A week in Puri

All the VSO India volunteers + representatives from their partner NGOs were invited to attend an annual conference.  The last time I joined a VSO conference I had to travel all the way to Delhi but this one was held in Puri in Orissa.  The number of VSO volunteers placed in Orissa has increased significantly since I arrived here last year so it seemed a good state to choose to minimise the number of volunteers having to travel too far.  We were lucky that the chosen venue was a very nice seaside town with interesting places to visit nearby but there were probably other constraints in that there had to be a hotel big enough to host 50 volunteers + 50 partners and appropriate conference facilities.  Some of the volunteers may have felt that it was a long way to have to travel but at least I didn't have too long a journey this time.  

It was really nice to have the opportunity to meet up with so many other people and find out more about what's happening in other parts of the country.  Volunteers based in Delhi have the advantage of seeing colleagues who are passing through the city which is the home of VSO India Programme Office, they.  The Delhi vols get to meet the new volunteers arriving and to say goodbye to the people leaving at the end of their placement but those of out in the more remote parts of India rarely see other volunteers so gatherings like that in Puri are really valuable to us, helping to remind us that we are not alone.  Places like Koraput have little in the way of social life or other outsiders and apart from trying to get to know our neighbours with our limited ability to communicate in each other's languages and meeting up with any other colleagues nearby we don't have the same opportunities to meet other people.  The conference went the way of most conferences, some bits inspiring and some less so but overall, it was a good week for me, giving me the chance to catch up with colleagues, meet some of the other NGOs and hear more about VSO India plans for the year.  

Orissa is famous for its fish and seafood but Koraput is too far from the sea and too poor to get any of these delicacies so I made the most of the local catch while I was there as I love seafood along with other things hard to find in rural areas - muesli for example!  Puri is a coastal resort with what looks like a lovely beach with waves rolling in from the Bay of Bengal.  I got up early in the mornings to go for walks with my camera while the light was good and not too bright.  The beach was full of people playing cricket and fishermen either pulling their boats into or out of the water or sorting out their nets.   Some friendly fishermen spotted Jim and I taking photos of them coiling their nets and insisted that we posed with them and their nets.  I suspect that Jim has a similar photo of me 'helping' with the nets. I did however have to watch my step when walking north along the shore as there is a fishing village at the top of the beach without sanitation.  Given the location the appropriate solution is for the people to use the littoral (the area between high and low water) as their latrine so that the water cleans the area twice a day and disperses the debris into a dilute state.  Sensible but not so great for paddling through the waves.  The pigs seemed to be enjoy it though.  I love swimming in the sea but decided not to swim on that beach but later in the day the sea was full of life and people having fun.  I managed to pick up some rather unpleasant gastro-intestinal bug that afflicted a good many of us from the conference.  I suspect that we all fell prey to a virus as we gradually went down with the bug and didn't all fall ill at the same time.

Puri seems to be a popular place for backpackers and felt a bit like it should be on the hippy trail.  The conference was held in the only hotel big enough for the numbers but I added a few days onto the conference to have a break from work and the delights of Koraput.  I struck lucky with the hotel I chose for my extra days, a delightful place called the Z Hotel, apparently the former home of a maharajah with wonderfully big, clean, airy rooms and a communal balcony area with breeze blowing in and the sound of the sea just a few hundred metres away.  We met some really interesting people staying there, it seemed to be one of the places that attracts some eccentrics as well as the more ordinary like me.  

I took a day trip with my volunteer friend Sheila to Konark a few kilometres north of Puri to see the Sun Temple, a Unesco World Heritage site.  This was fascinating with some extraordinary stone carvings and was built in the form a chariot for the sun god Surya with 12  pairs of wheels and pulled by 7 pairs of horses.  Much of the stone has crumbled  away through erosion of other damage but it is still a tremendous piece of architecture.  What I hadn't realised until I saw the place and heard the guide's descriptions was that many of the sculptures appear to be inspired by the Karma Sutra.  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konark_Sun_Temple"> Sun Temple <\a>.