Bicycle Ride and Konark Sun Temple

 A bicycle tour through the countryside...

and local villages. 

 A professional coconut climber, who harvests and trims dead fronds.

 Animals are everywhere.

 Our local lunch stop.

 Langur and baby.

 The laundry business.

 Every village has a pond for washing and bathing.

A beautiful house in the painter's village.

Konark Sun Temple.

 One of twelve wheels around its base.

Monday, April 9^th.

After a quick breakfast, Pulak picked us up in his company car with his driver and we drove to his house/office. We were going on a bicycle tour. The idea of riding a bicycle here, I must admit was a bit daunting but, nothing ventured nothing experienced (or something like that). The bikes were brand new hybrid type Riverside bikes with no gears. We set off on small back roads and trails, all of which were either paved or cemented, but there were lots of speed bumps and the usual obstacles: cows, dogs, pedestrians, motorbikes, tuk tuks and the odd car. But, it was much better than the bigger roads.

We rode for about three hours, through some lovely countryside and several small villages. We watched the locals farming, socializing, making bricks, fetching water, herding goats, bathing, doing laundry and climbing coconut trees. Yes, we saw a man whose profession is climbing coconut trees. He said he climbing up to fifty a day. Apparently, this is a dying profession. The trees are climbed to harvest the coconuts and prune the tree removing dead fronds that could potentially hurt someone if they fell on them. Further on we watched a man weaving the fronds into matts. All along the way Pulak stopped to interact with the locals. He travels through here with tourists regularly and has made many connections with the people. We talked to a kindergarten teacher while her charges sat and ate the lunch outside. We saw a couple of langur monkeys. We watched a brickmaker making bricks. He was very efficient and although he made them individually in a one brick mould, he made about four bricks per minute and then would carry them across the yard, pop them out of the moulds and bring them back to start again. As we watched I thought that the man worked hard, with no opportunity for retirement or pension and would probably work until he died. Every village has a pond or pool that is fed from ground water. They are used for washing clothes, bathing and cooling off from the heat. Some of them look fairly clean, others are obviously polluted or congested with weeds. The women bathe fully clothed and the men usually keep their privates covered. We came to a river where there was obviously a laundry business or a community laundry collective. There were dozens of lines all hung with bed sheets, sarees and clothes. There were people standing in the water and beating clothes on rocks. Looking at the river, I wondered if they were beating the dirt out of the material or beating it into the material.

We stopped at a little shop for lunch, which was beans and deep fried potato pieces on a grain like couscous and a masala chai (a tea with milk and sugar and spiced with dry basil, nutmeg, dry ginger, green cardamom and black pepper). Shortly after that we left the bikes with a truck and walked a bit to the painter’s village, which is a little community where some painters live. They paint temples and patterns on houses. The village was small and had numerous painted houses and a few shops selling touristy stuff.

At that point, it was very hot and Liz and Will decided to head back to the hotel. Nico and I went with Pulak and his driver to the World Heritage site of the Konark Sun Temple. It was about an hour drive and we stopped at a little restaurant for lunch. The Konark Temple is an 11^th century sandstone temple with hundreds of intricate carvings of gods, dancers, and some kama sutra positions. There are six large carved wheels on either side of the main building and people believe it was meant to be a large chariot. Unfortunately, its position near the sea has caused it to be weathered quite badly and the large stupa at the rear has collapsed. The whole complex was abandoned when the Buddhists fell into decline when the Hindus took over, and it was lost and buried beneath sand. It wasn’t ‘rediscovered’ until the British were in power. As a result the carvings, although impressive are weathered and look brittle. The main building is surrounded on three sides by scaffolding, but according to Pulak little restoration is happening, probably from lack of funds from UNESCO, since Trump pulled the US out. We wandered around there for an hour in the blazing heat, before going back to the hotel where we immediately made use of the pool.

I used the spare time to get the hotel to print nine documents I need for upcoming trips, flight tickets and hotel and trip vouchers.

We met up for dinner at 7:00 at the bakery next door where we said goodbye to Pulak. He is an amazing man and has been a wealth of information to us. Will, Liz, Nico and I had pizza and were joined by Tomo, who wanted to say goodbye to us.

Then we were off to bed as we have a very early start tomorrow.