Puri to Pondicherry (or How Henri Got Food Poisoning)

)Un peu de français plus bas... alors lisez tout le post!

There are limited food choices in Puri, and after 6 days here we were running out of ideas. Henri had a sneaking suspicion that eating at our hotel gave him the runs (une diarrhée) the morning after so we kept trying new places to eat. However, I reasoned, it's just a bad morning poop so it's nothing to worry about.

One Saturday, we tried a restaurant facing the beach. It was supposed to be our rest day, and the following day we planned on visiting the tribes in the Orissan mountains - just something to kill the time while we wait for Tuesday to arrive, because that's the only day that the bookable trains can go either to Chennai or Pondicherry.

After three hours of doing nothing in the restaurant, we went back to the room to do the laundry and slept. When we woke up, it was time to have dinner again. This time, we wanted to treat ourselves; we were curious if expensive hotel food would be better than the places on CT Road (which were not exactly cheap either, they just taste cheap) so we went to the biggest hotel in Puri and looked at the menu. The food was twice the price everywhere else in Puri, but, we thought, if it's just as good as Teej in Kolkata, then we'll go back to bed happy and satisfied.

Little did we know that the most expensive food in Puri would also be the most poisonous.

Konark

We woke up early to have breakfast at 7 so we could pick up the motor bike at 8 as agreed at the bike shop. Breakfast was at a place recommended by Lonely Planet for its dosas, and I asked for a non-spicy one while Henri ordered an ordinary dosa. But when I tasted the dosa put in front of me, it was still spicy; and then the cook gave Henri an uttapam. Duh? Then the cook made another dosa, but put raw onions in it and asked Henri for a little extra money for the onions. Duh squared. Then I asked for napkins to wipe my fingers and a kid gave me newspaper. The day began like a big joke.

After a hurried breakfast, we looked for the bike owner but he wasn't there - neither was the guy at the other rental shop. What's up with the bike owners here? The brother of the owner saw Henri and me pacing up and down in front of the shop and he called his lazy brother to come over. We finally got a bike at 9 am, we put fuel in it and drove from Puri to Konark to see the famed Sun Temple.

We took about an hour and a half to get there because the bike is old and it kept dying; restarting took time. On the way to Konark is a protected forest, a wildlife sanctuary, meaning the place was cleaner than most of India. We were surprised to see such clean rivers and streets, and the highway was newly paved. Incredible!

Entrance to the temple is 250 for foreign tourists, but only 10 for Indians, Nepalese, Thais, and a host of other countries I can't remember. Too bad I needed a passport to pretend I'm Thai!

Puri Day 3

Renting a bicycle to discover Puri was harder than we thought. The renters we talked to yesterday were not in their shops... In fact, all the bike rental shops were abandoned! Except for this one guy who had one bike with a basin on top (we doubted if it was really a bike for rent, actually), and another guy way back in the market who said his rate was 4 Rs per hour (a super deal!). He asked where we were staying, and when we said Vishal Plaza he got angry and said he doesn't want to rent it out anymore. I asked why, and he said "I no like that hotel."

So we went back to the other guy, and we got the bike for 40 Rs (0,70€) until 6pm.

The two main things to see in Puri are the beach (done) and Jagannath Mandir, a temple for a local god who was incorporated into the list of avatars (sometimes interchanged with Buddha) but also doubles as the Lord of the Universe.

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?