Puri: A Trip to the Bay

Long ago, it used to be known as the Railway Hotel, for it belonged to the Bengal-Nagpur Railway company. From its large verandahs, you could see the Bay of Bengal stretch far and wide ahead and in the evening, if you were seated on its easy chairs with a drink for company, you could feel the balmy breeze from the bay hit your face directly. However, days, in fact years have passed and the sea is no more visible – its view interrupted by a building, yet the high walls and the long verandah remain and the breeze still caresses your face every evening. It is now known as the BNR Chanakya Hotel – but those hallways, wooden stairs, tall arches always recount a story from the past.
Our return to Puri after a decade, while being seated on the verandah that evening, reeked of nostalgia. Of course, you cannot count us amongst those Bengalis who visit Puri when in doubt of visiting where to go, but a visit to Puri or for that matter anywhere, is always a welcome change from the city.

The facade of BNR Chanakya, Puri

We rolled out of our Calcutta home at 9 in the morning. The lack of a good dhaba,on the Kharagpur- Puri stretch remains a constant lament and our forgettable lunch at Bhadrak reinforced this belief of mine. The rest of the journey remain predictable and except for some traffic in the Cuttack – Bhubaneswar section, it was a straight 9 hour drive to Puri.

Soup and bread sticks in the evening

The next morning, when I stood on the Puri sea beach, darkness of the night was receding. A barge bellowed in the distance, then fading silhouettes of fishing boats being lifted by the waves appeared, and then a nulia (life guards) appeared on the beach and then there was the limited commotion of tourists, who, as understood from their conversation were fighting against a hangover. Finally, a yolk like orange sun rose in the distance and spread its warmth. My heels by then had sunk deep in the sand and it took an effort to lift them off. I had a cup of tea from that the tea seller and then make my way to the hotel. It was time for breakfast.
After breakfast, we headed to the sea. A Blue flag beach is a new addition since our last visit – with drinking water, ample parking, shower areas. We spend a couple of hours bathing in the sea and were quite hungry after that.

We lunched at the Wild Grass restaurant and the aromatic, fall of the bone mutton curry made us realize why Oriya cooks were once so popular in Bengal’s eateries. We returned to the confines of the room where unapologetically, we went off for an afternoon siesta.

The hallway/verandah on the first floor

First we went to Swargadwar and purchased Khajas from one of its myriad shops. And later spent the evening was spent on the sea beach where we listened to the waves crashing on the shore as twinkling lights from the fishing boats swayed in the darkness and then munched onto some snacks and tea from the nearby tea vendor and in the process remembered that this was the Puri which was familiar. We dined at the hotel in the evening and called it a night soon.

Even a couple of decades ago, Puri and Bhubaneswar stood to imply the entire state of Orissa. Not any further though, as tourism now penetrates deep in the forests, gorges and hills of Orissa.

But when it comes to Puri, if there are two things to define the city: it is the sea and Jagannath temple .So, like all good Bengalis, on the 3rd morning of our trip, first visited the Jagannath temple and after lunch drove down to Konark. A slice of sunlight was playing hide and seek through the canopy of the trees as we returned inn the evening. The Konark-Puri drive remains one of my personal favourites. As we reached the hotel, it occurred to me that we had already spent 2 days in Puri but there wasn’t even the slightest hint of the monsoonal clouds to be seen.

The Railway hotel, in its heydays was famous for its English fare like Roasted chicken, Souffle, Steaks. However, even though some of that finds its way to the menus, they are available only if you insist. For dinner, we had steaks and caramel custard, which were very well prepared. That day had been quite long and hectic and since we were to return to Calcutta the next day we slept off early.

The next day we checked out of the hotel and again after a 8 hour drive reached home.