Now that the plan is fixed to Puri Jaganath and Bhuvneshwar. All the flights to Puri are in day time and its just 1.15 hrs from Hyderabad. From Bhuvneshwar Airport take a cab to Puri Beach(which is 60kms) and this location has all the hotels along side the beach road. Now, let's go to the different places which are a part of my itinerary.

Places to Visit in Puri

Day 1:

Puri Jaganath Temple: The very first thing anyone needs to do is to visit this temple and then roam to other locations. Puri Jaganath temple is about 3 to 5kms from beach road and you can either book a cab through the hotels(for overall trip) / the mini autos / 7 seater autos / rent a bike. There is no uber / ola. Started at 11 am from hotel took an auto to Puri temple

Puri Jaganath temple has entrance in all the 4 corners of which there is only 1 main entrance. The autos will take some sort of short cuts and drop you at their convenient entrance gate and do you know what non-Puri or non-Odisha people are not allowed at any other entrance.

The minute I reached main entrance, I really wanted to return back just seeing the half km queue and each queue had 10 divisions like 100000000s..... of people were already waiting to enter the temple 😨. And there were some guides who were running around people stating "give x amount of money we will skip the queue" and take to the main entrance directly. But I was so skeptical to choose as I felt they might just loot money and run away. The guide who approached us was talking as if he was drunk and I really did not want to believe any of his words, but when my mom tried to talk and understand looks like that's his way of talking. However, he was a good decent guide and he said he would take the money only after the darshan is done and after we reach exit gate.

During all this something very good happened, I got to see "Jay Shetty". I already follow him on instagram, linkedIn. He is such a great personality who came there with his family in such simple clothes and no security. Without any thought I directly walked to him and said I know you and nice to see you and his family members said he is here for temple visit so let's give him his privacy. I said sure not at all a problem, but trust me my eyes were only on him damn such a simple person and he does look good. At least for few minutes my mind got diverted from the long queues / crowd😋.

Skipping the longest queues, the guide takes us to the temple entrance gate(Note: No Phones are allowed, you have a stall near the entrance). The minute the entrance gate was opened OMG people were running, pushing you from all the sides, hardly any place to breathe. I was so damn afraid that people would hurt my mom I just cant explain what was going through my mind then, of course it was not good thought just because of the crowd. Guide saw the struggle and half way through entrance he took us through some other route where he showed us "the bhog / food gets prepared everyday, the 2 wells from where they use the water for the food", then he took us inside the temple where you get to see Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra from a distance and crowd shouting, pushing etc etc. That one view of god is enough to fulfill your wishes. Within the temple surroundings there's a tree where in you are allowed to touch or get the blessings only if you are paying 500 INR and you get to make 3 wishes(and tell it no one). Also, you can provide Anadanam / food by paying X amount to the donation centre inside the temple. The temple is too tall and the place is too big, it took an hour or 2 for the above.

The famous sweets at Puri Jagannath temple is "Khaja", half km to the right of temple entrance is the "Old original Nrusingha sweets" and its just yum

Mausi Maa Temple: Visit this next as this is close by to Puri Temple

Shree Gundicha Temple: This temple remains closed always except the 11 days of the yatra every year

Lokanatha Temple: This temple is surrounded by water, it was closed by the time I visited(4 pm)

Mata Math Temple: This temple is just wow, Wow, WOw and WOW. Every corner, right left all the sides there is some or the other statue, beautiful art, so many big sculptures just mind blowing.

Omkareshwar Temple: This is on the route to Puri beach. This temple has 100s of shiv lings.

Day 1 started at 11 am and it was 5pm by the time we covered all this. Remaining time can be spent on the beach and street food along the beach

Day 2:

Chilka Lake: This is 60kms from Puri beach, it is better to start by 9 am as it takes 1 n half n hour min to reach this place. Once you reach the location you need to register for the boat which has 2 routes

Route 1: Chilka lake + Red Crabs + Dolphins --> ~3500 INR ~ 3hrs to 4 hrs

Route 2: Chilka lake + Red Crabs + Dolphins + stopping at island --> ~4500 INR ~ 3hrs to 4 hrs

Irrespective of any number of members(not greater than max members per boat) you are charged only 3500 / 4500. However no 2 families coming in 2 different cars are not allowed to book 1 boat. As it was just me and mom we wanted to pair up with other families but we weren't allowed to do so because all the cab drivers and the registration collection team had a tie up. So we were charged 7000 for 4 ppl(2 diff families) just to use 1 boat.

When the ride starts its good, but after a while it gets bored. I did sleep on the boat as I had nothing else to do 🙈. I was assuming that I would see Red crabs crawling by the shore, but they got those in a tub and showed us, then they started showing us different varities of shells and sea animals. Never knew that animals had so much talent 😁, they can make pearls, 9 colored gem, yellow gem, red gem etc etc .and they showed us live muscles in the shell and removed pearls from them. Please don't get surprised like me as they sell those for huge amounts, do bargain at 75% rate if they say 1000 ask for 250 max. Just seeing our 2 families as good customers the guy earned 10k per family by selling those to us. Later got to know we can get that for a much less rate.

Later they take you to doplhin site, all the boats were going behind the 3 dolphins. It is good to watch dolphins but the dolphins are afraid and running away seeing those many boats. Min 20 boats were surrounded 😓

After sometime they stopped at an island which leads to Bay of Bengal ocean. The water and beach was no neat you hardly get 30 mins to spend on the island.

By the time we reached the start point it was 5pm. So the route which we need to go back to Puri the whole way had all the cows/ bulls etc etc sitting in middle of the road and hardly any place for the vehicles to go. So just be careful do leave this location before 4pm else its difficult to cross this place when the time cross 5pm.

Alarnath Temple: So on the way to puri you can find this temple. It was dark by the time we reached.

Day 3:

All the flights to Hyderabad are after 5:30 pm. Checkout from the hotel and visit the below which is on the way to Bhuvneshwar Airport

Panchmukh Temple
Ramchandi Temple
Chandra Bagha beach

Konark Museum / Sun Temple / Craft market: The muesum shows the history of the Konark Sun Temple and the temple architecture is just amazing. I got goose bumps every min I started seeing the depth of the stone cravings. Konark is known for Kajus so you get to see many Kaju stalls in the craft market.

Linganath Temple: This temple has 108 different god and goddess temples and same questions popped out "How many years , how many people were involved in building this temple"

Raja Rani Temple: This is a calm serene place

Murdeshwar Temple
Ram Madir

Back to Airport Our flight was at 8:45 pm, we could peacefully cover all these places without any hurry

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