Kolkata / Puri trip – Puri portion

yousaybenares

As for Puri, I took 12 hour sleeper train down to there from Kolkata and stayed at Z Hotel for almost 3 weeks. There have been other IM’ers referring to Z Hotel so I won’t go into too much detail here. It is wonderful ‘sanctuary’ from rest of India, if that is what you are looking for. There are lots of community spaces (garden, TV room, rooftop) within hotel grounds, staff is wonderful and fellow guests (mostly foreigners) are mostly engaging. If you happen to meet the owner, who stops by on occasion at the hotel, say “Hi from Paris” for me (is another story) – he is interesting guy who likes to discuss the world at large (politics, environment, Puri itself, etc.) and is into Grateful Dead music.

Puri itself has lots of good fish and seafood, decent beaches once you get around the fishing village ‘dumping’ grounds (or take moped or bus out of city and get to cleaner area), and a handful of Internet access places (I like Halla Gulla – they also sell CDs there and have a sweet pet dog that sleeps underneath the computer cabinets).

I met up with IM’er ‘Rangers’ via another friend and we talked about some environmental issues particular to Puri and Orissa. One issue is about trying to get the fishing villagers to stop crapping on the beaches. The Indian gov’t is supposed to have offered to build faciilties for them and would only charge 1RS per use, but even at that rate is too much for large families to afford, so meanwhile tourists not happy and hotel owners not happy. I also heard that fishing villagers are from another state altogether and somehow are voting twice, once in each state. Their voting bloc may be why the beach-as-a-toilet situation is at a standstill.

The second concern is that of the Olive ridley turtles who come to lay eggs in specific regions of Orissa. Their nesting grounds are being threatened by some plans to build a new harbor, as well as other issues. I’m no expert on either of these – so if interested you can read articles in various Indian papers and/or ask Rangers’ or other folk here at IM.

I found Puri to be a most relaxing place and I tried to do as little as possible so you will need to read up elsewhere to get more ‘active’ account on what to do there.

(I posted pic of Z Hotel garden and Puri beach in Kolkata forum as I started trip there)

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The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing.

rangers

Hi Man
How are u?and where are u at present?
Dave is still here at Puri,we met on the film festival.The festival was all fine.
Now we have one member from Taiwan thru HC.org
and Dave is showing her around puri and chilka lake.
If u have any good pictures from puri..will u mind sharing?
smiles
sanjay

yousaybenares

Hi there Rangers! I am back in US and very sorry to have missed Puri film festival. I had to take train out the first night of it and get back to Kolkata. Also sorry never got to Rangers itself and the full moon walk. Hope you guys got good audience, appreciation and more press for film fest.

I put a few pictures of Puri under the Kolkata writeup area since was combined trip for me, but if no objection from higher powers will post those and a couple others here as well.

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rangers

Nice to hear from u.thx for the pictures.