Chandipur, Panchalingeswar - the 'উৎকল অভিযান'

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page," - St Augustine

It is difficult to remember incidents, occurrences. But easier if some of it has become stories. One such story is our new year tour to Chandipur-Panchalingeswar back in 2015.

For the five of us (myself, Saptarsi, Dipayan, Tanmay & Snehasish) it was a trip to remember for more than one reason. It was some journey mainly due to the stuffs that happened to us during those four days. Recounting those days still gives me an unexplainable joy, maybe that’s why I keep on sharing particular stories about that trip in many different groups to invoke laughter and happiness.

We were a group of five very different people, among whom a few were sharing a trip for the first time (Snehasish, Tanmay with the rest of us). But most of us knew each other a bit due to us sharing the same office and project account at that time. Everyone except Snehasish is of same age, he was the kid in the group (although just one-year junior 😊).

The calculative one among us is Dipayan. He is the main reason causing most of our trip with him cost-effective and also enjoyable (due to his quirky nature😊). Hence our planning was spot on. We booked two “Panthanivas” (OTDC undertaking chain of hotel in the state of Odisha) from Utkal Bhawan in Kolkata (near Lenin Sarani Rd) almost a month and half before – one for Chandipur and another for Panchalingeswar, removing any possibility of last minute rush.

On the night of 31st December 2014 – myself, Snehasish (nicknamed Gorkha for some unknown reasons) were staying at Tanmay’s (to be called Dhara/Bisuddha/Matal here onward) mess. Dot on 12 AM (1st Jan) he woke us forcefully, shouted happy new year, submerged himself into ‘Glasses of Old Monk’ and went to sleep. We two (me & Gorkha) baffled and sleepy headed also complied, only to be woken again the next morning at about 4 AM to rush to catch the train.

The journey:

DAY -1: [HOWRAH - BALASORE] – 1st January 2015(Thursday)

We boarded ‘Dhauli Express’ from Howrah to begin with, Saptarsi and Dipayan joined us @the station and we started @about 6:05 AM.

During the course of our train journey we came to know various things about Gorkha. One of which is he likes to eat a lot in train, whatever be the food choice. It was particularly interesting as he was not at all known as a foodie. Dhara started his jargon, saying that everything in life can be handled with delight if you have a bottle of Rum at your disposal. Though I had doubts initially, I’ve to admit during the trip he convinced us he actually can use Rum as panacea😊.

It took us almost four hours to reach Balasore station, from where after finishing our breakfast we took a bus from near the station towards Chandipur Panthanivas. It is essential to note here, there were many auto-rickshaw options available from station, but we were on a budget-tour and had weapon of middle-class traveler named ‘Dipayan’ (to be called Dunku now onward) at our disposal.

After a somewhat around 45 min bus journey through the dusty roads of Orissa we reach Chandipur, checked-in in our rooms, changed and ran towards the sea.

Chandipur has a phenomenal beach which is not a continuously existing feature on the map; i.e. the sea disappears during the day. They call it the “Hide and Seek of Vanishing sea”. Mother nature's tricks are bemusing for sure. This beach recedes ~5 km during the ebb, and then comes back to during evening with the high tide. This gave us the chance to walk deep into the actual seabed with only feet getting submerged in the shallow. To be noted here due to this feature Chandipur is also locally known as Chandipur-on-sea.

The beach is a mildly busy one within which therein lies a sereneness, nature’s tranquil aura melts away daily stresses of our life. non-aggressive, in fact, very gentle and welcoming waves, cool wind crashing against our legs and the hypnotizing buzzing of the wind is a livening experience.

With receding sun, sky above the beach becomes an artist's palette of warm colors. Roaming around we filled our bellies with deep fried crab with extra added spice and Dhara had his added benefits (rum).

Our tour planner and executor Dunku had a list of places to visit and Balaramgadi Village was our destination for that evening, but destiny had other plans.

Google says Balaramgadi Village is located near to the beach merely 2 KM, at the confluence of Budhabalanga River. We knew that, just didn’t know which way. Matal was really confident about his navigational skills even in that intoxicated state (something which made somewhat aggressive); he along with Dunku’s insistence guided us towards the left from where we stayed along the sea-bed starting around 4:30 PM-ish, we never reached Balaramgadi, but Matal kept on telling - see there’s the end, towards west see the tree line, we would cross it and reach Balaramgadi. This continued for the next one and a half hour or so; we crossed empty sea-bed, skeleton of unidentified animal head (cow perhaps) and occasional small trees but reached nowhere. Gorkha was feeling angry and hungry (as usual) at the same time, so were the rest of us (except Matal, still ☹). Evening was almost over, with visibility becoming low. And that is when we understood what it meant by ‘vanishing sea’.

Thunderous sound of waves seemed rushing towards us, the lack of visibility meant we thought it is very near (it wasn’t at all) – we were scared, tired. One step, two steps, quick steps and then starts the run…

Everybody was running, Gorkha was mildly shouting ‘শালা, সমুদ্রে ডুবিয়ে মারবে!’ as expected I was nervous and hence did what any illogical person like me would do – started pointing fingers at Dunku and Matal and let the blame game begin. With every decibel of increase in wave-sound our energy level dropped but walking speed increased, we ran back the entire path in 40-ish minutes (that took us 1.5 hrs. before). Only after we reached the sea shore (concrete road) near the hotel in presence of artificial lights and caught our breaths we realized the waves were miles away still and we were not in any kind of danger😊. I guess fear gets to everyone.

Tired, a little bit sad we roamed for some while near about and returned to our rooms, but the day wasn’t over yet. The caretaker we had @Chandipur Panthanivas was a greedy one, who wanted to extort whatever money he could, even after we specified our food choice he kept suggesting us additional costly item for dinner, one of us (who specifically pleaded to me not to name him in this article section) decided to teach him a lesson or a sort. At dinner table ‘he who must not be named’ (let’s call him Voldemort for this scenario) arrived with his shirt off, bare chest not even any vest only in shorts (pant) and acted as if he is intoxicated (he was a bit though, but totally in self-control) 😊. There were other families there at the dinner hall with most of them keeping their eyes fixed at us perplexed about what is happening there. The caretaker thought, this is his chance hence again suggested us, ‘do you want to take something?’ (আর কিছু চাই? মাংস? চিংড়ি?), and Voldemort had his revenge ‘পয়সা আমি একই দেব, এবার ভালোবেসে তুমি কিছু দিলে না করবো কেন??’ (I will pay the same, if you want to give something more lovingly, who could say no). The care taker chuckled (in confusion maybe) and left. We ate and left for the bed but not before the following conversation that happened between Voldemort and a group of really intoxicated boys just outside the dinner hall, -

• Boys: ‘Good Night’ (in chorus),

• Voldemort: ‘The night is always good…’,

• Boys: ‘hooooooo…’, (sound of someone slipping in background)

DAY - 2: [CHANDIPUR SIGHTSEEING – BURIBALAM, REMUNA, DEVKUND, RUSSIA DAM] – 2nd January 2015(Friday):

We had booked a traveler car in Chandipur Panthanivas, for sightseeing and to take us to Panchalingeswar. Hence on the next morning, we started semi-early (@8:30 AM-ish as best as I can remember) for the temple in Remuna.

On the way we first visited the banks of the Buribalam river, 4km from Chandipur (we may have got off the car for a few minutes or may be not I can’t remember with certainty). Buribalam is famous for being the place where the encounter between Bengali freedom fighter Bagha Jatin (Jatin Chandra Mukherjee) & the then British commissioner, Charles Tegart, took place. He was shot twice, but still swam across the river and managed to escape.

Remuna (a Notified area committee - a settlement in transition from rural to urban) is almost ~21km from Chandipur. It took us almost an hour or so to reach there. There we saw the famous place of worship of Khirachora Gopinatha, a famous Vaishnabite seat with a temple dedicated to Lord Krishna (butter-stealing Krishna). It is said, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, stayed here for two nights on his way to Nilachal (ancient Puri) from Nabadwip. On the temple premises, there is a footprint, engraved on a piece of stone attributed to him.

The mythology around the establishment of the temple goes like this, Lord Rama carved the idol of Gopinath through his arrow and Sita used to worship the deity at Chitrakut. Then the king of Orissa Langula Narasingha Dev, enshrined the idol at Remuna. There are three idols of Krishna installed side by side at the sanctum sanctorum. Madan Mohan, Gopinath & Govinda (from left to right).

Another myth for the name being ‘Khirachora’ is that, Madhabendra Puri (guru of Mahaprabhu), a devotee of Lord Krishna used to stay in Vrindavan. Once, he visited Puri to fetch sandal pulp for the lord and on his way back stayed at this temple. During the sandhya aarti (evening prayer), the deity was provided 12 pots of Khir (called amrta keli, a milky-sweet preparation). Seeing which, Madhabendra felt the urge to taste it so that he could prepare the same at Vrindavan. That night, one pot of Khir went missing. The main priest of the temple, received an order from Lord Krishna in his dream, ‘I have stolen one pot of Khir& kept it under my cloth, delivered it to Madhabendra Puri’. The priest rushed to the sanctum sanctorum and found the pot under the deity’s cloth and then and there, carried the Khir to Goudiya math, 1.5km from the temple (where Madhabendra was sleeping).

We spent around 30 minutes in the temple, Bisuddha doesn’t like temple much, hence he mostly stayed outside. We took some pictures and then started for our next destination.

Our next stop was Devkund falls, in the Udala division of Similipal Forest (some ~ 75 km from Panchalingeswar). My memory is really vague about this place, I could hardly remember anything. In fact, I wouldn’t have mentioned it, if not for my conversation with Dipayan (phone call on 19th Jan’18), who forwarded me one of his pictures taken in this place.

As much I can remember right know it was a semi-dense forest covered with hills and had lakes formed by waterfalls (google search informed me one of it, is 50 ft high, total five falls, each creating a lake or Kund - Pancha Kunda). We climbed around 100-120 steps from Devkund to reach the temple of Devi Ambika Mata, it is a Satipith. The temple was built by the kings of Mayurbhanj in 1940. According mythologist, the waist portion of Sati fell here during Shiva Tandav. We offered our prayers and had tilak drawn on our forehead by the temple’s priest. We didn’t know about this place before, it is still not very famous. Hence not at all lavishly maintained. But maybe that’s why there was a sense of calmness, that we enjoyed. After taking some photos, we started travelling again.

We visited Russia Dam (locally known as Rishia Dam) next. Our driver told us elephants come here for water (from Tenda Elephant Sanctuary – as per google) - though we didn't saw any. A little bit of history about this place is, it was built adopting Russian technology hence named so. I would like to point out here, despite its calm and cleanliness I didn’t find anything of interest there. Seemed very much like an ordinary setting to me. We did saw a far better but lesser known dam later, I would come to that eventually.

It was the last place we visited for the day, our next stop being Panchalingeswar.

Around 4 PM, we reached the Panthanivas of Panchalingeswar, in the middle of a hillock of the Eastern Ghats. The geographical positioning of this Panthanivas is amazing. Our plan for the day was fulfilled but Dunku always planned ahead. After talking with the hotel receptionist, he fixed a local for our next sightseeing tour to Kuldiha forest and surrounding. Rest of the day was quite uneventful, except Gorkha started feeling under the weather.

DAY - 3: [PANCHALINGESWAR & KHUMKHUT DAM] – 3rd January 2015(Saturday):

On the next morning after breakfast we started hiking towards Panchalingeswar Shrine. Atop there was the deity, five lingams of Lord Shiva, covered with water always, as a water stream flows over them.

Legends differ about these lingams on their accounts. Some say, they were enshrined by Sita, others attribute King Banasur for their installation. One folklore is that, Purnachandra Mardaraj Harishchandan (local King) discovered the lingams here (Jarasandha, warrior- of Magadha, in saint’s disguise, guided Harishchandan to the lingams).

We saw a custom of deity worship there, one has to feel the lingas under the stream of water by lying flat on the rock, in some surrounding potion wearing shoes is not accepted. Hence one has to submit their shoes in one place for guarding in expense of Rs 5/- at the time. During our brief stay, a vocal scuffle broke out between some pandas (agents of temples around India, a most disgusting profession in my opinion) and a bengali elderly couple, due to them not wanting to remove their shoes. There I saw an ugly nature of Indian society once again, we hurt each other by breaking us apart; we fight reminding ourselves it is Hindus Vs Muslim or Bangals Vs Ghoti, if not then at least Bengalis Vs Orissas – we are never Indian enough.

It was sunny that day and we had to ascend ~250-275 stairs in order to reach the temple. Gorkha had taken ill. Due to his mild fever we let go of the opportunity of trekking further though the hilly jungles. We saw a few people marching ahead. We came down, I ( and may be Saptarsi also) brought a framed picture of Panchalingeswar Shiva and we proceeded for some following our lunch.

I become really happy thinking about this day because it was the day we visited Khumkhut Dam, even after being discouraged by both the locals and the situation. Gorkha had fever so after taking some medicine we were carrying with us he went to sleep; the day was done for Dhara too – he submerged himself in his famed ‘panacea’. But the rest three of us decided to visit Khumkhut.

We asked around and the Panthanivas reception told us there is nothing to see, so did some local shop owner. Some local even said they don’t even know about the place. I was thinking it must be some glorified detailing in some travel account best if we not waste any time looking for it. But Dipayan was adamant (and thankfully he was), ‘why waste time sitting idle in the hotel room? Rather let’s explore’. And as I pointed out before – he was the tour leader, hence we obliged.

Starting from the left side of Panchalingeswar stairs, we walked some 3-4 Kms (maybe, not sure at all) through muddy roads and rows of neatly-built tribal huts, with the outer walls

decorated with tribal motifs with curious, colorful tribal villagers eyeing us along the way. I was video recording our walk, here is a collection of some moments:

When we reached dam, we found out it is actually a pond, right in the middle of the forest, fed by rain water.

The dam must surely have been built to prevent the water from flooding the nearby tribal village. History tells, a king of the Harichandan dynasty built a watch tower to keep a watch and hunt animals that visited the pond. After the long walk it was a luxury for us to enjoy the silence and the serene waters of the dam, till we were joined by another group of labors from Madhya Pradesh who were working nearby and heard about this dam. It was perplexing to know that two groups from two different states had so much interest visiting this place and yet the locals seemed totally unappreciative of it beauty. Noteworthy here, the watch tower made by the king can be seen almost submerged within the pond. We returned happy and shared the details of our visit with the rest two. Our tour was almost over only the biggest disappointment was yet to be faced.

DAY - 4: [KULDIHA] –4th January 2015(Sunday)

The very encouragement for me to visit a forest is the desire to witness animals in their own habitat. Every opportunity I get to be in a forest, I consider it as a blessing. Trees, sound of cricket, soothing sound of flowing water and awe-filled humans among free spirited creatures, what more can you want. Alas!! this time we didn't get most of it.

The private safari arrangements we had made beforehand took us to the Kuldiha forest entry gate at 8AM that morning, the gate wasn't even open, it was well before the opening time. It seemed the driver has some sort of underhand settlement with the forest officials, after a brief phone conversation, someone came and opened the gate. We booked the tickets and started our tour.

The entire forest range area was made at a suitable location inside the forest, the solar panels seen suggested no day time electricity. We were promised a lot; squirrel, peacock, bison and whatnots but didn't find squat, not even a bird. This was the first time I was in a jungle which seemed soundless, no chirping, no hut-hut nothing, damm nothing. Can there be a forest without insects? (maybe they hide themselves, brutes!).

The car was racing through the jungle road. Our eyes were fixed towards every dangling branches and semi dense bush. We were silent, not in condition to express our feelings. All jungle creatures had become reclusive.

Our supposedly six-hour long safari ended within three, the driver tried to calm us - 'let's see some temples', he said. 'We are not the religious type', replied Dhara. Dunku called the safari arranger and lashed out resulting us back in the jungle for round two. This time for an hour or so, still no luck, only saving grace was jungle’s spread; and as it happens always I ran helter-skelter within the jungle after losing my camera cover (it was not lost, Gorkha hid it for fun).

We were dropped at the station at around 2PM probably, we took our lunch and waited for the return train (Dhauli again) which was some 6-7 hrs. late (hail Indian Railway!!), we entered Howrah at 1 AM-ish. That's it, the end.

I tried compiling a video with images from our trip to give the reader a taste of our trip, hope you like it:

Ibn Juzayy while scribing the travelling adventures of Ibn Battuta wrote, “traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” I am the former for sure, whether I can be called the later one or not, that’s for you to decide.

References:

1. “A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling” – (in short to “RIhla” or “The Journey”) By Ibn Juzayy.

2. Unabashed conversation among friends.