relaxing in puri

The train from Kolkata to Puri was very hot and rather uncomfortable. It was a night train due to leave at 10.35pm and my second class sleeper ticket entitled me to a place on a lower bunk. The train left Howrah Station, one of Kolkata's delightful colonial buildings, around 11pm arriving in Puri nine and a half hours later at 8.30am the following morning. It was too hot to sleep through the night but all in all the journey could have been worse. As the sun rose I noticed the landscape outside had changed. As we had reached into Orissa the corn fields of North India had given way to healthy green rice fields and a higher occurrence of palm trees.

When we reached Puri I got a cycle rickshaw straight to the Gandhara Hotel which sits just back from the beach itself. I knew I was going there because I'd researched it on the Internet in Kolkata having decided it time to take a break from all the cheap hotels and cockroaches in favour of a few nights somewhere 'mid-range' as my Lonely Planet would put it. It's a lovely hotel, five floors high, with pretty gardens and a roof top restaurant. Because it's out of season I've turned out to be the only guest, and the efficient staff are waiting on me almost hand and foot. My room on the third floor has views out from three sides, there's cable television and even hot water in the bathroom (not that I need it in this heat). It's a sanitised world away from most of the recent hotels I've stayed in.

The beach at Puri is quite pretty, more so than I'd expected, and looks out over the Bay of Bengal. As I stood on the beach this morning I remembered that the last time I saw this water was from the other side over in Thailand last July. I needed to keep my eyes on the sea because, it being early morning, the beach was strewn with locals defecating on the sand (one side of India I still find hard to cope with). The part of town I'm staying in is sleepy and quiet at the moment and bereft of foreign tourists. There's just me. There's little traffic and little hassle, just the calm sea breeze. There aren't any sights to see either and so I don't need to feel any guilt over spending a few days relaxing and doing next to nothing. The only thing to do here is chill out.

I spent most of yesterday just pottering about: checking my emails, sorting my laundry, enjoying the local seafood, and I plan to have a similar type of day today. I feel good being here and that my batteries are being re-charged ready for an assault on South India.