Puri-Konark trip - Advice needed

Hi,

Planning a 3 day trip to Puri-Konark-Bhubaneshwar from April 16th to April 19th. Need some advice on it.

1) which part of Puri beach area is the cleanest?, names of sea facing hotels (not too expensive, but should be extremely cleam) in that area.

2) Sightseeing places in and around Puri and Konark.

3) Does Bhubaneshwar warrant a visit and a night halt? Or can we skip the place and spend all three days in Puri. We do have a morning flight out of Bhubaneshwar on April 19th.

Any advice would be highly appreciated.

The best place (clean and silent) in Puri is the new Marine Drive area. You can find many good hotels here. For sight seeing I would sugest you to take a car from Puri for a day and the will show you all the places (Konark, Bhubaneswar, etc.). The next day you can visit Chilka Lake by car.

regards
Sayantan

Yes ! IMO, Bhubneshwar is must visit. It has amazing temples.

At Konark, The Sun Temple (Black Pagoda) is great.

At Puri, you may look Hotel Z.

There are many sea facing hotels but don't go too far, I was surprised to see a Cremation ground amidst hotels there.

Yeah. The cremation ground is called Swargadwar (Gateway of Heaven) and many people prefer to stay there. The main market is at Swargadwar.

Stay there till they need it.?

The new marine drive road is a very nice spot. The hotels are quite good here. One can try this area.

Hey Guys, Thanks for the valuable tips.

New Marine Drive seems to be the best place to stay. I checked up Hotel Z, I guess they dont have AC rooms though. And mid april - dont think we can do w/o AC....Any other names?

Any idea what the temp might be during that time...Hope not over 40degree (as somebody was trying to frighten me)

Are the caves near Bhubaneshwar worth a dekho?

All,

Can anybody tell me if Hotel Sonar Bangla, on New Marine Road is a good hotel for our stay.

Thanks

Don't miss Konark beach. Barkul is the place to visit Chilka.
For stay in Puri have you checked OTDC's Pantha nivas? I had stayed there many many moons ago and it was quite good.

I stayed at Panth Niwas in Konark, when I visited Puri for Rath Yatra. It's very close to the Sun Temple and is excellent value for money.

I did stay a few nights at Pantha nivas Konark too. The evening walk to the beach thru lines of Casurina trees was great. Another wonderful part of staying here is that you can watch sun rise from the sun temple and see how the first rays of Sun falls on the face of the temple, a thing not to be missed.

JyotiDa,

I also did, but after dark it's tough finding some vehicle to come back to the Panthniwas and it's a long long walk. Having reasonably good food at Konark was also a big problem . I hope it has improved lately.

Bhubaneswar is avoidable unless you are a hardcore temple enthusiast. Pandas at Lingraj temple
are real pushy and all these temples are identical, more or less.
Nandankanan Zoo is nothing special.
I would rather stay 3 nights in Puri and visit Konarak and Chilka. Coast between Puri and Konark is amazing, forests and rivers snaking thru.

On New Marine Drive, you can try Hotel Shubham also. There are a lot of hotels and mostly those are new and well maintained. Do not really remember all the names. You can also try the PanthaNivas.
A stay in Bhubaneswar is not required. You will find many package tours from Puri which will cover the Lingaraja Temple, Mukteswar Temple, Udaygiri and Khandagiri caves in Bhubaneswar, along with the Sun Temple in Konark and the beach in Konark, Nandankanan Zoo etc. It can easily be done in a day. But as you guys are planning to take a flight from Bhubaneswar, you can stay overnight in Bhubanswar after the sightseeing.
Also, you should spend a day in Puri itself, visit the Jagannath Temple and other local attraction, enjoy the beach. A full day is needed for chilka.

We had borrowed two cycles during our last trip. During my student days that's ancient history now we had stayed in the fisher man's village just before the spot where Chandrabhaga river meets the sea.
Yes getting good food was a problem then. I remember that during our last stay we ate rice & egg curry for three consecutive nights
But the two sun rises made up for that though.