An Outing with the Wing

It all started in our one of those mid-wing conferences on a sunny morning just before the endsem exams. Out of no where, came up the idea of celebrating the end of the semester in a rather different way, by going somewhere out of this colorless place and our monotonous life. A lot of names came up but finally we decided upon the sea-beach city of Puri along with its nearby tourist spots.

Once the planning was done and the awful endsem days were over, we set out on our journey in the night of the 28th of November. There are a lot of trains to reach Puri from Kgp but we had booked our ticket in Purushottam Express considering that it was the earliest and we would reach Puri in the early hours of the morning. But at times your luck doesn't seem to care for your scheme of actions. We saw all the trains coming and going right in front of us and finally when our train came well past midnight, we had spent more than two hours on the Kharagpur station. At least we got to explore the length and breadth of the longest platform of the world. And at last we were hardly left with any energy to keep awake for even five minutes once we got inside the train.

The train got delayed further in the way and we reached Puri at 9:30 in the morning, 4 hours behind schedule. In the meantime, we had been contacted by various agents from hotels in Puri in the train itself. We selected one of them who took us right up to his hotel. The rooms were good and the location was favorable, that is quite near to the sea beach. The hotel tariffs in Puri in general are much lower than I have seen in many other cities.

Traveling in a group has many advantages but there are some obvious shortcomings. And the major one is the difference of opinion among the members. That's exactly what happened first while selecting the hotel and then on a larger scale when we started to plan out our day's schedule. While most of us felt that we should go to the beach first and the temple later, others had certain reservations about visiting the beach in the sun.However a consensus was reached and we set out for the beach which was hardly 5 minutes of walk from the hotel.

The sea beach of Puri is known for its huge waves. The imposing intensity and energy of the waves there is a simple treat to watch. But more than just the watching, it's getting into the water and being whirled around by the waves is what gives you the real excitement.We stayed inside the sea for around two hours, all the while jumping on the huge waves and letting ourselves being carried away by them. On many occasions I was all surrounded by water for quite sometime and was being rotated round and round by the current.The funniest part was Mandal losing his goggles inside the sea and its subsequent finding out by a lifeguard who demanded a cool 50 rupees for his courageous act.

On returning to the hotel we had a long bathing session and then had the lunch in the hotel itself. That was followed by a short sleep to get rid of the tireness of the morning.In the evening we went to the famous Jagannath temple. Shreyas was too tired and decided to stay back at the hotel itself. And it was then only when we came to know that Rupesh won't be there with us for the next day because of his Inter-IIT practice and he had to return in the night. After coming back from the temple we went to the beach once again, this time not to be routed by water but just to enjoy a walk besides the sea on a cool evening beneath the moonlight. And we also found time to buy some good sea artifacts and sculptures at a very low price. The kind of bargaining that takes place in those small beachside shops is quite absurd. Rupesh bought three conches for Rs 90 when each of them was priced at Rs 180! And I bought five key-rings containing sea-shells for Rs 5 which were priced at Rs 10 each initially. While me,Bollam,Sarkar and Mandal stayed at the beach for a while, Marathe,Vamshi,Saiki and Bharti went to arrange for a taxi for our next day's journey to Konark and Bhubaneswar.On the beach itself we said goodbye to Rupesh and then had our dinner. The prawn fry at a beach stall was really savory.We then went back to hotel, really tired after a hectic day. After some dull moments on television where we watched a James Bond movie andIndia losing to South Africa yet again, we went to sleep.

Our taxi was at 7 in the morning. So we had to wake up early. Soon we reached Konark to witness the majestic Sun Temple.In the way to the temple all of us bought some very cheap but attractive sunglasses.The temple is a 12th century one, made mostly out of huge stones.However a major part is under reconstruction after many cracks and impairings that have occurred in the temple walls. The reason is supposed to be the removal of a huge magnet on the top by a Muslim ruler at the behest of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. The magnet used to impart strength to all the iron rods which were used to hold together the stones.Also we realised that more than the grandeur and the artistry it is the engravings on the walls that the tourist guides really find worth explaining!

It was around 10 in the morning when we came out of the Sun Temple and set off to Bhubaneswar. In the way we halted at the Dhaulgiri Stupa. Its a nice shrine atop a hill which has statues of Buddha in various postures. The natural beauty around is worth a long stay there but we had limited time in hand.So after spending half an hour or so at the Stupa we went to the Lingaraj Temple in Bhubaneswar which is another huge old temple. There are more than 100 small temples within the complex. We had our lunch on a roadside hotel just before we reached the Nandan Kanan zoo where we were to spend the rest of our afternoon.Nandan Kanan is a huge zoo with all different varieties of animals. But the most fascinating of them were the huge white tigers which were present on large numbers.We travelled over a lake inside the zoo on ropeway which was another great experience.Equally elegant were the cobras,the elephants, the hippos and the beautiful birds.

After relaxing a bit in the zoo itself,we went to the Bhubaneswar station and stayed there talking and talking about each other. We took Utkal Express for our return journey which was just before the midnight. The train took slightly over 5 hours for its journey to Kharagpur and at about 5 in the morning we were back to where we belong-our wing DTE,Patel. This first sort of outing with the wing was no doubt a monumental experience.