Chandipur & Panchalingeshwar - ‎15th July to 18th July 2004

Thanks to social networking that today I am reminded of one the best trips of my life. Chandipur & Panchalingeswar July 2004.

I was in the 2^nd year of my college. Trip was organized with 7 of my school friends: Aritra Mukherjee, Deepto Ghosh, Sukanta Ganguly, Sayan Kundu, Somenath Nag, Sudipta Mukherjee & Sanmitra Ghosh aka Rahul.

Utkal Bhawan, 55 Lenin Sarani,Kolkata. Aritra & myself got our booking done from here. Scary part was the booking officer told us in case of any emergency (or ambulance required) we need to report it atleast 24 hrs beforehand, as it shall arrive from Balasore. Though only 25kms but nothing can come up the hill to the Panthanivas where we shall be staying at night time. We believed it once we were there.

15^th July we reached Balasore by local train. There on, it was a trekker to Panchalingeshwar. The driver offers us help on what all we can get & where we get it. We got to learn some Odhiya words. After that we were graduated to Odhiya songs: ‘Gote tu .. gote mu’. Rahul & Somenath learnt it by heart & we had to listen to it for the next few months J. Another one was ‘Panapatta na hoilo’.

Now the handsome dude of our group Deepto aka Chutupal now was offered something uncanny: ‘Machine’. Next few days we were offered machine by drivers, hotel boys & locals. What we derived at the 1^st instance was ‘Machine’ is arms. We were almost in the interiors of a state so getting cheaper arms was a possibility.

Chutu was quick to reject saying: We don’t need it. We are simple college goers.

Driver: What are you saying. College goers only ask for it over here. I can get you whatever type you desire, local, foreign et all.

Sudipta: What exactly is Machine..err…

Driver: ohh..you don’t know what is a machine. It is ‘escort’ <I am a sober kid>.

Chorus: Ohhhhh….Ummmm….Nnnnooooo…we are fine.

Chutu: We shall contact you if we need your help. <We never did. We were sober & had no courage either>.

Once we reached Panthanivas, we decided to visit the Panchalingeshwar temple. It was on the top of a hill. It was not much crowded. Temple of Lord Shiva. But the main attraction was the Pancha Lingas. A stream was flowing down the hill.  Almost at the top of the hill there was a part which was dented & stream was flowing over it. On the hill there are two arrows printed: Left leg & left hand. So follow the arrows, keep hanging & put your hands through the stream to feel the Pancha Lingas. Actually it was pretty scary. It was slippery & if you skid, bye bye, it shall be a reunion in hell.

We achieved what we thought was something deserving a bravery award. Now as we were descending we saw Sadhu babas having Sandwiches  <I have to be sober here>. The smell was enough to get our heads swooning. Chutu & Somenath the smart guys managed some for the night.

Panthanivas was a standalone building with only a caretaker/cook. We asked for Chicken & roti for dinner. As it was being cooked we decided to go down the hill for a 2km walk to make calls as our mobiles were out of network & out of charge. There were constant power cuts. Whatever little charge we had Aritra used it up to call up a college junior (of course a girl) asking how she faired in her pass paper. Price worth 4 kms walk in exchange of chatting with a girl, of course Aritra chose the 2^nd one.

It was about 7 o clock in the evening. The locals asked us to walk fast back to our lodge. On our way we realized why they said so. It was pitch dark, there were no street lights. Only company we had were 2 dogs who stayed in Panthanivas & had followed us downhill. It was deserted for the full stretch. If we were robbed & murdered even ACP Pradnumya would have had no clue where we were.

The sky was clear. Trillions of stars & a bright moon were watching the 8 boys quite far from the maddening crowd. Power cut as was expected. We arranged everything on the lawn of the lodge. Post dinner we realized the cook had gone down to the village & it was only 8 of us in a lonely spooky bungalow & not a human soul within a radius of 2 kms.

Out came our spirit raiser. I’ll call it energy drinks. Mosquitoes were on the attack & we had our kevlers (coils & odomos) on. With the energy drinks we had the sandwiches. I am tempted to write: Kids never have energy drink & sandwich together. It is really dangerous. Sandwich was the best of its kind. Guys started freaking out. The events that followed are worth mentioning.

At first there was session on Optics as we looked at the night sky with utter surprise. Then there was a physics lesson. Our physics champs Sudipta & Somenath gave us a lecture on Diesel Engine & Propeller. Wow. 1 hr or so it stretched. That was something. Everyone almost had their research papers ready.

Things moved onto quantum physics & then into time machine. Well well, that was it. Rahul suddenly started realizing that he was being dragged into some sort of time machine & he started crying for help. This continued for some time. We decided to call it a day.

But the night was far from being over. Next in line was Sukanta. He wanted mosquito nets to be tied. Reason being: He was being attacked by a giant cockroach that would supposedly bite him. In came rescuer Deepto. He volunteered to tie the nets. We started gossiping. After 2 hrs we realized Deepto was still standing at the same corner trying to put a knot on the mosquito net. That time duration is my calculation. Guys still believe it was only 15 mins, but I completely remember it was 2 hrs ;) Sudipta had the energy drink bottle as his side pillow & was not at all agreeing to part from it.

I exactly don’t remember what actually triggered the next incident. We had two rooms with 4 beds each. We had closed our doors before going to bed. On the upper side of the door there was some sort of emergency exit or ventilator. The next thing I remember there was a water fight going on. People came out of rooms stood on chairs & threw water through the vents on the beds. I don’t remember how the peace treaty was signed :P Probably we ran out of water. Next morning before the care taker arrived we had to mop the floor. The corridors were flooded.

We had a nice day trekking through the forests on the hills. It was monsoon so we didn’t get the official permit. A small amount was paid to a local who was happy to guide us for half a day. He told us stories of mad elephants & other deadly creatures that could cross our roads. I don’t know who went lucky but we didn’t meet any of them finally.

We had booked our trekker. It picked us up from Panthanivas & headed for Chandipur. The journey was awesome. We passed the Missile testing zone. It looked so much like the Hitman gaming zone. We had a full trekker. Seats were reserved by our luggage only. We were sitting on the top, were ideally the luggage would have been. The first sight of the vast Bay of Bengal made our day. Pretty tired we had a walk around the beach, frequently being asked whether we need Machines J Thank you were still our answers.

The Chandipur Ocean is a peculiar of its kind. During low tide we could walk for approx 2 kms from the shore through knee deep water. But it has a very high pick up speed when there is a high tide. We have chosen a full moon night to check this out. We had walked 2 kms when water started rising. We rushed back. Finally when we reached the shores it was almost 5-6 ft deep. The shore is rocky & waves have a deadly rage. Aritra & Sayan had the major cuts as they were thrown quite a number of times on the rocks.

The rest of the trip was quite peaceful. The worst came while returning. It was general class. We were sitting near a stinky bathroom for about 6 hrs.

We had analog cameras then. The search for those pics today winded me back to this lovely trip. We have parted ways working for different organizations & in different geographic locations. But what bind us are the memories of such a wonderful trip. J