Rambha, Orissa

For this one, I will have to take a plunge in the pensieve (Harry Potter Fan alert!) and really look for the memory coz it was a long time ago. One of my most beautiful travel memories at the same time :)

This one wont have a flow or any sequence of events but just some of the best times afresh anytime I imagine Orissa.

So Rambha is a tiny village near Bhubaneswar. It is one of the less traveled places by we Indians but completely flocked my foreigners ( How I love the way foreigners travel without a care in the world !!)  Rambha is a coastal town but because of its locational advantage the water here is calm and peaceful giving you the mirage of a lagoon. Yes you wont get the sea waves here but if you are looking for peace, a nice swim and sunset on the boat this is the place to be.

Few things that are not very popular about Orissa is that it is beautiful and raw beyond ones expectation, at least it was like this in 2009. The Government has done a brilliant job by setting up really cheap, safe and clean guest houses in almost all the tourist spots. We always stayed at the Govt guest house, for cost saving students they have the option of both dormitories and rooms with a balcony opening towards the sea.

In the evening you could simply walk in the backyard, talk to any of the boat bhainas and ask for a ride on the boat. The simple villagers almost agree to anything. Our bhaina arranged a small tea party with pakoras in the boat while we stopped in the middle of water looking at the stars. <There is an island which can be seen across the water, in one other occasion we went to the island and the boat guys arranged a bonfire on which we could cook fresh fish caught from the sea.> Bhaina was brilliant with his storytelling of all the people who came there and happily he would draw out a picture of him posing with a pretty foreigner making him blush all cherry red :) :)

So after a nice evening and dinner, we all were just chatting in the balcony around 11 pm in the night. We suddenly see some foreigners going out in a car. We also had a car with us so we decide to follow them and after travelling though marshes and uneven roads we get down at a place where a guide meets them. We also request the guide to take us along. Now all of us are walking in farmland sort of an area. My friends know how much of a chicken I can be and here all ghost stories are live in my head. But then we reach the beach ( this one has steady waves). <Fun Fact - Orissa is also known for  Olive Ridley Turtles who are famous for their synchronized nesting behavior. The females actually come back to the same place they hatched to lay eggs. We had luckily landed on the same beach famous for this phenomenon>

We waited at the beach as instructed by the guide and then we saw a turtle come from the sea, slowly but efficiently dig a huge deep in the sand, lay over 50 eggs in it, cover it as if there was nothing underneath and then go back back into the sea. 

This whole experience is so beautiful that I am out of words to say how amazed I was to see life in its most natural form. We all ended up coming back without uttering a word on the way probably just overwhelmed by the magnitude of the universe and its actions. 

Image credits: Google