• How do I get there?
• Getting Around
• Tourist Offices
• When to Go
• Where do I Stay?
• What  to bring
• Things to do

How do I get there?

Getting Around

In Puri, cycle rickshaws are the best way to get around. Once you get your bearings right, then a rented motorbike/bicycle is a neat way of getting around town. Cars, Auto-rickshaws and the city bus service are other transport options. Travel agents can makeyou’re your travel arrangements, be it booking tickets for flights and trains or renting cars, motorcycles or bicycles.

Tourist Offices

The Orissa Tourism Development Corporation tourist office is located at Station Road, close to the Railway Station in Cuttack. The railway station also has an extension counter of the OTDC run tourist office to help visitors with hotel and transport bookings and sundry information. However, it may be better to arrange your travel itinerary with a travel agent.

When to Go

While one can visit Puri any time of the year, winter months from November to February are the best times to visit as the weather is at its balmiest best. If you don’t mind being part of a crowd of thousands of people and are seriously devout, then come here during June and July when the Rath Yatra takes places. It is the annual Chariot Festival of the Jagannath Temple when devotees throng this town to pull the Lord’s chariot. The rainy season (June to September) is best avoided as the southeast monsoon really pours its heart out.

Where do I Stay?

All hotels in Puri are situated near the beach, quite close to the Railway Station. The up market top-end hotels have comfortable rooms with facilities like air conditioned rooms, health clubs, well manicured gardens, swimming pools, restaurants etc and rooms that overlook the sea. Hotels that cost a little less are older establishments with wide verandas and balconies facing the seafront. The cheapest places are small lodges that offer basic rooms with lockers, fans but little else. It is better to book rooms at the hotels in advance especially so if you plan to visit the city in June/July when the Rath Yatra takes place.

What to bring

Plenty of cool clothes to combat the heat and humidity, sun shades and sunscreens, insect and mosquito repellents and a laid back attitude to help deal with the snags and glitches that are part and parcel of the travellers’ lot in India. Puri can provide the basic necessities for a traveller like toiletries, cosmetics, medicines and camera films. If you need more specific or fancy stuff, then you’ll have to lug it across in your baggage.

Things to Do

• Dining & Entertainment
• Shopping
• Special Events
• City Getaways

Dining & Entertainment

A range of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food is served at the restaurants of the upmarket hotels. Chinese, Indian and European Continental figure on all the menus, though visitors might not always recognise the taste of the food served! Seafood is fresh from the waters of the Indian Ocean. Inexpensive eating options are limited to the handful of cafes that dish up local food in platefuls. Vendors on and around the beach serve Indianised versions of fast food like burgers and noodles and of course, all the Indian favourites.

Shopping

Grand Avenue, Puri's broad main street is lined with shops and stalls that sell rudraksha (holy seeds) and sandalwood beads, Ayurvedic cures and the images of Lord Jagannath. Another local speciality is the amazing "religious maps" of Puri where the pilgrimage sites are traditionally represented with a conch shell made up of seven concentric layers. Otherwise soap stone, seashell, pattachitras and palm leaf paintings, horn work, woodcarvings and solapith work can be purchased from the government run emporia and shops in Puri.

Down the road towards the railway station is Sudarshan workshop, one of the few traditional stone carvers' yards left in Puri. The sculptors and their apprentices seem more interested in pursuing their art than selling it to tourists, but if you are keen on buying a souvenir then go to the factory shop next door and purchase large religious icons carved out of khondalite, the multi-coloured stone used in the Sun temple at Konarak.

Special Events

The singular most spectacular event held in the city which draws hundreds of thousands of people to Puri is the month long Rath Yatra or the Chariot Festival. Held in the month of June/July this festival is the annual holiday of the gods of the Jagannath Temple. See details above in Rath Yatra in sights to see.

City Getaways

Balighai, 8 km from Puri is a popular picnic spot at the point where the River Nuanai meets the sea. Brahmagiri with the shrine of Alarnath and the shrine of Baliharachandi on the solitary sand dunes near the River Bhargavi is only 25 km away.

Satyabadi or Sakshigopal is 20 km from Puri and a trip to Puri is considered incomplete if one does not visit the shrine of Lord Sakshigopal(Krishna) here.

Raghurajpur, a famous artists village in Orissa is 16 km from Puri. Besides art – pattachittra and talapattachittra, this village is the hometown of Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra, one of the most renowned exponents of Odissi, the lyrical classical dance genre born in the temples of Orissa and handed down from generation to generation in the Guru-Shishya (teacher-disciple) tradition.

Birapratapur and Ganganarayanpur are two traditional Brahmin villages, situated inland amongst the coconut palms, paddy fields, muddy lakes and rivers. Thatched houses of baked clay and wood, painted with gay designs, and small temples are the main attractions of these quaint villages that worship Lord Vishnu.