Puri – A Place to be spiritually and amicably

It was in the wee hours of the morning and the sun was still to come up in the sky, when I decide to go to Puri and start looking for some online bus bookingservices.  So I wake up gently, a was little surprised to see it was still dark, even though I was in Puri, Orissa where the mornings are usually early than expected. It’s too hazy to drive past the empty boulevard stretch along the beach. Every single inch of the road is lined with beach resorts and multi starred hotels facing the sea giving you the best possible time of your life. As you enter the temple main road, the rickshaw guys wake up due to the occasional car drives. Life slowly moves here as the sun rises up in the sky, its rays gazing up on the 200 feet tall tower of the great Puri Jagannath Temple, the shrine to many around to which the entire town revolves.

Puri is basically a holy city and is a part of one of the Char Dham itinerary where most of the pilgrims visit Dwaraka, Badrinath and Rameshwaram. As I enter the temple only to look at it dangling with devotees and their devotion. It looks like as if the entire city is here – including the tourists, the locals, the pandas, all struggling with each other to get the first sight of the lord. I move through the crowd and manage to find a small corner where I can have my own spiritual moment and a moment of silent communication with the triad deities. I was overwhelmed by the sight of these larger than life wooden deities of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Sulabhadra. I forget to move forward because I have the entire 400,000 sq. feet of space around the temple to explore.

Beach

If the identity of Puri is claimed by the temple, then in the Indian tourism it’s the emerging beach resort destinations of the east. A weekend getaway by many tourists from the neighbour states is thronged by the people. As I walk by the beach in the evening to find that it is completely crowded by the tourists. You may see the kites and balloons flying around, and the camel rides are very popular here. Saving the environment is one of their popular themes. Local festivals happen around as the Rath Yatra or during the New Year’s Eve and the annual beach festival that happens in Puri around November and December every year. You can see the sand arts of many artists and of the famous artist Padma Shri Sudarshan Patnaik who runs an institute here to promote his craft. So why wait book your tickets through the best bus booking services online and enjoy your trip to the fullest and keep exploring.