Simlipal -> Lodhasuli

Bird’s eye view 

A quick travel upto Lodhasuli today, with nothing much to write about, or so we thought. Lodhasuli was to be a simple break point on the way home. Travel distance was short, around 180 km, although we knew that the first 40 kms in the forest would be slow. We finally spent 6.5 hrs on the road. Travel was a mixture of the slow trundle (forest), the hanging around (riverside), panic (getting lost), bouncing around (road repairs), and a wow ending. 

But let’s not let the cat out of the bag yet. 

Leaving Baheripani in Simlipal (9.30 am) 

Since our expected run was around 4 hours and there was no point in reaching Lodhasuli before lunch, we had a late wake up (7.00 am in spite of our honest efforts at sleeping in). We lazed around the sit-out drinking tea and chatting with the caretaker. I was quite intrigued by their lack of connectivity and asked him what happens in case of medical needs? What I meant was, what do they do if a guest has a heart attack or something. His mind refused to latch onto guests, and he said that the nearest medical facility was 50 kms away, and the locals depended on their own home-grown remedies! Hell, the nearest phone signal was 5 kms away, at the viewpoint of the Baheripani waterfall. Talk of being disconnected. Only BSNL works a bit here. Panna found a boy scrolling on his phone, because he had BSNL, and promptly borrowed a hotspot from him to send a few messages. But this cannot be a system, of course. Panna cannot be here all the time. 

The party broke up when we went to the dining hall to partake some well-made alu parathas, followed by three games of carom. Yes, there are TT boards and a volleyball court out here too, essential entertainments in a no network area. Today, we had the whole place to ourselves, but apparently many guests will arrive today for the weekend. 

We rolled out at 9.30 am, determined to give an approximation of slow-cycling with our Punch. The morning drive through the forests was as beautiful as ever, with saal leaves fluttering through the air to add to the inch-thick layer on the ground. It was lovely not to be under time pressure, and in Simlipal forest, literally the journey is the destination. 

The Khairi river (11.00 am) 

After an hour of driving, having crossed the small mountain we had negotiated while coming in, we again found the small Khairi river hugging the road we were travelling on. However, it had decided to negotiate a bunch of boulders at that point and had become a bit aggressive and noisy, like a kid who unexpectedly meets his classmates at the cinema hall. 

We climbed down a serpentine path to the river and spent almost an hour on its banks, so peaceful was the surrounding. Panna loves nothing better than water. It takes a bit of persuasive skill to hold her back from flitting across the river like a skipping stone. Nonetheless, she dangled her feet in the rapids to her heart’s content, while I looked on indulgently. God has this habit of pulling things out of his eternal hat, mostly pleasant, so we both thanked him for this unexpected gift. 

Lunch at Baheragora (3.30 pm) 

Yes, that’s right, 3.30 pm. You might as well ask what happened? Well, three things happened that delayed our lunch so inordinately. 

Firstly, we left Simlipal and arrived at Jashipur, the town on NH49 that is the gateway to Simlipal, at 12.30 pm itself. Our alu parathas were still partying inside our tummies, refusing to carry on and make place for the next round of guests. So we decided that we would pop into a dhaba only when we were hungry, and kept driving. 

But who knew NH49 was like a yogi practising abstinence - it refused to yield any suitable eating place till almost 2.30 pm. At that point, we were ready to dive into any ramshackle dhaba, when suddenly the police sitting beside the highway waved a stick at us and told us to explore village roads for a while. The highway ahead was blocked for some unexplained reason. 

Well, I mean to say, what? It’s not that I dislike beautiful forest-lined tarmac roads (anyway NH49 was pretty bad at places with the road repairs going on), we had sort of had our fill in the last few days, and we would have liked to be moving steadily homewards, and not travelling at right-angles to our intended direction. Google maps had no clue as to our future course and kept telling me peevishly to "take a U turn” or else. Gradually we met a few cars coming the other way, diverted by stick wielding cops at that end, no doubt, and their scowls cheered me up a bit, because that told us that we were on the right path. 

So after a detour of around 20 kms, with sub-diversions and sub-sub-diversions inside the bucolic backroads, we finally emerged on the highway again, with an audible sigh from Google maps, who was probably ready to pack up and go home for the day, read the paper on his recliner, and argue with Alexa. 

We had just one hour to go to Lodhasuli, and only Baheragora in front of us seems to be a junction where food might be available. We received our third shock when we turned right, for the final run to Lodhasuli, and there was nothing in sight. Future travellers, beware. Between Jashipur and Lodhasuli, there is hardly any food joint worth the name. 

We finally turned into Satkar Dhaba, a middling joint, but with surprisingly good food. Both Panna’s chicken and my fish were excellent, and my additional veggies were exactly the healthy dose the body needed. 

Reaching Lodhasuli (4.00 pm) 

It was a very short run to Lodhasuli, a forest zone, where our accommodation was located. Lodhasuli was a notoriously dangerous area in my youth, infamous for robbers, and cars would tend not to travel solo, and to avoid the place after dark. 

Now it is a different story, and we rolled into the Prakriti Parjatan Kendra, run by the West Bengal Forest Development Corporation (WBFDC), the equivalent of Orissa’s Eco-resorts. It was a spacious compound, full of saal trees, and a block of buildings near the centre where the rooms were located. The grounds were used for storing logged timber as well, and the stacks of black logs, tagged and numbered, strewn around the grounds, leant a different character to the landscape. The sun was just about descending behind the saal forests, throwing long shadows. We sat on the logs and watched it go down, thankful at somehow landing up at another beautiful place, which became so much more than a mere stopover. 

Evening would be a busy time, catching up on electronic correspondence, and, for me, completing my two blog entries (yesterday I was forced to be offline, remember?). So let’s get down to it, folks. 

Tomorrow we travel home, to Kolkata. 

Photo credits: Panna Rashmi Ray