Bird’s eye view
Another day, another 200 km. We covered this in 5 hours today, notwithstanding half an hour spent in various halts.
We did not have any touristy places to cover during the travel, but that does not mean it was without excitement.
Roads were uniformly good, except for a 5 km stretch that was exceptionally bad. The NHs were excellent, a pleasure to drive on, with or without music. Even the SH was very good.
Weather was definitely warmer, giving us a precursor of what we to expect on the banks of the mighty Mahanadi.
Let’s break it down.
Leaving Daringbadi (9.00 am)
We left Daringbadi quietly, without fuss, after having partaken of their standard breakfast of puri-bhaji and poha. However, I think that the cook had overslept, because the poha was definitely undercooked. Anyway, a full tummy is a full tummy. Usne to 'puri' koshish ki.
Nor had we been deprived of the early morning sunrise, as the energy-supplier rose over a bank of hazy mountains. We did not insist on stopping at any viewpoint as it was evident that no better view than the current one could be managed by the Almighty.
Our route would be a bit west, then north, then east to reach Satkosia (see map above). So we skimmed along NH69, a beautiful vista of saal and mango trees.
A word about mango trees here - Orissa is chock full of them. The flowers were in full bloom and often the complete tree would look quite white. Its hairstyle would be further enhanced by green and red leaves hanging in bunches, so that all in all, the mango tree would look like a character from Manga comics (very apt, what?). But we found no speciality of the region, except for a breed called Miyazaki from the Kalahandi desert, whose kilo pips the post at a couple of lakhs. No aam mango, this.
A bit before Balliguda, we veered northward towards Phulbani, which turned out to be a prosperous town, where we turned eastward and hit SH1, which, though narrower than the NH, was a beautiful piece of work. Since we had been on the go for two hours, we stopped in the shade of a tree, added some caffein to hot water, munched some peanuts, and gave a little relief to our cramped legs and varicose veins. Locals walked and cycled by, to all purposes pretty disinterested in us.
A word about the average Orissa inhabitant. He is a thoroughly decent fellow, helpful and caring, even to strangers, and quick to smile. But many of them do not speak beyond Oriya. My efforts at Hindi and Bengali often fell flat, and my college dumb charades had to save the day.
And speaking of communication, we were concerned to note that even the slightest forested stretch or hilly area would show a rapidly diminishing signal strength. This, I found, was a lacuna left behind by the previous government. Even Uttarakhand, though patchy, was not this butterfingered at dropping calls.
Reaching Satkosia (2.00 pm)
Satkosia boasts of the Satkosia Tiger Reserve on the southern bank of Mahanadi, and Tikarpada national park on the north bank. In fact, we drove through a bit of the Satkosia Tiger Reserve. So short was the interval, however, between ‘You are entering STR’ and ‘You are leaving STR’, that I suspected that the whole STR must be like a park bench in the middle of a clearing, with the message ‘Reserved for tigers’ painted in white on its back.
Satkosia Sands is more commonly approached from Bhubaneswar in the east, and that road, though a narrow concrete one, was in good condition. However, when arriving from Phulbani side in the west along an SH, we leave the SH for a short jump north to connect to the above mentioned concrete road. That short jump, around 5-6 kms, marked ‘Bad road’ in the map, presented us with the first of our tough events.
Picture this. A concrete road ten feet wide, winding through the head high shrubbery. I turned a bend, and a motorbike, carrying a young man, his wife and probably his father, was suddenly upon us. I stood on my brakes and veered as much left as I could. The rider did his best between steering away yet not skidding, but still - boom! The side of his front shockers slammed into my right fender. I got down, really worried about their health. Luckily, not a scratch on either of the three of them. In fact, the man was a bit apologetic about damaging my car. We wished each other the best in life and carried on. I don’t know whether we could have got away without a single recrimination or advice in any other situation we could think of. As I said, the Oriyas are decent people.
The second challenge was the short stretch of 5 kms or so, naming which ‘Bad road’ is like calling Adolf Hitler ‘Bad boy’. Even a snake would have found the terrain extremely undulating. I was glad that the Punch sports strong shockers and a slightly higher ground clearance, which enabled it to manoeuvre without bottoming out. Nevertheless, when we exited to the final cemented road, the car was covered in red dust and looked like the second lead car in Mad Max 2.
And then the third twist in the tale. We had just negotiated entry past a forest department barrier and were just 5 minutes away from our destination, when we found the road blocked and a series of trucks sitting there, their drivers playing cards. For some reason, the ten feet wide concrete road was being relaid en-bloc for some fifty feet. I could see the wet concrete shimmering, which meant at least a day of no thoroughfare. I got down to enquire with the people how to deal with this, in pantomime of course. True blue villagers and workmen speak only Oriya. The supervisor gestured in an arc over the paddy field, encircling a truck and a shovel grazing there, indicating I should get into the field too and drive around them and climb back onto the road beyond the fifty feet of shimmering concrete. I was flummoxed, because my Punch did not look like a tractor. “Really?” I pantomimed. “Stop being a namby pamby and get your ass into the field,” he pantomimed back. So I did. Luckily, the ground was lumpy and soft and not slushy, so although the Punch had a wheel in the air sometimes, like a bulldog looking for a favourite lamppost, it finally clambered out. We had to do this twice more, wondering whether there was enemy action involved, as Bond would had conjectured, but that was the last obstacle, and we rolled into the Satkosia Sands Resort, another OFDC venture.
The resort is on the banks of the Mahanadi. It has some permanent cottages slightly higher up but interesting, in winter months when the river shrinks, exposing sandy banks on both sides, this resort sets up around twenty Swiss tents, which are again removed after three months, once the season is over.
We had rented one such tent for the night. A fairly big room with an attached bath, it was quite comfortable, though the weather was hotter than we expected (34 degC). Being an all-meal-included package, we were shooed to the lunch shamiana, where six solicitous ladies served the two of us to a very good meal. Once again, OFDC cooking came through.
Sunset on the Mahanadi (5.30 pm)
We were tired after the long drive and went to sleep, heat notwithstanding. There was a possibility of doing a boat ride in the afternoon, for seeing muscular crocodiles in particular, but since Panna has a ‘good from far’ relationship with the species, we watched the sunset from our bit of Mahanadi sands and shed no crocodile tears.
The resort organises a folk dance performance when guests are there, a standard performing group being on contract with them. We were set up on cane chairs and tables on the sand, while musicians and two dancers played out a comic drama in front of us on a square of packed sand. Tea and pakoras filled the void inside, while the sky and clouds filled the void outside, putting us in a philosophic mood. Meanwhile, since the smart repartee of the actors were all in Oriya, the void inside our minds continued, with Panna and I trying to guess the storyline. Performers here also have a funny trait of performing for each other on stage, not looking at the audience at all. After the final lack of applause had died down, we asked another Oriya couple who were watching, slapping their thighs in mirth, what the hell was all that about, and they explained about a couple separated for 12 years, who describe their partners to their well wishers, and even when they finally meet, are suspicious about each other’s authenticity. All very sentimental and philosophic, just the way comedy is supposed to be. This was the ‘Kela Keluni’ dance form, we were told, that usually highlights tribal life. A couple of days ago, this same group had performed the ‘Sakhi Nata’ style. Probably quite a well-known group in these parts.
The temperature has dropped a bit and the night is really pleasant. The fan air in the tent feels cold. There is mild light in the sky from the half moon, which looks like ‘a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas’, as Walter de la Mare would put it. We will sleep well tonight, since we have dined well too.
Tomorrow we travel to Keonjhar.
Photo credits: Panna Rashmi Ray
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