Travel to the south involves transiting in Orissa, usually at Bhubaneswar. This time, we halted at Cuttack, just for some variety.
This distance of 425 kms is done by pro drivers in 9 hours of no-break driving, but I was expecting to take longer. The usual breafast and lunch breaks add around 1.5 hours to the trip. My additional imponderable was the condition of the highways, given that Dana had spread her wings across Orissa just a couple of days earlier. A few videos of Balasore and Bhadrak bobbing up and down in the waters had not done much to boost my confidence.
But I was impressed. No impact on roads up to Cuttack, a bit of flooded fields here and there, and (here I did a double take), very few speed cameras. Either the gale had blown them away, or, what is more likely, Orissa govt took them down to prevent that bunch of costly equipment bring scattered all over Jharkhand.
Breakfast at Kolaghat (8.30 am)
We left at 6.30 am and had breakfast at Kolaghat (H. Anand shrieked its siren call) of masala dosa at 8.30 am.
Lunch at Panikoili (2.00 pm)
Lunch was at Panikoili, at a fantastic joint called Odianee, which only serves Odishi thalis. And what a spread. For just Rs 200/-, the veg thali, with some 10 veggies and rice, made its appearance. As we ate, more and more items appeared and at the last count, 22 veggies were served! Granted that the initial offerings were small morsels, but it was simply un-fini-shable! And I ordered a fish dish on top. Crazy servings, but not to be missed.
From around 1.30 pm, as we had entered Bhadrak, the cloudy sky finally got punctured and the moisturizing started, sometimes as drizzles and sometimes as downpours. Panna was having a spell at wheels at the time and she got some practice of driving in the rain on Indian highways. This was probably the last caress of the cyclone that had passed this way.
Mahanadi riverside (4.00 pm)
We reached Cuttack at around 4.00 pm. We had thought of visiting the Netaji Museum, but found that it is closed on Mondays. So we took a drive around the city before checking in. Cuttack is a small city, and from a driver's POV, quite chaotic, like a disturbed ant hill. Have you seen drone shots of a busy street intersection, played back in time lapse (fast forward) with groups of vehicles moving in fits and starts, completing their crossing in four or five attempts? Cuttack crossings are like that at normal film speed - no signals, no policemen, free for alls, with drivers and riders looking around with curious detachment, as if all life is a play. I got into the spirit of it thoroughly and deferred my onset of Alzeimers by a couple of years!
While crossing the Mahanadi into Cuttack, a friend of Panna advised us to take a peek at Mahanadi riverside. We thought it would be like a promenade, but it was just a footpath beside the river, with a huge black pipe disturbing the view. There was a Jobra Park nearby, which also did not look very impressive. We wished the authorities would really invest some money here, because it has the fundamentals of a fun-filled stretch right on the hammer. We spent around 20 mins here on the way to our hotel.
Located in a busy district of Link Road, Bishal Inn is basically a small business hotel with (and this was important), an adequate parking space. A cup of room-brewed tea and a Lays packet put us to rights and we jumped to our electronics - I to my travel blogging and Panna to her work-related blogging. Dinner will be in the room, as we carry rations like soup sachets and thepla. Anyway, the veggies from the Odishi thali were still greeting each other inside, so filling it had been.
Tomorrow we leave early morning for Vizag.
Photo credits: Panna Rashmi Ray
