Orissa gaman

Bird’s eye view  Today is our second day of hillybilly living, and we came down from Mahendragiri hill (5000 ft), drove across a plateau, visited waterfalls and temples on the way, and climbed up to Daringbadi (3000 ft). For comparison, Gangotri is at 10,000 ft, therefore Daringbadi is no honcho.  It was a travel of just 200 km, but, as I mentioned earlier, I suffer from the wandering eye, and we underwent time dilation to the extent of 7 hours, arriving around 2.30 pm, just in time for lunch.  The roads were a mixture, frankly, and the village roads in Orissa are not as well-maintained as village roads in, say, Tamil Nadu or south Karnataka.  Let’s take a look on the ground.  Leaving Mahendragiri (7.30 am)  It felt like a sin to leave this beautiful property so early in the day, that too before we had the free breakfast. However, our accommodation in Daringbadi also was ‘all meals’, which meant we could not miss lunch there, could w...

Bird’s eye view  Today, we flipped.  We flipped the sea-level for 5000 feet.  We flipped the straight highways for a mountain road.  We flipped the blistering sun for a faintly chilly drizzle.  We moved from Gopalpur to Mahendragiri hills, a distance of 130 kms, but since I deeply believe in Management by Wandering Around, we took 4.5 hours to do it, taking in a waterfall in the process. Let’s see how that happened.  Leaving Gopalpur (8.45 am)  Another lovely sunrise across the sea. The sun penetrated the haze at around 7.00 am, but there was already a beachful of people with smartphones at the ready, eager to record a few reels. We sat in our balcony chairs in a halfway house between gratitude and smug superiority, as we didn’t even have to brush our teeth in order to say 'Hi' to the sun.  Since our lodging had no food provisions, we popped down for toast and eggs, which were slightly below par. I mean, a food-stall is no ...