How I reached Lingaraj Temple

It does feel slightly weird when you try to get into an auto at 6 in morning in a sufficiently cold November  dressed just in a black cotton tshirt and mini-white synthetic shorts when everyone else inside the auto including the driver has at least three pairs of clothing on – not to forget a wollen topi as well. You feel like that girl traveling alone in a city transport bus, trying her best to ignore the glances of dirty uncles. I took the auto because I was not sure I was fit enough to run 20k – which is the distance I would have needed to cover if I had to touch Lingraj Temple as I planned to do today (you will see for youself how bloody far away the temple is from my guest house as you shall scroll down the following snap-shots).

I did a quick jog from the guest house (green dots) – and took the auto (traced by red dots) which dropped me just before Master-canteen chowk (bottom black circle if you scroll down).

It felt good to be out of the auto – little girl had no more uncles to worry about. The shoes hit the road and I started my second round of running (traced path marked by blue dots in the following snap-shot), climbed up and down the railway overbridge (the portion where blue dots intersect with white railway tracks) – crossed Mausima Mandir standing erect at the foot of the bridge, continued running to reach the Bindu Sagar Lake and then ran further along it to finally reach the Lingaraj Temple (lies inside the area between the green dots – the green dots mark the walking-path that I traced before entering the temple).

To my bad luck, they don’t allow photography inside the Lingaraj temple. ( I wonder how wikipedia manages to show few). To my good luck, the whole area in Old Bhubaneswar around Bindu Sagar lake has several other temples, most of them look very similar to each other. So, I observed, admired and clicked some of them – some long shots and some close ones like say the one highlighting the tummy of a small Ganehsa figure engraved on one of the temple facades. There was a temple right in the midle of the lake too which had a different architecture altogether.

It was a serene feeling – stolling inside the Lingaraj Temple courtyard. The air smelled so much like the way it smells in Deogarh – home. Everyone should see this temple – very beautiful, very cute, very pure. The aura energized me enough to run all the way back to the guest-house with just one small break and some more photography at the Mausima Mandir. So how did you spend your Sunday? 🙂

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