, a dense crowd is not merely inconvenient for me; it can become physically difficult. I had imagined that even in a crowded temple I might find some private centre of devotion, but instead I felt hurried and handled. The panda persuaded me to offer ₹5,551 for puja, and I did not feel that I had arrived at that amount through a calm decision of my own. I felt pressured and financially exposed at a place where I had expected my attention to be directed towards prayer. I was there for about an hour, and I also came away disappointed by the amount of Mahaprasad I received in relation to what I had paid.
I want to be fair about this experience. I cannot know what happens within the entire temple administration from one visit, and I do not want to turn one uncomfortable experience into a blanket judgement about every panda, priest, police officer or temple employee. What I can say is what I felt. I felt exploited. That distinction matters to me. I entered a sacred place expecting to think about devotion and found myself thinking more about money than prayer. Perhaps another visitor would have a completely different experience, and I hope many do. Mine was simply what it was.
The contrast with Raghurajpur became particularly striking in retrospect. There too I had paid money for something connected with Jagannath, but I knew whom I was paying, what they had made and what labour stood behind the object. I had watched the artisans work and heard their stories. At the great temple, I had felt anonymous; in the artisan's home, I had felt that I had actually met the people behind what I was taking home. This is not a judgement about which place was holy and which was not. It was simply an unexpected reversal in my own journey: the great temple, with its immense religious authority, had left me uneasy, while the tiny wooden Jagannath shrine made by artisans in a Raghurajpur home had given me comfort.
Puri Beyond the Crowds
I did not spend much time at Swargadwar or Golden Beach because the crowds were too much for me, particularly after the experience at the temple. Around the market, there were stalls selling handicrafts, Pipili work, seashell idols and other souvenirs, while local fish, prawns, lobsters, pomfret and other varieties were being fried at roadside stalls. Instead of buying from the roadside, I went to Boyanika, the Odisha government's handloom outlet, where I bought Sambalpuri and Bomkai cotton sarees, handloom Katki T-shirts for my son, towels and salwar pieces as gifts. Buying something for my son brought the second Puri briefly into the fourth. He had been barely three when we had splashed in the sea together; now he was grown, and I was selecting something for him in a shop. Time had not announced its progress. It had simply accumulated.
Niladri Beach and the Blue Flag Beach
Not far from my hotel was Niladri Beach, and what I particularly enjoyed was the park in front of it. Neat, pleasant and relatively secluded, it had places where one could sit and simply enjoy the sea. Events and programmes are also held there from time to time, bringing some activity to the otherwise peaceful surroundings. I liked the fact that I could go there without making a special excursion of it, sit for a while and watch the sea at leisure. After the crowds and bustle of some of Puri's better-known stretches, the quiet character of this little seaside space was a welcome change.
The nearby Blue Flag Beach offered a rather different experience. I took a short toto ride from my hotel one evening and paid an entry fee of ₹20, which, I believe, goes towards maintaining the beach and its facilities. I bought a couple of cans of cold drink and settled in to enjoy the evening. The moon was shining above the ocean, and the beach was far from deserted. There were people everywhere, some sitting and some standing, all seemingly drawn by the same simple pleasure of watching the sea under the evening sky. I sat there with my cold drink, taking in the moonlit water and the lively scene around me. It was not the solitude I had found at Niladri Beach, but it had its own charm: a shared enjoyment of the sea, with strangers gathered together simply because the view was beautiful.
The Sea from My Veranda
One evening I sat on the veranda of my room at Hotel Vijoya International and watched the sea. I had spent the day moving through places filled with people, stories, religious significance, history, commerce and noise, and now I was alone again. The sea was visible from the room, but from the veranda I could give it my full attention. I listened to the waves and watched the water, and gradually I began writing in Bengali.
The first words were হে উত্তাল সমুদ্র—O turbulent sea.
হে উত্তাল সমুদ্র
হে উত্তাল সমুদ্র,
তোমার অতল গর্জনে
আমার বক্ষে জাগে এক অনন্য শিহরণ।তীরে এসে ভেঙে পড়া ফেনাচ্ছন্ন ঢেউয়ের স্রোতে
ভাঙা কাচের মতো ম্লান হয়ে যায়
আমার যত ক্ষুদ্র ও বিষণ্ণ ভাবনা-চিন্তা।তুমি সীমানাহীন,
অপার তোমার নীলাম্বু বিস্তার, অগাধ তোমার গভীরতা।
তোমার নীল জলরাশির বুকে
লুকিয়ে আছে কোনো এক আদিম রহস্য,
যা শোনায় আমায় পৃথিবীর বুকচেরা গান।সেই অনন্ত অতলে আমায় বিলীন করো—
তীরভাঙা তরঙ্গের আঘাতে
ধুয়ে যাক মনের জমাট বাঁধা আঁধার ও ক্লান্তি।
ফিরিয়ে দাও অন্তরের গভীরে লুকানো আসল প্রশান্তি,
তোমার ফেনিল স্পর্শে জেগে উঠুক সুপ্ত চেতনা,
আমার ভোরের আকাশে
উদ্ভাসিত হোক এক নব জীবনের আলোকধারা।
The English translation:
O Turbulent Sea
O turbulent sea,
in the deep thunder of your vastness
something within my breast stirs with a strange and wondrous tremor.
In the foaming rush of waves breaking upon the shore,
my small and sorrow-laden thoughts
grow dull and distant, like shards of broken glass.
You are without boundary,
your blue waters immeasurable,
your depths unfathomable.
Within the vastness of your blue expanse
lies some ancient mystery,
singing to me a song drawn from the very heart of the earth.
Take me into that endless depth;
let the blows of waves against the shore
wash away the darkness and weariness gathered within me.
Return to me the true peace
hidden in the deepest chambers of my heart.
At your foaming touch,
let my dormant consciousness awaken,
and in the sky of my morning
let a radiant stream of new life arise.
This poem was written while sitting on the hotel veranda, watching the sea and listening to its roar. I had not gone to Puri intending to write poetry, but the solitude of the journey had created space for it. What I find especially interesting now is the relationship between the two poems. The first, written in the train while travelling towards Puri, was a poem of new hope. It emerged from the monsoon landscape, from green fields and clouds and the anticipation of reaching somewhere. The second came after I had already experienced the journey with all its pleasures and disappointments. It was born from the sea and turned inward. One poem looked towards renewal; the other asked for release.
The second poem does not contain the whole journey, nor could it. It says nothing about the price of the boat at Chilika, the crab curry I ate with my driver, the artisans I met in Raghurajpur, the difficult temple visit, the sarees I bought or the television that did not work in my hotel room. It belongs to the sea alone. Perhaps that is why it feels right there.
The Journey Home
Eventually the journey came to an end. I returned by Vande Bharat, expecting the same convenience I had experienced on the way to Puri. The train was scheduled to reach Howrah at around 8:30 in the evening, but it eventually reached at approximately 11:30 p.m. I do not know the precise operational reason for the delay, and I would rather not invent one. It may have been related to track work, signalling or another railway issue, but all I can say from my own experience is that the delay was inconvenient, particularly because I arrived at Howrah so late after several days away. There was something almost ironic about it: the Vande Bharat had represented speed at the beginning of my trip, while on the return journey it reminded me that timetables are intentions rather than guarantees.
When I finally returned home and unpacked, the objects I had bought seemed to tell their own stories. There were the Sambalpuri and Bomkai sarees, the Katki T-shirts, towels and salwar pieces, the Pattachitra framed in Tussar and the little wooden Jagannath shrine from Raghurajpur. The shrine went onto my study table. The ten-rupee note returned to my wallet. The photographs remained on my phone and computer, and the poems remained in Bengali, carrying something of the journey that photographs could not quite capture.
What I Carried Home
The four Puris now sit together somewhere inside me. There is the Puri of the schoolgirl travelling with her parents and brother, when Konark was a revelation, and I had not yet learned that monuments could be damaged or restricted and that access could change. There is the Puri of the young mother with her three-year-old son, surrounded by friends and family and the laughter of Dr Aniruddha Ghosh, whose early death has changed the meaning of those memories. There is the Puri shared with my classmate after the Bhubaneswar visit, belonging to another period of adulthood. And there is this fourth Puri, entered alone, carrying memories that nobody else could see while they were being made.
The city itself has altered across those visits. The roads are more developed, the beaches busier, the tourism infrastructure more organised, and places that once felt less commercial now contain the familiar machinery of contemporary tourism—hotels, transport, organised excursions, craft outlets and shops filled with souvenirs. Yet the old and the new have not simply replaced one another. They have accumulated. The ancient temple exists alongside modern hotels; the centuries-old traditions of Jagannath exist alongside tourists taking photographs; traditional Pattachitra is created in family homes while some of the finished work travels abroad; a modern train carries visitors towards a city whose identity is rooted in a much older world.
That accumulation is what I brought home. I brought back the memory of the Konark wheel behind a ten-rupee note, the sudden appearance of Irrawaddy dolphins in the monsoon waters of Chilika, the sight of villagers carrying motorbikes across the lagoon, lunch shared with my driver, the hands of artisans moving across Pattachitra and palm leaf, a little wooden Jagannath shrine, a temple visit that left me disappointed, the quiet of my sea-view veranda and two poems written at different stages of the journey. I brought back pleasure and frustration, beauty and discomfort, history and ordinary life. None of them cancels the others.
Perhaps that is what returning to a familiar place really means. We imagine that we are revisiting the same city, the same beach, the same temple, the same road. We are not. The person who arrives has changed, and therefore the place changes too. A schoolgirl sees Konark and feels wonder. A young mother remembers the sea through the laughter of a three-year-old. A woman travelling with an old classmate carries another kind of familiarity. A woman who comes alone sees the same sea from a hotel bed and then writes a poem from its veranda.
The sea itself makes no distinction. It was there when I first came with my parents. It was there when my son was small and our group spent hours near the water. It was there on my third visit, and it was there again when I sat alone at Hotel Vijoya International, listening to its roar after a day that had left me both enriched and unsettled. I had changed four times in relation to it, perhaps more. The sea had not needed to change at all.
I went to Puri carrying three earlier journeys with me. I returned with a fourth. I had thought I was revisiting a place I already knew, but perhaps I was really meeting another version of myself. A familiar destination can become new when the person arriving there is no longer the person who came before.
That, more than anything else, is the Puri I carried home.
Things I Carried / Things You May Find Useful.
A few things I found useful: Travelling alone also makes you conscious of the small things that make a journey easier. For anyone planning a similar trip, I have put together a few practical travel essentials that you may find useful.
- a lightweight umbrella
- comfortable walking shoes
- a compact travel bag
- a reusable water bottle
- sunglasses
- a power bank
- a small travel organiser
- a lightweight cotton stole/scarf
-------------------------------------------------
About the Author
My work has appeared in Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Muse India, Intrepidus Ink, Fractured Lit Magazine, Sky Island Journal, Nanum Magazine, BULL Lit Mag, Kitaab, Setu, Epistemic Literary Magazine, Gulmohur Quarterly, Fictive Dream, Literally Stories, Literary Yard, Shabdodweep Web Magazine and other literary journals. My writing has also received recognition in several competitions, including Second Place in the Flash Fiction Magazine contest, Second Prize in the Inkspot Short Story Competition 2025–26, and Second Prize in the 3 Minute Arts Story Writing Competition 2025–26.
My debut poetry collection, When the Earth Sang of Us: A Meditation on Love, Life and Nature, is available worldwide. Through both fiction and nonfiction, I continue to write about the places I visit, the people I encounter, and the experiences that make an ordinary journey worth remembering.
Follow Susmita Mukherjee
· X
· Facebook
0 Comments