We
started our journey from Howrah station by Dhauli express in the early
morning of 28 Dec, 2012 .
Our
train left exactly at 6 AM. Due to the foggy condition, the
train was running slow . Therefore, we reached Balasore Railway Station
(BRS) of Orrisa at 10:20 AM, late by a hour, instead of schedule time 9:26 AM .
We were eight (8) friends in our group. We hired an eight sitter Tata Sumo from
BRS and reached Chandipur, 16 km away from Balasore at 11:10 AM. Luckilly
we managed a 6 bedded room at Orrisa Tourism Development Corporatin (OTDC)
Panthanivas which is right in front of the Chandipur sea beach on the Bay of
Bengal. This beach is unique in that the water recedes from 1 to 4 kilometers
during ebb tide . The whole day we enjoyed a lot at the beach .
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chandipur sea beach
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| chandipur sea beach..... |
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| chandipur sea beach during the time of ebb tide...... |
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| chandipur sea beach...... |
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| chandipur sea beach... |
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| our group at the chandipur sea beach.. |
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| chandipur sea beach during the high tide.... |
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| chandipur sea beach during the high tide.... |
Next day,
on 29 Dec, we hired a Bolero car from a local travel agency and left for
Devkund at 9 AM. On the way we visited Buribalam and Gopinath temple. Buribalam
is the place where the river Buribalam meets the Bay of Bengal . It is very
near to Chandipur . We saw a number of fishing boats there. The villages
on both the sides of Buribalam river are fishermen’s villages .
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fishing boat at buribalam...
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Gopinath temple...
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some arts at the Gopinath Temple's wall...
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On
the way we stopped for lunch at around 12:30 PM at a restaurant named
Kalyani. Then about 2:15
PM, we reached Devkund. We saw Devkund
waterfalls, then left Devkund about 4 PM. Our next destination was
an ecofriendly cottage named “Sun and Moon’s Dale “ at Panchalingeswar, at the
Eastern Edge of the beautiful & hilly Kuldiha Forest range. We
reached there at 6:30 PM and had our dinner there . The owner of this
ecotourism cottage is a Bengalee lady from Kolkata named Ms. Sonali Mukerjee,
with a local Oria share holder, Mr.Manoranjan Das who takes care of this
ecotourism cottage. We got delicious homemade food here.For more information visit Mr. Das's web http://www.kuldihasafari.com/
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kalyani palace Restaurant where stopped to
had our lunch on the way to Devkund....
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on the way to devkund....
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| devkund waterfalls... |
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| temple at devkund falls... |
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| a small falls at devkund... |
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me with my friend nilu at the devkund falls....
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Devkund water falls
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| the roof of the temple at devkund.... |
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| Lord Hanuman at devkund temple.... |
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| Lord Ganesh at devkund temple..... |
Next
day on 30th December, in the early morning at 6 o’clock we proceeded to climb
up 360 steps to reach Panchalingeswar temple at the hilltop. After
visiting the temple, we left the place at 8:30 AM for our next destination of
Kuldiha Forest Center at the very Center of the Forest range. For
visiting the Center, we had to get a permit from the Forest office located in a
nearby small town Nilagiri. After securing the permit, we bought and
packed some prepared vegetables and rice from the Nilagiri market for lunch.
Nilagiri is also locally famous for its delicious sweets like Rasogolla,
Rasomalai, etc. So we tasted some sweets from there as well. After
reaching the Kuldiha Forest Center, we had our packed lunch from Nilagiri at a
forest rest house . We spent about two and a half an hour in the forest
and saw some deer and giant squirrels and heard various types of bird’s songs,
but not lucky enough to see any elephant.
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| on the way to panchalingeswar |
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| eco friendly cottages at panchalingeswar.... |
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| at panchalingeswar....... |
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| morning view from panchalingeswar temple... |
After
leaving the forest on the way back to BRS, we visited the palace of Nilgiri’s
king. The hired car dropped us in the evening of 30th Dec at BRS. We
spent the night in a hotel near the station . Next day on 31 dec we boarded Jan
Shatabdi express from BRS at 9 AM and reached Howrah Station at 1 PM. That
ended our marvelous journey of Chandipur, Panchalingeswar and Kuldiha Forest of
orrisa.
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| kuldiha forest.... |
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a mini natural water reserver where elephant often comes...
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| palace of Nilgiri's king....... |
This is my first blog .Thank you Aleya Fufu and Dadu for encouraging me.......
