Pune to Puri - Bike Trip: Day 4

Monday the 10th was not starting too well ... "Orissa bandh" was being issued by some party! Wasted a good five hours of our time ... we were cooling off our heels till about 13:00 hours. At least we got to have an amazingly tasty lunch waiting for the road to clear.

Post lunch we were off to Konark and Puri. The NH5 is excellent and no complaints whatsoever. We took the Puri diversion from the highway heading off to Pipli. The road to Konark turns left from inside Pipli market. This turn (as they usually are!) is also quite “miss-able”. The road to Konark is all two lane and quite narrow inside the small villages, so maintaining high peed was not possible.

We halted at Konark to keep our bags in the hotel room, to head off to see the Sun temple and then Puri. That day being "Orissa bandh" meant that the Konark temple was
closed for the day.

The drive to Puri was very memorable ... 40 kms of amazing road ... no lights on the road expect the headlights of our bikes ... hearing the waves crashing on our left and hoping that we don't bang into the cattle that might be sitting in the middle of the road.. :)

The road right up to Puri village is like this, but once you enter Puri village, you know you have reached a typical "devasthan".

The ride back to Konark was not as scary knowing we had made it to our destination in four days and everything had been good so far!

The pictures of the trip have been uploaded at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/shantanu.gadgil/Pune2Puri