Bhubaneswar City Guide

For many more photos of Bhubaneswar and the rest of my Odisha trip, check out my wife's Instagram highlights.

I have a separate post on Puri, Konark, and Cuttack, and a separate post for recommended books, music, and films from Odisha. Most importantly of all, I have a separate post of food recommendations in Bhubaneswar, don’t miss that. 

This main Bhubaneswar post has a lengthy intro covering some of Odisha's history and culture, just scroll to “Things to Do” around halfway down if you want to jump to the recommendations.

I spent around two weeks in Bhubaneswar in January 2024. It was great, highly recommended! In that time I also visited Konark (highly recommended), Puri (as a non-Hindu only somewhat recommended), and Cuttack (somewhat recommended if you have a lot of time).

I regrettably didn’t get to explore Odisha further. I’d love to come back and visit some nature places, wildlife sanctuaries, small towns, tribal and rural areas, and some of the really nice looking heritage stays (Belgadia Palace has been on my list for some years now, and there are several others that look great but I probably can’t afford). I was bummed to miss the funny looking Irrawaddy dolphins at Chilika lake, which is the world’s largest brackish water lagoon, whatever that means, and second largest coastal lagoon of any sort. There are also the ruins of the ancient Buddhist monasteries at Lalitgiri, Ratnagiri and Udayagiri, which look great and can be done as a day trip. 

By the way, I hardly saw any foreigners at all in Odisha. Maybe one group of tourists in the entire two weeks? And this was at peak season! The main sites (all… four of them) had a lot of Indian tourists but most of the places we went were pretty quiet. 

Bhubaneswar and the nearby areas I went to really excel in two ways: food and temples. I can add local crafts. Other than that there’s not much. If you aren’t excited by going somewhere just for food and temples you shouldn’t come. But if you love food and temples, boy have you lucked out. There may be no better destination. Most other places with great temples are lackluster dining destinations, I believe, and they also lack the modern creature comforts that Bhubaneswar offers (though that perhaps makes the templegoing experience less immersive, but it also made staying here longer term more manageable).

Puri and Konark seem to get more attention than Bhubaneswar, but I liked the city. People probably underrate its attractions compared to the more famous temples outside of it. At least a few days of temple, museum, and restaurant hopping is highly recommended. Though I had two weeks, I wish I could have spent more time, going for more temples, more museums, and more food, and spacing it all out a little more. 

That said, while a lot of the places I go benefit a lot from the longer stays and maybe aren’t ideal for weekend trips, Bhubaneswar makes for a really excellent weekend trip.

It wasn’t a bad place to live either. It’s an Indian city with all of the pitfalls that that entails, but in some ways it was nicer than most. After independence it replaced the heavily congested Cuttack as the capital, and a planned city was developed by the architect Otto Königsberger. His work isn’t a must see or anything (though I enjoyed driving through the capital area with the old bungalows), nor is Bhubaneswar as nice as the more famous planned city of Chandigarh, but it has well above average orderliness for an Indian city, with neatly laid out wide roads that were surprisingly easy to cross. It was fairly calm and relaxed. Also, it's relatively small. Most of our drives were between 10-20 minutes. When we occasionally drove 30 minutes to get somewhere it felt like a very long ride, but compared to my regular Mumbai commutes that’s nothing. Traffic was only very bad once, and that was because the president of Singapore was in town. 

As a modern city, it’s alright. Not a ton of unique character, nor is it very happening. But we went to work from a few nice cafes, and I saw a few movies at pretty nice movie theaters. What more does one need? I never made it to any, but there were some nice looking book stores. My wife was satisfied with the quality of the offerings of the big clothing brands. We had Instamart and for the most part we got around by Uber pretty well. Uber cars were nicer than in Mumbai. Uber autos had an unusually high rate of canceling on us, though. Another negative, as someone whose idea of traveling is walking all day, is that it isn’t a very nice walking city. 

The winter weather was pretty nice, though it got noticeably hotter between mid and late January. Even when I was there, we had pleasant early morning and late afternoon excursions but needed to retreat by noon. I can’t imagine temple hopping being as much fun closer to summer. Unfortunately it was hazy and polluted the entire time I was there. I bet it’s very pretty after the rains (and during, but it’s probably not worth the hassle).

Beyond going from temple to temple, I had a great time learning about the history and culture of Odisha, which gave me a different look at Indian history. Previously pretty much all I knew about the region was Ashoka’s conquest of Kalinga (though the oft-cited significance of that, with Ashoka converting to Buddhism as a result of guilt over the carnage he unleashed, is maybe not true), and some battles between Vijayanagar and the Gajapatis which I came across when reading a lot about Hampi a few years ago (whatever I read about the Gajapatis, I’ve since forgotten). 

(Out of curiosity I just checked the index of a few of the big Indian history books I have, looking for Odisha and various dynasties, temples, town names, and a few other related things I could think of, and basically nothing turned up outside of quick references to the Kalinga battle.)

Though Odisha doesn’t feature so much on people’s radar outside of having a bunch of temples, there were several great empires here in the past. This makes intuitive sense; someone had to build the grand temples! There is potentially a lot to cover here, but I honestly kind of don’t care all that much about the various dynasties of Odisha and their famous battles with other major empires throughout Indian history. That stuff isn’t my thing. 

Meanwhile, the maritime history and the connections with Southeast Asia are what really fascinated me so that’s what I’ll focus on. 

But first, a quick linguistic link with Europe:

“The present name ‘Odisha’ or Odisha has got its genesis in the Greek “Oretes” of Pliny and the Sanskrit ‘Odras’ of the Mahabharata. According to Dr. N.K.Sahu the two terms seem to have been suggested by the term ‘Or’ or‘Orua’, meaning rice. In fact, the word ‘Orua’ prevalent in Odisha since early times seems to be the same as the Greek ‘Oruza’, meaning rice. The Oxford Dictionary states that ‘Oruza’ is a loan word in Greek derived from some Oriental source. The ‘Oretes’ or ‘Or’ (Odra) people may, therefore, mean either the ‘rice eating’ or the ‘rice growing’ people.” (Source)

Who knew there was a state in India that shares an etymological root with an Italian pasta variety? (Though apparently the name orzo is more of an American thing.)

[Fact check: the robots knew, darn, and from my follow up questions it turns out not all of the above was necessarily accurate, whatever.]

Anyway, I was of course aware of ancient links between India and much of Southeast Asia (as has hopefully anyone who has visited those countries) but for some reason I always thought the trade embarked from South India (I most frequently see discussion of Tamil traders in the eras of the Pallava and Chola empires). As people with a better understanding of Indian history than me certainly already knew, traders from ancient Kalinga had extensive contact with Southeast Asia, and you can see evidence of that in those countries as well as in the culture of Odisha today.

(Kalinga’s boundaries correspond fairly well with present day Odisha, plus chunks of surrounding regions, most notably northern Andhra Pradesh. As Wikipedia describes it, “The Kalinga region is generally defined as the eastern coastal region between Ganges and the Godavari rivers.” The entire east coast of India, spanning from Bengal down to Tamil Nadu, was involved in trade with Southeast Asia over the millennia, with different regions being more prominent at different times.)

Kalinga was so well known that to this day keling, kling, and kleng are used in parts of Southeast Asia to refer to Indians, though in many regions this developed into a derogatory term, particularly in Malaysia. Until the modern name of India, the Malay and Indonesian word for the entire country was keling. There was even the Kalingga kingdom in Java in the 6th and 7th centuries CE. (I’ve seen some sources bring up the Kalinga province in the Philippines as well, but that appears to just be a linguistic coincidence.)

(The “keling” wikipedia page contains many interesting nuggets. Another name for India was Jambudvīpa which means “the land of jamun trees,” surprising as it appears to be native in Southeast Asia as well and a common name for jamun in English is “Java Plum.” The first known usage of “keling” is in the Malay historical legend Sejarah Melayu (Malay Annals) which “mentions Raja Shulan as the king of Keling who sets out to conquer China with his descendant Raja Chulan.” I want a movie about that. Also, “After the introduction of Islam, Keling sometimes referred specifically to Malayalee or Telugu people while Gujaratis and Indo-Aryan peoples from Pakistan were often confused with Parsi or Persians.” The colonists in Southeast Asia adopted it too, with the Dutch calling Indians Clings and Klingers, the British calling them Klings, and the Portuguese calling them Quelins. Indian leaders in colonial Malaysia were known as Kapitan Keling, which obviously needs to be an “In & As” Tamil movie, and in George Town you can visit the Kapitan Keling Mosque.)

Ancient Kalinga had numerous trading ports on its coast, stretching from the westernmost mouth of the Ganga river down to Chilika Lake, a popular tourist spot today. Few visitors realize the lake was a natural harbor, I believe the largest on the east coast, where boats would dock before starting on their voyage to distant lands when the wind conditions were favorable. Rivers were used to bring goods to and from the inland kingdoms, and many archaeological digs have turned up millenia old coins and pottery fragments from China, Rome, and the Middle East. There are also findings that suggest a boatmaking workshop at Chilika, and it is said that even today you’ll find pieces of ancient pottery walking on the banks of the lake today. 

Other than those scattered objects (which, to be clear, sound similar to what you’ll find all along India’s coasts, though perhaps the provenance is somewhat different), there’s nothing really left to see of this ancient trade. It is worth noting, though, that the grand temples of Puri and Konark were once closer to the shore than they are today and were said to act as landmarks for ships, as did ancient stupas of which only ruins survive. There are also a few related sculptures and carvings in Odisha, notably the giraffe relief carving at Konark, suggesting trade with Africa, and a relief carving depicting a boat which is now in the state museum in Bhubaneswar. (Looks more like a local river boat to me, but the elephants along with the waves and sea creatures suggest longer distance sea travel. There are other boats depicted in various arts and crafts but I don’t know if any very old examples have survived. Here is another more recent painting.)

I can’t think of any other related sites or objects (though I do recommend the maritime museum in Cuttack), but the tradition of maritime trade and the ancient links to Southeast Asia are kept alive in the cultural memory of the historic trading communities. 

I have mixed feelings about holidays/festivals in general, and I’m even more mixed on them in India. On one hand I like seeing the traditional rituals and there are many aesthetic and culinary pleasures to be had at them. On the other hand they are usually loud and crowded and polluted and annoying and it is best to avoid them altogether. 

With that said, I really want to come to Odisha for Kartika Purnima. Though it is celebrated all over India, I hadn’t heard of Kartika Purnima before. (Well, I’m sure I’d heard it mentioned before, but I didn’t remember it. There’s some holiday like every three days in India and I never get clear answers on what they’re about so I seldom bother keeping track.) It recognizes the full moon day in Hindu month of Kartika, which makes sense as Purnima is the Sanskrit word for “full moon.” It comes two weeks after Diwali, which comes at the new moon, and it is usually in mid-November. 

(If I ever do come for Kartika Purnima, which is the last day of the month of Purnima in Odisha, I’ll make sure to come early because wikipedia says: “During Kartika month, the entire Hindu population of Odisha becomes strictly vegetarian.” I must come for pure veg month! I doubt they’re really that strict though…?)

From what I gather, this is only a minor occasion in much of the country, but it has a big significance in parts of Odisha thanks to the history of maritime trade in the region. Apparently if you are near the coast at this time, you can actually feel the shift in the wind, reversing its south-to-north direction and going from north-to-south, ideal for a sea journey to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Families, particularly women and children, commemorate this at the Boita Bandana festival, placing paper boats with lamps into the water before sunrise and waiting for the sun to come up and the boats to fade into the distance, just as the women and children in the family would have done many centuries ago as the traders, known as Sadabhas, went off to sea. 

(I am reminded of Thailand’s Loy Krathong festival, which is also on the full moon day at or around the same time in November. Both Loy Krathong and Boita Bandana translate to something like “lamp boat” (though boita means boat and they sound similar, there’s no linguistic connection). I was in Chiang Mai for Loy Krathong and I kinda hated it, but that was mainly because it was so touristy and crowded, while hopefully Boita Bandana is more quaint and relaxed.)

(Much of this was discussed in Sanjeev Sanyal’s book The Ocean of Churn, one of my favorite Indian history books, focusing specifically on the happenings of the Indian ocean. Here’s a short video of him talking about Odisha’s maritime history, basically he more eloquently says everything I just said. Regarding Odisha, the book doesn’t have that much more to say, but I think anyone who has read this far should find the book very interesting.)

Cuttack takes the celebrations even further with its Bali Jatra (“Voyage to Bali”) festival, which lasts around a week starting with Boita Bandana. It looks… crowded. I think I’d have fun though. Notably, they perform plays and songs based on the folk story Tapoi. From Wikipedia:

“The story describes a wealthy sadhaba family which consists of a wealthy widower merchant who had seven sons and a daughter named Ta'apoi. The daughter being the youngest in the family was doted on by her father and brothers. The merchant decided to take his sons on a trading voyage leaving Ta'apoi behind in the care of his seven daughters-in-law. Unfortunately it didn't go well as they secretly resented her and made Ta'poi do all the household work and even made her starve many times. Months after enduring physical and mental abuse Ta'apoi ran away to the forest and prayed to Goddess Mangala (a form of Goddess Durga) who showered her blessings and a few days later, her father and brothers return unexpectedly. Realising what had happened, they brought Ta'apoi back and punished the sisters-in-law for their misdeeds. This folk tale hence points out the tradition of long voyages and also expresses the inner anxieties of the merchants and their family members.”

I wouldn’t want to watch the whole thing, but it was fun to spend a few minutes skimming through the film version of the story. 

There’s a festival in August or September called Khudurukuni Osa which relates to the story. On every Sunday for the month, unmarried girls fast, make offerings, and pray to Mangala for the safe return of their brothers (symbolically speaking, I guess it’s just for their general well being today). There’s also a village called Manpur that makes Tapoi dolls. 

Goddess Mangala, by the way, was the “the prime deity of the Sadhabas and their families [and] was important in seeking blessings for good luck, protection of ships, safe return and profitable business due to the fear of shipwrecks and insecurities and fear of unknown duration of the long maritime voyages.” I don’t believe I went to any, but there are numerous Mangala temples in the area. Some are called “Bata Mangala,” with Bata usually translating to way or journey, a sign of her still being the goddess of travelers to this day. I drove by the very popular Maa Bata Mangala temple on the way to Puri, which is said to protect travelers en route to Puri (word is you get good snacks, sweets, and chai at the Maa Batala Mangala hotel right outside, too). The Maa Mangala temple in Kakatpur is another major Mangala temple, which apparently had a deity worshipped by Raavan brought back by a Sadhaba after the victory of lord Ram. Notice that on the map it is on the Prachi river, between Cuttack and the Bay of Bengal, making it a perfect stop before embarking on sea journeys. As a frequent traveller, I guess I should go pray and make offerings at some of these Mangala temples!

(In the Buddhist era, it was the goddess Tara that would protect those on sea voyages. From wikipedia: “Tārā's name literally means "star" or "planet", and therefore she is associated with navigation and travel both literally and metaphorically as spiritual crossing to the "other side" of the ocean of existence (enlightenment).” There are archaeological findings of Tara in coastal Odisha but I don’t know if you necessarily get more here than any other Buddhist place as Tara was pretty widespread. Mangala may be a localized, Hinduized version of Tara.) 

For more stories set in the world of Sadhabas, there are the Jataka tales, many of which mention Kalinga. Speaking to the issues and happenings of their day, a number of Jataka stories featured merchants traveling by sea to India and Southeast Asia. I’m not well versed in the Jatakas, but I have read the translated illustrated Thai version of the Mahajanaka (this is a very popular story in Thailand, I wrote about it in my post on Thailand book recommendations). My research assistant Chatrapathi Gopal Prasad Tanhaji IV tells me that though Kalinga does play a role in the story, invading Mithila which sets off the plot, the perilous boat journey to Suvarnabhumi was likely not from Kalinga. Still, it’s fun to read a story depicting that world.

That pretty much describes what survives of the old sadhaba culture, though if you go to Odisha you’ll notice that one of the common surnames is Sahoo, derived from “sadhaba.” I met a Sahoo who used genetic testing to track down some distant relatives in Myanmar and Malaysia that have been there for many many centuries. The Malaysia relatives merged with the Tamil community there and can no longer speak Odia, but they still use the language in their rituals. 

Beyond these traditions, I wondered if Odisha has more distinct cultural parallels with Southeast Asia than other parts of India do. The Indian influence on Southeast Asia is so obvious and widespread that I won’t bother going into it here, but is there specifically an Odia influence, beyond the name Kalinga? 

My guess is not really, but maybe a bit. Many of the cited connections are shared with coastal south India, and it’s hard to say what came from where. Puppets, textiles, masks, crafts, language, etc. Some of the temple artwork in Bhubaneswar feels very Khmer, but I don’t know what I’m talking about, and maybe you get similar stuff in Kanchipuram. The traditional clothing feels more Southeast Asian than other parts of India, maybe, but here I really don’t know what I’m talking about, and I just compared it with a google image search of “Andhra traditional clothing” and it looks the same to me and somewhat like “Thai traditional clothing,” but very different from Bengal and UP. 

The best I got is that the color palette of Odisha is very blue, and of course the color palette of Thailand is very blue, while Andhra Pradesh is very red, but now I’m just making things up. But maybe there’s something there. I liked this blue temple with wave design motifs in Puri, it reminded me of Thailand. 

Though it’s unrelated to the history, there are relatively modern ties between Odisha and Indonesia that are worth noting. During Indonesia’s struggle for independence from the very evil Dutch (much much worse than the British, I swear), two independence leaders were saved and flown to India on Nehru’s orders by Biju Patnaik, an adventurous pilot who later became the chief minister of Odisha and whose son followed in his footsteps. He remains perhaps the greatest icon of modern Odisha, and for his role in Indonesia’s independence movement, he was given honorary citizenship and some significant awards. The greatest sign of respect, though, is that he chose the Sanskrit name Megawati for the daughter of Sukarno, the independence leader and founding president of Indonesia. Megawati later became president herself. The legacy of ancient Kalinga lives on! 

Fittingly, Bhubaneswar’s airport is named after Biju Patnaik, and it is an international airport, which kind of surprised me. There are two flights a week each to Singapore and Bangkok, and three a week each to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I wondered if there was a lot of business travel from Bangkok to Odisha because there’s also a pricey Thai restaurant at one of the five star hotels, complete with a Thai expat chef, and a more in-depth Thai menu than most upscale Thai restaurants in India, not expected in a “tier 2 city.” It doesn’t seem like a lot of Thais are coming for business, though, and Odisha’s Buddhist sites remain fairly obscure and aren’t on the typical Buddhist circuit. I guess Thailand is just a popular tourist destination and people like the food. (It helps that they’re big seafood eaters.) 

(Nothing against Biju, but it would have been cool if the Bhubaneswar airport were named after Kalinga. Imagine, flying in mere hours from Kalinga to Suvarnabhumi! What a world! By the way, Biju founded Kalinga Airlines, which was merged into Indian Airways.)

I probably wrote too much about Odisha’s maritime traditions considering it’s hardly relevant to what you’ll do and see there. But I read a lot about it and found it fascinating so I wanted to share.

It’s also interesting that Odisha was so prominent historically despite being a place I never hear about today. When I do hear about it, it’s really just as a place with a lot of temples, or as a sleepy tribal belt in the shadow of Bengal. 

The “shadow of Bengal” status goes back centuries, as a large chunk of Odisha was ruled from Bengal under the Mughals and the British, and at one point Odia was considered by some to be a dialect of Bengali! There was no linguistic basis for this (so I’ve read, I have no knowledge of Indian languages), it was apparently just a way for Bengali elites to impose their language on their allegedly backwards neighbors. Bengali was widely taught in Odisha’s schools at one point. 

Backlash to this eventually led to Orissa Province being established in 1936 (after a roughly two decade period where there was a combined Bihar and Orissa Province, which broke away from Bengal), incorporating the southern parts of present day Odisha under the Madras presidency (where Odia was second to Telugu), and a small area in the west that belonged to the Central Provinces (where Odia was second to Hindi). This made Odisha the first linguistic region in India, a precursor to the widespread reorganization of states on linguistic lines that came after independence. 

The Bengal comparison still looms large, though, and Odisha often gets lumped with it into an “East India” cultural sphere. For this reason, I especially enjoyed learning about the numerous connections with South India, which is seen as a world away from “East India” even though Odisha borders Andhra Pradesh and has plenty of shared history and cultural commonalities with Andhra and the south more broadly.

(I appreciate anyone who has read this far, but at this point most of you should just skip ahead. I mainly kept this in for two friends who happen to have coastal Andhra roots and will probably read this!)

One of Odisha’s most significant dynasties was the Eastern Gangas, who built the Puri and Konark temples (Odisha’s top two major sites). They began as a Telugu speaking dynasty and their early capital was Kalinganagara, which today falls in Andhra Pradesh near the border. They later moved their capital to Cuttack, made Puri their spiritual center, and became an Odia dynasty, and for the most part their territory encompassed present day Odisha and coastal Andhra. Some of coastal Andhra’s major temples were built by the dynasty in this time, including Vizagapatnam’s Simhachalam temple where you can see Odia inscriptions.

Despite being rivals of the Cholas, the great Eastern Ganga ruler Anantavarman Chodaganga’s mother was a Chola princess, which is how he got his name (Chola + Ganga) (for a marriage link to the other end of the country, he apparently married a Kashmiri princess). Other rivals of the Cholas, the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka, married East Ganga princesses. (There are numerous other connections to Sri Lanka, from the spread of Buddhism to the similarities between the Sinhala and Odia languages to Nissanka Malla who ruled Polonnaruwa and claimed descent from Kalinga royalty, and much more, but I don’t want to get too distracted here!) My readings also spoke of idols in Odisha’s great temples which were taken from Tamil Nadu, and idols in Tamil Nadu’s great temples which were taken from Odisha. 

That’s all the past, but can you feel any “South Indian” influence today (outside of the border regions)? Well, many modern temples are colorful and over the top, often guarded by statues of Hindu lions with mustaches and crowns. This feels very South Indian, but I don’t know for sure if it is. (Many temple sculptures also reminded me of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, there’s an obvious continuum here based on the old trade routes.) There’s the curvilinear script, which looks more like the scripts of Dravidian languages than Odia’s fellow Indo-Aryan languages with their straight lines (the reason: the Dravidian languages plus Odia were historically written on palm leaves, which would tear with straight lines) (my wife also noted that the language sounded like a mix of Bengali and some southern languages, I don’t notice these things though). There are basically idlis, dosas, and vadas for breakfast and snacks, they just have different names (pitha, chakuli, bara), and they’re served with dalma which is a kissing cousin of sambar (though overall I’d say the Odia cuisine is closer to Bengali). And for my favorite South India/Odisha crossover, there are the single screen cinemas with 4k laser projectors and Dolby Atmos. Yay! (You don’t find those in Bengal.) 

I don’t want to pretend Odisha feels super South Indian or anything, and it probably does feel closer to Bengal than to Andhra Pradesh. My point here is just that these cultural spheres are, of course, not so clearly defined, and Odisha ultimately has its own feel.

Things to Do

I’d say Bhubaneswar has three universally highly recommended things to do (aside from eating, which gets its own post, and day trips, also with their own posts). They are the temples in the old town (there are dozens, visit at least a handful), the cave temples (two clusters right across from each other), and museums (there are three main ones, the one I went to was great, and the others look good too). There’s also Dhauli, where you can see the Ashoka edict, which should be a significant place to visit for some readers even though most of you may not care much, and there’s the awesome Maharaja Picture Palace cinema, which I loved and maybe a few of you will love it too. There’s some other stuff as well. 

If you’re interested in doing tours, I enjoyed the ones I did with Ekamra Walks. As of writing this, in May, there are no walks on the schedule and the last walk on their Instagram was in March, so maybe they’re only in the cooler half of the year, which makes sense. When I was there in January, they had numerous group walks, very reasonably priced (200-300 per person), every Saturday and Sunday. The two I did were the “Spiritual Sojourn,” which took us to four different temples in the old town, and the “Mystical Odyssey,” which took us to two different tantric temples (one in the old town, one a bit outside the city). They also had a nature walk, museum walk, and some safaris. It seems you can book private tours, and the tour lineup changes. I would have loved to do a food walk, which they’ve done in the past. 

I found them worthwhile, especially the Mystical Odyssey tour about the tantric temples as the topic is so unusual and the information they covered is pretty obscure. Both tours went pretty deep into esoteric elements of Hinduism that went over my head, but I appreciated the level of detail and the guides were very knowledgeable and passionate, and they pointed out a lot of interesting things I wouldn’t have found out on my own. I would do more tours with them in the future.

That said, I find tours more valuable in old city areas with a maze of small winding alleyways and countless hidden food and architecture gems and numerous lesser known stories to be told (that’s not what you go to Bhubaneswar for, but I do think there could be a good old town walk somewhat in that vein, and Puri and Cuttack could have such walks). With temple tours… I’d rather just explore on my own and read an article containing the information? But that’s me. I kinda just wanted to wander around marveling at the beautiful temples without having to focus my attention on how the different strands of Shaivism and Vaishnavism developed. (But unlike most people, I like to read. Send me some articles about that topic, I’m interested!)

Also, I found the structure of the tours frustrating because you meet at the starting point, and then wait for the bus and the rest of the group to arrive, and then you drive to where you are going. I’m down for this for the stuff outside of the city, but I didn’t feel it made much sense for the places in the city. The tours didn’t actually get started until around 45 minutes after the scheduled start time, even though the start locations were only like 10 minutes away from the meeting point.

But anyway the tours are good, I recommend them if you like taking tours.

As for my recommendations, usually I order things roughly by priority, but since there’s not that much to do in Bhubaneswar and I already gave you the top picks up front, I thought it would be fun to order them roughly chronologically (while still grouping like with like).

I’ll start with BCE monuments. 

The oldest structures to see in Bhubaneswar are ruins from the ancient city of Sisupalgarh. This may have been the capital of Kalinga that was conquered by Ashoka, though there isn’t definitive evidence. It seems to be from before the Mauryans invaded in ~261 BCE, though. It is said to be among India’s best preserved forts from its era, but there’s not that much to see. I say skip it unless you’re hardcore and have plenty of time to see everything else I tell you about. I saw the ruins of the northwest gate, listed as Sisupalgarh Fort on google maps, but I never saw the cool pillars that are in a lot of photos, those are in a different area. Sisupalgarh isn’t really close to anything, but it isn’t that far from the old town and you could club it in with Dhauli.

Dhauli is further outside of the city and is definitely recommended, though if your interest in Indian history is minimal and you just want to see beautiful things then it definitely ranks below other Bhubaneswar attractions. I’m really glad I went, though, and I recommend it on the way to Puri as it isn’t far off the highway. You could also combine it with the Chausath Yogini temple. Note that it was hard to get Uber autos going to and from here.

Dhauli is famous as the site of the very famous battle where the Mauryan armies slaughtered the army of Kalinga in a bloodbath that was so disturbing, it filled Ashoka with regret and he converted to Buddhism (which he later spread and turned from an obscure local cult into a massive global religion) and went from a king who ruled with violence to a non-violent king who ruled through good and fair treatment of his citizens. At least that’s the popular story, informed by Ashoka’s own writing (via the edicts) wanting to show himself as an enlightened ruler, Buddhists wanting to show the transformative power of Buddhism (though many Buddhist chronicles were apparently clear about his misdeeds), and Indian nationalists looking for great local rulers to hold up as heroes. There’s since been some Ashoka revisionism (like really, the hagiographies aren’t true?!), but I say don’t worry about the truth. If you want to know more you can watch the movie.

Anyway the famous Kalinga battle that the vast majority of my Indian readers will have at least heard of happened somewhere around here. I don’t know if anybody knows where exactly. I pretended it was in the plains that the hill overlooked. That’s probably correct. 

The main attraction in Dhauli, for most people, is a stupa built by some Japanese Buddhists in the 1970s at the top of the hill. This place is super popular around sunset time (though I went on a long weekend so it may have been busier than usual), with people very excitedly taking pictures next to unremarkable things. It’s okay I guess? Moreso if you like people watching. Not that exciting otherwise, but I like the sculptures and the murals that tell the story of Ashoka. The hill also has a Hindu temple (with priests who aggressively ask you for money), a lot of small stalls (I bought starfruit), an enthusiastic Indian tourist temple atmosphere, and some nice views of what I claim is where the Kalinga battle was fought (also, it was gloomy when I went, but I believe on a clear day you can see the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves, which would have been great to see). 

However, the main attraction for readers of sammendelsohn.com is not the peace pagoda, it is the Ashoka edict and the rock cut elephant sculpture next to it (to alert people to the presence of the edict, so they say). These would have been made shortly after the ~261 BCE battle. They were awesome! Not as magnificent as other things you’ll see in Bhubaneswar, but it is just so fascinating to see, particularly having read about the Ashoka edicts in numerous books. I believe this is the only edict I’ve seen outside of a museum, and the text was larger and better preserved than I was expecting. And who doesn’t love a good stone carved elephant?

This area is not well advertised. It is the main reason I came to Dhauli, yet there are few signs pointing to it or people headed in its direction. Look for DHAULI (ASHOKAN ROCK EDICT) on Gmaps. When I got there I walked up the stairs past the elephant to look for the edict but couldn’t find it, then wandered around the park looking for the edict (fun, I like parks but having a mission makes them even better), then went back and asked the security guard and he pointed us to the edict, on the other side of the elephant which faces the road. You’ll figure it out. There were a decent amount of people at the park but I seemed to be the only one who cared about the elephant and the edict. Insane.

For some info about its discovery and a bit more context, this is a good read.

The nearby Ashoka pillar is not an original construction, don’t expect much. 

Also in the vicinity is the 8th century Bhairangeswara temple by the river. I didn’t know about this. It looks nice, if unremarkable compared to the temples in the old town, but perhaps the setting makes it more evocative.

(I’m really fascinated at how popular the stupa is and how unpopular the Ashoka edict is. The location of the stupa is clearly meant to commemorate Ashoka, an important figure in Buddhist history. It was chosen due to its proximity to the edict. The edict is very clearly what makes this place significant. I do not understand tourism!)

Next up are the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves (note: there’s also an Udayagiri Buddhist monastery around two hours from the city, this is not related). Now we’re getting to the great stuff! These caves were built as lodgings and study areas for Jain monks, mostly in the 1st century BCE, though they continued to be used and altered, with some alterations happening over 1000 years later (I believe the majority of what you see is 1st century BCE, though). The caves have some wonderful and unique carvings, and it’s just a nice place to walk around and feel removed from the modern world. It’s definitely a good morning activity, before it gets too hot, though it could be fun in the late afternoon after the sun settles.

Start with Udayagiri as these are the most impressive, and it’s easier to navigate. Khandagiri has some great caves too, but if you don’t have time or energy left for it you don’t have to feel too bad about skipping it.

There are a lot of caves to explore and multiple paths to take. I walked around kind of randomly and then tried to figure out where I was and read the descriptions in my Blue Guide book. I saw some caves that were straight ahead and then turned right, which I recommend. If you don’t have a guidebook, there are good descriptions and images here. 

You don’t have to see all of the caves, though most of them have some fun, interesting carvings to look at. If there’s one that you can’t miss, it is cave one, “Rani Gumpha,” which has the most elaborately carved reliefs, particularly in the upstairs section. There are some pretty detailed scenes here, possibly telling part of a bigger story, though nobody knows what it is. My guidebook said that it could be from a lost epic, while ChatGPT says other theories are that it could depict courtly life, Jain legends, or some local folk story. It seems to tell a story of a woman being kidnapped and then rescued? It was fun to look at all the small details and mini stories, and it’s really amazing how well preserved these are after over 2000 years. The art style here is different from any other I’ve seen, and if I saw these murals out of context and had to guess what country they were from, I really have no clue what I would’ve guessed. What’s with their beehive hair? There were some wonderful images of fruit too, I think those were downstairs.

There’s a somewhat foresty path from here that leads you to cave 10, Ganesh Gumpha. This also had nice reliefs but it was blocked off so we weren’t able to go close to them, unfortunately. We could still appreciate the elephant statues outside, as well as a sculpture of a female guardian. There are Hindu gods inside, I believe those are the later additions. There are some benches nearby where we sat and just enjoyed the atmosphere. You aren’t allowed to bring food but I snuck some chocolate in and ate it here. Single origin bean to bar chocolate at ancient cave temples is as good as life gets.

There are more nice caves around here but I’m not sure there’s anything that stands out about them. If you head to an area up top you’ll see a destroyed horseshoe shaped building, which may have been a temple. 

The two other noteworthy caves are 12, which has an exterior shaped like a tiger’s mouth (I think it looks more like a frog but it’s still awesome), and 14, which has an inscription from Kharavela, the Kalinga ruler who built these caves. Very cool! I didn’t know the significance of this at the time, but the Hathigumpha inscription is an important text for historians in understanding the era as it provides exclusive information about military conquests, infrastructure projects, and Kharavela’s own life. (I believe it is the only source of information on Kharavela, whom I hadn’t heard of. I’ve since seen him cited as one of India’s greatest rulers in history but that claim seems a bit over the top based on one inscription that he had written about himself?)

There are claims that Kharavela deliberately wrote this here, facing Dhauli where the Maurya-Kalinga battle was fought and where the Ashoka edict is, as way of avenging the defeat from 200 or so years prior, given that the inscription claims Kharavela had a successful attack on the Mauryan kingdom of Magadha and where he made the king bow at his feet and brought back stolen Jain idols. Kind of a fun story but a bit fanciful, and who knows/cares. But anyway, it didn’t occur to me until hearing this that you can possibly see Dhauli from here. Keep an eye out for that. I think it was too polluted when I was there, though.

On the way down to the exit from there, there were some nice caves with cool sculptures, but we didn’t investigate closely.

We easily spent over an hour at Udayagiri and were pretty satisfied with what we saw, and it was also starting to get pretty sunny, so we went quickly through Khandagiri. It’s a cool set of caves but it’s anticlimactic after Udayagiri. If you’re the kind of person that doesn’t feel a need to see this, you can skip it.

My first note is that there are tons of monkeys at Khandagiri (I only saw a few at Udayagiri). Big furry white haired monkeys with giant tails. I love them and wish they would love me back.

My other note is that the shrines here are more clearly Jain. I don’t recall specifically seeing any Jain iconography in Udayagiri, but I saw numerous Jain images here. Interestingly, some of these sculptures were added in the 11th century by the Somavamshi dynasty (more on them later).

It’s also not as well kept or well labeled as Udayagiri, and it’s an active temple area. The highlights from what I saw were caves 3 and 7. There were a few others that were nice too. My Blue Guide recommends caves 10 and 11 but I don’t think I saw those. 12 looks nice too, going by the Wikipedia image (all the way at the bottom). I didn’t see as many as I would like because I didn’t know where to walk, and certain parts were off limits because of construction and monkeys.

Since it was popular, I checked out the big modern temple at the top of the hill, but it wasn’t that interesting. I liked a smaller temple we saw on the way up though.

The caves are away from most other things in the city, but they could be clubbed in with the Kala Bhoomi Crafts Museum (excellent, see below) or the tribal museum (I didn’t go). There are two great places to eat (hygiene concerns aside) in the area, the Barramundi temple and the Ballaree restaurant (more info in the food post). I also liked Mission Shakti Bazar, a nice crafts store connected to a Koraput coffee outlet (more info in the food section, though gmaps lists it as permanently closed, leaving it here in case it reopens) .

Now we get to the heart of Bhubaneswar, the old town, also known as Ekamra Kshetra, filled with countless temples. This is probably among India’s finest collection of temples in one area, with countless beautiful structures full of finely detailed carvings. The scale of it is really amazing, you could take away the ten best temples and you would still have an awesome collection of temples! (Or at least a pretty good collection.) It’s also apparently a fraction of what it once was. Several things I read noted how there used to be thousands of temples in the area, while there are now only hundreds. I generally mourn the loss of heritage, but I can’t say I felt there was a great dearth of temples here. Then again, I’ll never know what I’m missing. 

I do wish the area were greener and quieter and less carelessly overdeveloped, though. Many of the temples are away from the hustle and bustle, some in fairly nice parks, but other than the area around the lake you don’t get much of a nice atmosphere walking from one to the other.

The temples are mostly 8th to 13th century Kalinga style architecture, and they are all on a similar spectrum, but it’s fun to see the variations in the styles, notably of the carvings. If you pay closer attention than I did you can probably track how the styles changed and developed, but even if you don’t pay attention you will still see how different the art styles are. There are many cases where, out of context, I wouldn’t have guessed they were Indian, and you can quite clearly see connections with Southeast Asia. 

I found some guides to Kalinga style architecture, but I got bored reading them and really just enjoyed my own shallow appreciation of the temples. I came to this area four times over the course of my stay, checking out new temples as well as revisiting a few of the major ones, and I loved it every time. My Odisha holy town hot take is that I’d easily rank Ekamra above Puri. I don’t think it would be crazy to skip Puri so you can spend extra time here…

By the way, I’ll cover this more in the food section, but I had my best meal in Odisha (and… one of the best in all of India?) at the Ananta Vasudeva temple, where they sell the food that is prepared for the gods. I highly recommend planning that for lunch, though be aware it isn’t the cleanest of places. 

Like the caves, I recommend an early morning visit to this area, or a late afternoon/sunset visit. Many temples can be visited at night, which is lovely even though you can’t see the details as well. Try to do the more ornate temples in good light, though. This is why I recommend multiple visits, because you can only cover so many temples in one chunk. Plus, you’ll reach temple saturation at some point. But I guess it’s okay if you only come once and hit up 3-4 temples, you’ll still have a great time. Most people don’t like temples as much as me, or so I’m told. 

I loved exploring the old Ekamra area, but if my words don’t convince you, let me share some words from Lord Brahma himself! [The following dialogue is based on real quotes from the Brahma Purana. Sources: 1, 2]

“Listen, O leading sages, I shall succinctly mention. There is a great holy centre known as Ekāmra. It dispels all sins. It is extremely inaccessible to ordinary persons. It is as auspicious and splendid as Vārāṇasī. It has a crore of Liṅgas and eight holy water spots in it.”

That’s nice Brahma, but… can you tell us something more interesting about the place? Why should people come here and not the countless other holy places in India?

“O excellent brahmins, in the previous Kalpa, there was a single Mango tree there by which name, the holy centre came to be known as Ekāmra. It was full of delighted and well-nourished people, both men and women. Most of the people there belonged to the learned group. It abounded in riches and foodgrains and similar things.”

Brahma, it’s the 21st century, and foodgrains aren’t so hard to come by for most of my readers. Why don’t you share something that is very special about Ekamra?

“In Ekamra dwell the most beautiful women on earth. With their slender waists, plump breasts, ample and beautiful buttocks…”

My goodness, Lord Brahma! You mustn’t just say such things! This is a family friendly blog after all!

“Their bodies bent down due to the weight of their breasts.”

I’ve heard enough, Lord Brahma! Go back to Brahmapura!

(No wonder Bangkok is full of Brahma shrines.)

It would be uncouth of me to comment on such matters more generally, but I will say… Brahma’s description matches the temple carvings quite well. (If those quotes from Lord Brahma made you uncomfortable, you might not be cut out for some of what you’ll see at these temples, just saying.)

(One of the details about the women that I left out: “Betel leaves added colour to their mouths.” How was this attractive?!?!?!)

Interestingly, the shape and size of the features on the sculpted ladies is one of the ways you can tell what era the temples are from, not that I kept track (also, the poses and the degree of explicitness contain vital information). I don’t claim to possess the discernment to detect such nuances and categorize them accordingly, but nonetheless I shall excerpt from The Sculpture of Odisha - A Study on Women on Odishan Temple by Dr. Ramakanta Bhuyan (Assistant Professor, Department of History, Berhampur University) in the June 2019 issue of International Journal of Innovative Studies in Sociology and Humanities:

In the 8th century [...] The images were seductive and enticing, they are somewhat aloof [...] more lithe in body proportions than 7th century figures. The breasts, were small in ratio to the wide hips, are no longer bound by a kuncha-bandha. The lower garment is nearly diaphanous so that legs are likewise fully exposed […] jewelry are well articulated in refined and enhanced the curves of the female form by contrasting the softness and warmth of flesh with the metallic hardness and precision of the ornaments [...]

In the 10th century […] they appear less aloof and more earthly. 

The alasa-kanya images of 11th and early 12th centuries are some of the most beautiful figures created anywhere in India. Particularly on the Rajarani temple are the loveliest of all Odishan creations. They were more lithe in body proportions, having long and pliable limbs, and assume extremely graceful poses, their supple bodies softly bending like meandering creepers. The pictures are not animated more than earlier, their actions are controlled and pleasingly seductive. [...] The new motifs introduced is the nupurapandika (adjusting ankle-bells), nartaki (dancer with hands joined above the head), the motifs of wringing water from long tresses with a hamsa catching the drops, and the motifs of riding on the shoulders of a smiling, bearded male. [...]

In the 14th and 15th century the artistic creativity and technical competence on the picture was diminished greatly. [...] In the mid-15th century the figures are rigid pose and squat in body proportion.

Archaeology is fun.

As Brahma hinted at, there’s plenty of local mythology here. Different sources tell it different ways, but the gist of the Ekamra story is that Shiva left crowded Varanasi to meditate in the forests around here. Parvati came later to look for him and saw a mango tree (ek-amra) that cows were gathering under and were maybe being milked by some unknown spiritual force, and this was where Shiva was, and Parvati did some penances that got his attention even while he was meditating. Something like that. Anyway it’s a holy place. The Bindu Sagar tank surrounded by temples also contains a drop (bindu) of water from all of the holy rivers, soaking the water into his dreadlocks and then squeezing them out, and that’s why the water here is holy and a bath here will give you spiritual cleansing (and hopefully not colon cleansing). Another water body, across from Lingaraj temple, is known for being where Parvati killed some demons. There’s more, but you get the point, and I wouldn’t say it added that greatly to my enjoyment of the place.

Okay, on to the temples.

Here I’ll go somewhat in order of priority + proximity rather than chronology. You can see over a dozen temples here and never get bored, but if you’re short on time and can only do Lingaraj, Parameshwar and Mukteshwar, plus a stroll around the lake and a visit to Ananta Vasudeva for lunch, I’ll say you did pretty well! If you have more time add Vaital Deul, on the opposite side of the lake as Ananta Vasudeva, and Raja Rani, a short walk from Mukteshwar (and maybe the outside of the city Chausath Yogini temple, particularly nice at sunset). And if you have more time, more recommendations are below! After a certain point it is kinda more of the same though, so I forgive you for stopping earlier than I did.

Also, while writing this I came across an excellent website by an archaeologist and photographer Kevin Standage where he wrote about and took photos of many of the temples in the area. Check it out if you want some more architectural detail and background information (when available) on any particular temple you see. He doesn’t list them in order of priority, and most of these won’t be worth seeing, but I did find some hidden gems that I’d like to visit next time I’m there. 

I think if you only have time for one set of temples, make them the combo of Mukteshwar and Parsurameswara, both connected to each other by a park, and a short walk from Lingaraj (which you should at least see from the outside as well). Parsurameswara is one of the oldest temples in the area, from the 7th century, built by the Shailodbhava dynasty who I’ve never heard of. The carvings here are amazing, and the temple is covered with them. The art style is unusual and unexpected, especially with some of the human figures, which as I mentioned I probably wouldn’t have guessed were Indian if I saw them out of context. The earrings, headgear, lips, facial features, body size, it was all so different from what I’m used to seeing. Really interesting. Plus, many great sculptures of the gods, and dizzying geometrical designs.

Mukteshwar, from the 10th century and from the Somavamshi dynasty (who ruled from the 9th to 12th centuries and built many of the temples in the area), is also excellent, and very different. The torana (gateway) is the standout element but again it is the small details that make it special. Just walk around and take it all in. Plus, here you get the naga/snake mermaid ladies, which you don’t get at every temple.

Keep an eye out here, I saw a handful of mongooses. (Mongeese?) I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before. 

Around the corner from Mukteshwar is Bhai Bhai Rasagola, which I recommend if you want a snack. They have both sweets and savories, and it was a good breakfast after a morning of sightseeing. There’s more detail in the food section.

A short walk from Mukteshwar is Rajarani (11th century), which is the only temple that you have to pay to get into. From a distance and from the front it doesn’t look that impressive (though you do get the snake mermaids guarding it, I’m a big fan of them) but once you take a closer look at the back and sides you’ll see that the sculptures here are probably the most detailed, refined, and three dimensional of any of the temples. They also to me felt less unique and weird, though, so I didn’t love this as much as Mukteshwar and Parsurameswara. Still amazing, though!

(Some people noted that the style at Rajarani reminds them of Khajuraho. I haven’t been, but I noticed the cover of my Blue Guide book has a temple image that reminded me of Odisha, and it turns out to be Khajuraho, and I totally see the resemblance.)

Also a short walk from the first two temples, but in the other direction from Rajarani, is Lingaraj, which is the biggest and most important temple in the city. It is massive (55 meters tall) and awe-inspiring. It’s the only place here that is very crowded (at many other temples you may have the place nearly all to yourself, though large groups come and go), and it is also the only one that non-Hindus are not allowed to go to. However, there’s a viewing platform on the north side which gives you a great view. (Jagganath Puri, also not open to non-Hindus, did not have a viewing platform, so this was nice.) Apparently this was built for Lord Curzon’s visit. I greatly enjoyed my viceregal view, but you also get good views just while walking around. For people who can go into the temple, you aren’t allowed to bring phones in, so you either have to deposit it or have someone hold onto it.

Lingaraj was built in the 11th century by the Somavamshi dynasty, but it appears to have been completed by the Eastern Ganga dynasty. Style wise, this is very similar to several other smaller temples in the area, but a lot bigger, so earlier temples were a trial run of sorts for this. Jagganath Puri, built a century later by the Eastern Gangas, is also similar and even bigger (10 meters higher, at 65 meters), but I found Lingaraj to be more magnificent, which is partly because I got a better view, but also because it is unpainted which makes it look much grander. 

I did a full 360 of Lingaraj to get nice views as I had free time while my wife was inside. You can do this too, but I wouldn’t say you have to. Your time is better spent exploring some of the smaller temples.

I could only see Lingaraj from a distance, so for me it was all about scale, while the others nearby were great because I got to really appreciate the small details. I think this is true even if you go into Lingaraj, based on what I’ve read and photos I looked at, as my other favorite temples have really exquisite and elaborate carvings that I don’t believe Lingaraj matches, though I’m sure it’s very impressive up close as well. 

I also loved some lesser-visited temples nearby Lingaraj. Right past the viewing platform is the Chitrakarini temple. Maybe it’s not noteworthy in the grand scheme of temples in the area, but it is still really great, with wonderful carvings. I definitely recommend it, especially for people who aren’t allowed into Lingaraj. Further down the same road and then left down a small alley is the Yameswhwar temple, which I found by accident while looking for something else. That was great too!

A short walk from Lingaraj is the Bindu Sagar lake, which is surrounded by ancient temples. This is the quintessential old world temple town Bhubaneswar. I highly recommend a leisurely stroll around the lake, ducking into random temples. 

The Ananta Vasudev temple is here. I highly highly recommend coming here for lunch (see the food section), and it's also a really nice, large temple even if it doesn’t stand out as much as some others I’m mentioning. It’s from the 13th century and it is one of the few in this area built by the Eastern Ganga dynasty who also built Puri and Konark and who were Vaishnavite, which is why this is the rare Vishnu temple in the area heavy with Shiva temples. Check it out even if you aren’t eating there, it’s awesome to see the food market in the compound next to the temple. I wanted to see the area where they prepare the food, but I was shooed away.

Also by the lake are some dharamshalas (rest houses for pilgrims) which are the only relatively recent structures of note here. I’m not seeing it on google maps, but the one I photographed, the Rai Bahadur Hazarimull Doodwala Daramshala (hell yeah), from 1929, is between Ananta Vasudev and Lingaraj. You can go inside and see the courtyard, it’s fun. 

On the road on the other side of the lake are two somewhat noteworthy local snack shops. I heard Baiya Kora Khai on Rath road is a good place to get kora khai, the prasad given at LIngaraj. Though I found it too sweet (I will add salt and very dark chocolate next time), it was better than the one I tried from a stall near the temple, being nice and caramely and with a good spice kick plus coconut to balance it. Here’s an awesome video of how it’s made. Also, up the road is Sankar Namkin Shop which makes fresh sev, not unique but still really fun to see.

On the same road is the Vaitaul Deul Temple (8th century), which has amazing carvings and some unusual features, including the tower that looks more like a South Indian gopuram than a typical Kalinga style tower. It’s also believed that tantric rituals were performed here, and there’s a small structure here where they may have made human sacrifices. Unlike other major temples in the area, which as I mentioned are mostly Shiva temples, this is a Shakta temple, dedicated to the scary goddess Chamunda. 

I had gone here on a tour with Ekamra Walks (mentioned above) that also took us to the very interesting Chausath Yogini temple, another site of tantric worship. This is located outside of Bhubaneswar, about a 25 minute drive from the old town and away from everything else, which gives it a nice atmosphere. I definitely learned a lot on the tour, though the topic is so esoteric I still don’t feel like I know anything. But I recommend the tour anyway, and recommend both temples either way! 

Though it isn’t in this area, I’ll include the Chausath Yogini temple here anyway since it’s thematically related. Built in the ninth century, it is one of only a few temples of its type in India (the most impressive of them is the one in Madhya Pradesh). I thought yogini was just a term for a female yogi, but it also refers to goddesses worshipped in the tantra traditions. In this case there are 64 of them (“chausath” means 64), which appear in the niches of the circular temple. All of the goddesses stand atop different animals.

(It's better than these photos make it look!)

I knew some of these goddesses (Saraswati, Mahalakshmi), and many of the goddesses here are female versions of major male gods which I didn’t know had female counterparts (Varahi, Narasimhi, Ganeshini, Brahmani). To quote from a more detailed blog: “The 64 yoginis are based on the Asta Matrakas or the eight major forms of Devi, the mother goddess. These are Brahmani, Vaishnavi, Maheshwari, Indrani, Kaumari, Varahi, Chamunda and Narsimhi. Each of these yoginis has eight attendants and when they are all assembled, they add up to 64 yoginis.”

My initial impression is that the temple was ruined and had a collapsed roof, but being roofless is actually a feature of yogini temples. I was told this is so yoginis can fly in and out (I forgot to mention they can fly), though I asked chatgpt and it had some other interesting theories. I would have liked to say more but the topic is pretty abstract and whenever I tried reading about it I got confused. About all I gathered is that weird tantric rituals were performed here in hopes of gaining powers and cursing annoying family members.

I recommend visiting if you have the time (a visit right before sunset is especially recommended), depending on your interest, though it is pretty out of the way. You could go on the way to Dhauli or Puri. It isn’t as grand or beautiful as most of the other places I’m recommending in Bhubaneswar, so people who aren’t very curious about nuances of Indian culture may not get as much out of it, but it is unique in its appearance and the images of the goddesses, and it is a good jumping off point to learn, or at least try to learn, about tantrism. I’m very glad I went, and would rank it as a Bhubaneswar highlight (one of a dozen, admittedly).

Now back to some final temples in the old town, if you have time.

One interesting temple is Bhaskareswara, to the east of the earlier cluster of temples. Compared to the others, it isn’t very impressive from the outside, but it has a different structure than the other temples and it has a massive shiv linga inside, one of the biggest I’ve seen, going from the base of the temple and stretching up to the prayer hall on the upper floor! Our tour guide told us that many historians believe this was originally an Ashoka pillar, and you’ll see many lingas in the area that were fashioned out of old stupas (I fact checked this and it is a widely held view, if not something that can be confirmed in most cases).  Another thing I liked about the temple is that it’s in the center of a good sized park, and when we went early on a Sunday morning there were a lot of people out exercising, doing yoga, or just walking and hanging out. 

Nearby is the Brahmeshwara temple, which was quite grand and had wonderful sculptures, and Megheswhar, which is less impressive but still nice and has Naga snake mermaids, and which I’m especially fond of it because when I visited there was a small family gathering for some marriage ceremony and they gave me delicious food (including one of my favorite Odia dishes, the elusive ambula rai!). These temples are overall more impressive than Bhaskareswara, but the linga there is the highlight of this area. 

I wouldn’t say you have to visit this area, but I would make an effort to at least see the linga at Bhaskareswara as that’s pretty interesting and unique.

There are also some prominent temples north of the old city cluster. You’ll almost certainly see the Rameshwar temple while driving to the old city, and there are some smaller temples across from it. They’re nice, but again not especially noteworthy that you must see them on a short trip. Worthwhile if you have time, though. 

Rameshwar is a Shiva temple, and as per Wikipedia, “Legend goes as when Rama was returning from Lanka after victory over Ravana, Goddess Sita asked to worship Shiva here. So Ramachandra built a Linga for that purpose.” Interestingly, the idol from Lingaraj comes to Rameshwar via chariot and stays for four days during one of the festivals. I came here at night and it was pretty busy with worshippers, which wasn’t the case for any of the other temples I visited, but maybe it was just the timing. 

Across the street are three temples, Shatrughaneshwar, Bharateshwar, and Lakshmaneshwar, all named after Ram’s brothers. From the 6th century, these are the oldest temples in the area. Though from a distance they don’t impress, they have some great carvings so it is worth a closer look.

Now I’ll cover the museums, of which there are several, though I only went to one. You should also go to one, either the State Museum or Crafts Museum, probably whichever location works best with your itinerary. I think more than one would be redundant and overkill on a short trip.

I was very interested in the Odisha State Museum, but unfortunately my timing was bad. I saved it for my last few days, and it was closed Saturday (many museums close the second and fourth Saturday of each month), Sunday (they’re generally open Sundays but this year it was Republic Day), and Monday (most of the museums are closed all Mondays). The museum has a lot of amazing looking sculptures, plus other local arts. Here’s a gallery (spoilers I guess). The Chamunda statue is intense. Not included in that link is the boat relief carving. The same complex also has the Kalinga Art Gallery. This is very close to the old town. 

Thankfully I could make it to the Kalabhoomi Crafts Museum, which was excellent, full of a wide range of wonderful art and crafts from across the state. It’s not in the most convenient location for most visitors, but it isn’t far from the Udayagiri and Khandagiri caves. 

The museum is nicely set up, much better than most museums in India, with buildings that evoke old village houses and good lighting and labeling inside the museum (pretty impressive from a government museum, to be honest). It seems pointless to list my favorite parts, just go and enjoy. Some of it was grand and intricate, some more cute and quaint in its simplicity, and I loved seeing various myths and characters interpreted through different art styles and mediums. One section is devoted to Jagganath, with replicas of the idols and related paraphernalia from the Puri temple (such as different clothing from different seasons), which was especially great to see as I wasn’t allowed to go into the temple. 

I think they have headset tours but I didn’t bother, nor did I bother with more than a minute of the video they show us at the beginning. The staff was funny, they kept yelling at us for walking on the wrong path or trying to exit from the wrong gate.

The tribal museum looked decent too, but I didn’t feel a need to go after seeing this. There are some other museums in Cuttack, I wrote about those in the Cuttack section. I really liked the maritime museum there. There are a few art galleries on the map, we went to check out the Orissa Modern Art Gallery which seemed nice, but it was closed because the caretaker went out for lunch and someone we met nearby told us there’s nothing there to see. Odd. There’s also the Sudarshan Art and Crafts Village, set up by the renowned sculpture artist Sudarshan Sahoo. I think this is mostly a workshop and I’m not sure how much there is to see, but it may be worth checking out.

I think that covers everything to do in Bhubaneswar. I would have liked to see some Odissi performances but I didn’t know where to go. There are a number of performing arts venues but I can’t find their schedules online? I happened to drive by some that advertised what’s happening on billboards outside, but I didn’t feel like stopping to check them out. We also planned a morning or evening walk at the botanical garden but never got around to it.

And if you want to buy gifts/souvenirs, there are a few nice places. Ekamra Haat has a lot of small shops selling local arts and crafts. The government run Mission Shakti Bazar was also very nice (though this may be closed based on a recent google review, and the adjacent Koraput Coffee says closed). If you want souvenirs and you’re driving to Puri, I highly recommend stopping in the Raghurajpur art village, see my post on Puri for more info.

And lastly, of course, I must mention the single screen cinemas! I was surprised that despite not having a strong film industry, Bhubaneswar has a number of nice looking single screen cinemas, with the booking apps boasting 4k laser projectors and Dolby Atmos. I don’t know what accounts for this other than an influence from neighboring Andhra Pradesh. Pretty sure you do not get this elsewhere in North India.

I only saw two theaters, one was the nice looking Keshari Talkies which I only drove by and didn’t get a chance to photograph, and the other was the wonderfully kitschy Maharaja Picture Palace which I went inside and would rank among my favorite theaters in India! Opened in 1992, it’s shaped like a castle and has an image on the side of it depicting lord Jagganath and a Maharaja watching an Odissi performance. The interiors are fun too, colorful and charming, and with some random decorations like a large sculpture of a European woman. Unlike most single screens I’ve been to, it’s a nicely kept theater, not as fancy as a nice PVR or Inox, but still clean and with good audio, picture, and seats, and with much more old school charm than the multiplexes. I only walked in briefly, but I hope to actually see a movie here one day, though they mostly only show Hindi movies without subtitles. I enjoyed their website’s About page where they list their numerous technical upgrades over the years, and you get the sense that it’s a family business run with passion. 

By the way, I did go to two movies in Bhubaneswar, both at the PVR Utkal Galleria. It’s a small theater, with only four audis, and the two I went to were on the smaller side (the others are larger, though), but it was a nice theater. Pretty clean projection. Apparently all audis are 4k laser and Dolby Atmos. I planned to see something at the Cinepolis at the other nice mall but the showtimes didn’t work out.

In the interval, attendants came in carrying trays of prepared food and tried very hard to get people to order. I think the only other place this has happened to me was in Kolkata. (“Regional variations in service at Indian movie theaters” is an overlooked travel writing genre, someone should do this full time.)

I always like seeing local ads at the movies. There were Odia language ads for local real estate developers, a local hospital, and a local egg brand. 

I feel bad that I didn’t write this down, but I don’t think they played the national anthem here.

And I was happy to learn about the Film Society of Bhubaneswar. Nice to see.