Holy Water for Shiva

So today and the coming week is sheer indulgence for me for I have a guide, driver, comfortable car and for this night anyway a very nice room and soft mattress.  I came to this southern Orissa tribal area in 2000, on my bicycle, celebrating the millennium and a significant birthday – after riding from Goa to Pondicherry and up to Vizianagram via Madras I joined a group of Action Aid riders and we rode through the tribal areas to advertise that leprosy was curable and raising funds by sponsorship.  We visited medical centres and hospitals and eventually I went back to a hospital and worked there for a while – physiotherapy and plastering over 100 digits each night to keep them from curling up after an operation.  Today we left Puri at 6.45 am and arrived at Rayaghara 11 ½ hours later – we drove the 400 ks and the last 145 were over the most atrocious single track roads so at times we were at walking pace.  Before leaving there was a puja in the car, offering hibiscus leaves to Ganesh who sat on the dashboard and as we left the town another puja was made at the Kali temple where people were also making one on entering.  To begin with the roads were fine, through paddy fields, passing coconut, oil, date and toddy palms, banana plantations and lots of ponds, rivers and the largest lake in Asia – the Chilika – where devotees were lining up to catch boats out to a Shiva Temple on an island.  Much of the road was on a causeway and there were lots of places where mud was being excavated to make bricks and in the process a new pond.  Stopped for a thali lunch and sped on.  To begin with many men were wearing lungis, turned up so they looked like short skirts under protuberant bellies but their torsos were naked.  Later on it seemed most men were in trousers and shirts and the women in saris.  We passed this procession of ladies with ‘holy’ water in pots on their heads following a tuktuk which contained an effigy of Shiva which was surrounded by dancing men and a band.  They were off to install Shiva and inaugurate his new temple.  The priests had performed a puja in the local river for 5 hours to make it holy enough for the ladies to retrieve enough  water for the bowls.  Then we passed Tattapani where there are hot springs which 17 years ago we visited to ease our aching bike muscles and drove  on into the mountains.  It was the last day of elections in Orissa so no one was at work but men were hanging around in the villages hoping to hear the results.  It meant there wasn’t much traffic which was a bonus on a single track road full of craters.  Many villages had volleyball pitches in full use but I cannot understand though how the inhabitants of villages can just throw away their rubbish on the outskirts and watch their plastic being blown over their fields. The most impressive memory of the day was seeing the huge mango trees in full blossom and the jungle covered mountains…PICASA PICS