Travelogue: Orissa

Lesson #1: Things are not always what they seem.

We’ve had pretty good luck staying in five-star accommodations off the beaten path – in Ooty, in Gwalior, in Khajuraho. We’ve found good quality rooms, with eager to please staff, at reasonable prices ($120/night vs. $300/night for something almost similar in a big city). Thus, we didn’t really hesitate to book two nights in Puri, Orissa at a 5 star hotel, on a beach, with nice big rooms and a pool.

I think we pushed our luck in India a bit too far. We arrived at the hotel (after a two hour drive from the airport) to find its pool “under renovation.” Hotel staff said the renovation just started two days ago, but by the size of the bare hole in the ground, either they were concealing the truth to make us feel better or they found the most efficient workers in all of India. Needless to say, we did not stay at the hotel, and the only other option in town was passable, but not what we envisioned. We only stayed one night, and it threw the rest of the planned vacation off.

Lesson #2: Babies are not happy with sustained loud noises.

We decided to take a boat ride out to see some fresh water dolphins on Chilika Lake. We thought the drive through the villages would be interesting; it was – especially for Tracy who had not really seen rural India. We enjoyed seeing pictures of the “googly-eyed” (my irreverent description) tripartite Orrian gods painted on houses. But the boat ride from the side of the lake to where the dolphins were that day was over an hour each way.

Patrick was fine on the way out, but after an hour of a really loud diesel motor, he had had enough. Face it, he’d been in a car for two hours and then a noisy boat for more than an hour, at an age where he really wants to crawl around. It was more than he could handle and he screamed the entire way back until he exhausted himself about five minutes from shore. Luckily, the lull of the car (and the lure of the breast) coaxed him back to sleep for the ride to our new hotel.

Lesson #3: A good hotel is worth every rupee.

After checking into a great hotel (what we had expected the first one to be) – where everything was clean, where the swimming pool was refreshing, where the rooms were spacious, where the restaurant options were tasty and numerous – we felt recharged and optimistic about the next day (Monday), despite the disappointments of the previous day and a half.

Lesson #4: States with significant Maoist influence take a bandh call seriously.

Bandhs (strikes) in HYD are hit or miss – it’s a big enough city with enough economic activity, that I think an all day bandh is just not feasible unless something completely outrageous is being protested. In this case, many agree that the government should not subsidize petrol or even cooking gas, given all the other ways money could be spent – such as primary education or clean drinking water. Thus, we didn’t really take the vague calls we heard about a “Bharat Bundh” (i.e., all-India strike) protesting the petrol and gas price hike seriously. Ooops.

Our hotel absolutely refused to provide any form of transportation during the bandh – even rental bicycles! (No, we didn’t understand that one.) The hotel also tried to keep restaurants closed and force everyone to use room service … but we went to the “guest-only” restaurant anyway and the chef was more than happy to have some Americans to try out his skills on. That aside, we felt like prisoners, which I guess is the purpose of a bandh. Thank goodness we had an evening flight – or we would have had to walk to the airport, I think.

Lesson #5: Even a seemingly disaster of a vacation can look half-way decent in hind sight.

Every cloud has a silver lining. Even with everything that went wrong – and so much did – I can still find enough hidden positives that eventually I will look on this attempt of a vacation and laugh. For instance, Tracy got to taste the frustrations we face living here, from hotel resorts without pools (did I mention we only booked the hotel only three days before? And the staff made no mention of there being no pool?) to complete city shut downs. As I said, we all got an interesting view of rural India we rarely see in HYD. We took one evening walk along the beach in Puri, enjoying a flat and functioning sidewalk with a nice sea breeze (and no smell except salt water). The Orrian food was actually quite tasty and different from Hyderbadi/Andhran food (way less spice, more mustard, some interesting lentil preparations and overall quite tasty). The boys pretty much behaved themselves and sleeping all in one room was not the disaster we feared.

In short, our three days in Orissa (four for Greg and Tracy, who stayed an extra day to visit Konark to see the 12^th century Sun Temple to which we could not travel on Monday because of the bandh) was nothing what we expected. Every frustration we ever have encountered in India seemed to surface in a matter of 72 hours. But the optimist in me is thankfully able to look beyond those things which went wrong – and I’m pretty sure in a year or two, I’ll be able to classify this trip as an “interesting experience” and not “disaster” (as I was apt to describe it today to coworkers).