Puri Days 1 and 2

I woke up at 7am to the sound of school girls chatting loudly around Henri. In a few minutes, it was time to get off the train, we had arrived in Puri at... what time, exactly?

By some miracle, we found the strength to walk around Puri from 8am to 12 noon (minus about an hour at Wildgrass for breakfast and 20 minutes on a rickshaw to go from west to east of the beach), from the train station to Marine Parade then CT Road.

We had the most bizarre expereince looking for a place to stay; Henri felt like we were not welcome while we were asking around. In one place, the man was more honest, saying "Indian here. Foreigner, CT road!" Well, thank you for pointing that out an hour after we'd asked almost all the guest houses and being turned away most of the time >:-(

It was a good thing that we didn't stay at the "Indian area" because we found a nice, cheap hotel along CT road that gave us a special off-peak discount. Other guest houses asked for twice the going rate at Vishal Plaza, but they were dirty, creepy, and full of flies. Our room was new, big, and most importantly, CLEAN. It felt like being at home a tiny bit.

We had lunch at Achha, where the guy who served us kept clutching his chest and saying thank you whenever we asked for something. He's a nice kid, but a bit too nice. Like if I threw sand in his face he'd thank me still. We found out he came from a tribal village and had been working in the restaurant since he was 10 years old, and he doesn't want to go back anymore; although he is proud of his roots. He just doesn't want to work in the fields anymore.

We didn't think we took suh a long time at the resto, but when we came out, it was almost sunset. And it was only 4:30!

There was a white woman chanting on the beach with an accordion and an Indian man playing drums, with a few curious people standing around them. There were some boys shoving each other into the water, and some men selling fake pearls and corals (I wanted to break their skulls because they said it's real coral! Grrr!) who tag-teamed us along the beach. There was still no quiet, but at least it was more quiet than the Indian beach that's  packed with people. Here, the tiny crabs outnumber humans.

The sand was kind of dirty, but according to Henri it is cleaner than the rest of the beaches he'd seen in the south of India, so hooray for Puri.

After watching the sun sink behind the thick wall of mist, Henri wanted to investigate the village to the east of the beach. I warned him that I read bad things about it, but he wanted to see for himself.

The first thing that we noticed were the men sitting along the stretch of sand, just in front of the boats. And as we came closer, they scurried away like tiny crabs.

Then, when we reached a seemingly invisible barrier, the sand became hot. The men had been pooping in the sand, and the heat of decomposing trash made heat issue from the ground. This was a place where cow dung, dog poop and human excrement came to meet the sea, and taste freedom!

This is what the fishing village looks like, in case you are curious:

Day 2.

We deserved to wake up late after the workout from the day before. After brunch at Honey Bee (I got a delicious bacon sandwich, and Henri had an overpriced pizza) which closes at 2pm, we transferred to Achha with Henri still talking to Vivi on Skype as we crossed the street. Thank you Tata Photon Plus!

Henri felt sick and he wanted to take a rickshaw to the other side of the beach, but I managed to convince him to walk along the beach until the "Indians Only" area where the Puri Beach Festival is supposed to be held near the lighthouse. Well, from where we stood at the foreigner's area, we couldn't spy a lighthouse, so it was going to be a long walk. Thankfully, Kolkata had trained us well.

The beach there was packed with people, nobody was sitting down. They were either standing in the water or standing on the beach. The honking of horns was deafening and there was a mobile disco being pulled by a man, with a rowdy crowd of people following him with what looked like spray foam.

Hardly noticing we had walked about 3 kilometers, we found the lighthouse, and the guest house where we were told we're not welcome.

It was the first day of the beach festival, but no one seems to have gotten the memo. They were still setting up the booths and the sun had already set. 

Sand sculpting is a local artform, and we were lucky to find some working along the beach.

We were too tired (some might say lazy) to wait for the festival to start, so we went back to the hotel room and watched some movies on cable. Now, it's starting to feel like a real vacation!