Puri

Puri's history is the history of its temple. The town, known in older texts as Purushottama Kshetra, grew around the worship of Jagannath, a form of Vishnu whose wooden images are carved in a distinctive abstract style and are renewed in a ceremony held only in certain years. The present temple was begun in the 12th century by the Eastern Ganga king Anantavarman Chodaganga and finished under his successors, and its spire has served ever since as a landmark for sailors on the Bay of Bengal.

The temple made the town wealthy and vulnerable in equal measure. It became one of the four dhams, the cardinal pilgrimage centres of Hinduism, drawing pilgrims from across the subcontinent along routes that entered the town through the Atharanala bridge. Medieval Odisha's rulers tied their legitimacy to the deity, and the Gajapati king of Puri still performs the ceremonial sweeping of the chariots at the Rath Yatra. Raids and wars repeatedly threatened the shrine, and its images were moved and hidden more than once.

The Marathas took control of the region in the 18th century, and the British East India Company followed in 1803, administering the temple's pilgrim tax before handing management back under pressure from missionary opinion at home. British accounts of the chariot festival gave English the word juggernaut. The railway reached Puri in 1897 and turned the pilgrimage town into a seaside resort for Bengal as well, a double identity it keeps today. Cyclones have shaped the modern town too: Fani, in 2019, tore off roofs and stripped trees across Puri before the state's evacuation system was widely credited with limiting deaths.

Life here is organised around the temple calendar. The daily cycle of rituals, the dressing of the deities and the cooking of offerings employ thousands of servitors in hereditary roles, and the rhythms of the year — the bathing festival, the fortnight of seclusion, the chariot procession, the return journey — set the pattern of the town's public life. The Gajapati of Puri retains a ceremonial place in these rites, and the temple's hierarchy of priests, cooks and attendants forms a community in itself.

Odisha's classical dance, Odissi, has deep roots in the temple tradition of this coast, and its poses echo the sculpture of Odishan shrines; the annual dance festival at Konark keeps the connection visible. Pattachitra painting, made on cloth stiffened with tamarind paste and depicting Jagannath and scenes from the epics, is produced in the village of Raghurajpur nearby and sold in Puri's shops, along with palm-leaf engraving, appliqué from Pipili and stone and wood carving.

Puri is also a beach town, and the two sides sit together comfortably: families bathe at Swargadwar at dawn as an act of devotion and return in the evening for ice cream and camel rides. Odia is the everyday language, Bengali is widely understood because of the long flow of visitors from Kolkata, and Hindi and some English serve in hotels. Visitors are asked to treat the temple quarter as a sacred space rather than a sight, and to be careful about photographing rituals and mourners.

About 200,000 people live in Puri, making it a medium-sized town by Indian standards but one whose population swells hugely at festivals, when visitor numbers can exceed the resident count several times over. The economy runs on pilgrimage and tourism: hotels and lodging houses, restaurants, transport, guiding and the trade in flowers, sweets, brassware, conch shells and souvenirs. A second economy of temple service, with hereditary duties and long-established priestly families, overlaps it.

Fishing remains important along the shore, where boats are drawn up on the sand and the catch is sold in the early morning, and there is farming of rice, coconut and betel in the villages inland. The craft villages of the Puri district — painters at Raghurajpur, appliqué workers at Pipili, stone carvers towards Konark — supply the town's shops and export well beyond Odisha. Puri is also a district headquarters, so government offices and schools employ a good share of the town.

The day begins before dawn with bathing and temple queues and ends late along the seafront. The main pressures are familiar ones for a small town carrying very large crowds: water supply and drainage, waste on the beach, traffic on a street plan built for processions, and the periodic damage of cyclones. Conservation work on the temple and its precinct, and schemes to widen and clear the area around it, have reshaped parts of the old centre in recent years.

Puri's most distinctive food is mahaprasad, the offerings cooked in the Jagannath temple's kitchens — said to be among the largest traditional kitchens anywhere — in stacked earthenware pots over wood fires, then sold in the Ananda Bazar inside the compound. The spread is largely vegetarian and free of onion and garlic: rice, dal, vegetable dishes such as dalma, lentils simmered with vegetables, and sweet preparations including khaja. Eating it is an act of devotion as much as a meal, shared without regard to caste.

Beyond the temple, the town eats Odia home cooking. Dahi bara aloo dum, lentil fritters soaked in spiced yoghurt and served with a potato curry, is the classic breakfast and street snack. Pakhala, rice fermented in water and eaten with fried fish, badi and greens, is the hot-weather staple. Santula and besara are vegetable dishes lightly seasoned with mustard, and chhena poda, baked caramelised cottage cheese, is Odisha's best-known sweet, sold alongside rosogolla and the syrup-soaked layers of khaja.

The sea supplies the other half of the table. Pomfret, prawns, crab and the mud-flat catch are fried in semolina or cooked in mustard gravies at the beach stalls and in the hotels, and the fishing settlements at the eastern end of the sand sell direct. Tea stalls run all day on the Grand Road, green coconuts are opened on the seafront, and the tourist restaurants along Chakratirtha Road add North Indian, Chinese and Western dishes for longer-staying visitors.