it has all the overwhelming ugliness of a so called upcoming "town" and the idyll and non chalance of the average eastern village..it saw surprising amount of development twenty years back, but none since...try remembering one of those acquaintances who have looked 40 all their lives..its surrounded by lusty blue hills on all sides, something typical of the ghats and for a few hours of dusk on random days of the year heaven descends for brief holidays in this unknown uncelebrated part of the world...a stretch of the eastern ghats which nestles my village..known as the panchadhara (meaning five streams)...I decided to write about it after my last visit when I saw it at its best, in a particularly wild green October..
for all my regional ties I do not know much of odia litertature..yet this is briefly borrowed from memory..
"chhota mora gaanti, bhugola pothi patare pache nathau taara naanti"..which should mostly translate to "my little village, so what if it's name is not found in geography books and records"...nahh much of the affection in those words is lost in translation, probably in tandem with my disaffection for its people like many others, over years..
if you know a thing or too about tropical rains, choose august-october although novemeber wouldnt disappoint you either..if you think the north is too far, too testing, hills too steep and (like me) too cold, this is your place, you ll like this place in passing, well literally..
in those days take a bus at one of those hours when its about to rain (how you re goin to do that, well you just have to get lucky for the best bit)...treat yourself to a journey through the clouds (a bus is good enough, though booking an autorickshaw is fair if there is a bunch of 4-5 people) as it raves titillatingly into the mountains that playfully crisscross into each other. The streams subtly accessorize your view while finding their way around the mountains and tracing their path along , for all their harmless presence bordering almost on absence, these streams had expanded during the 2001 floods to gorge down the very roads from where you re gazing down at them (be there and you cant even start to wonder, how on earth that happened!)
so let me stop meandering and mooring around panchadhara's landscape and help you with the usuals:
getting there: take a puri - bolangir, bhubaneswar - sambalpur intercity..and get down at boinda..the boinda station itself is quite pretty, one of those small places where the train wouldnt bother to stop more than 3-5 mins (time of journey - 3hrs)..from there take a bus (max 70 bucks) or autorickshaw (250 bucks) to athamallik (yes, thats my village)...you re likely to cross the ghats which is stretch of somehwere between 5-7 kms 30 mins into the journey...
usp : although am yet to see one in all of my twenty five years, if yu re lucky/unlucky (the way yu see it) yu may spot a wild elephant!! causing an occasional traffic snag :D (most locals and my mom have experiences to recount) (passing tip: choose the evening for this)
usp #1: it will never have touristy usp, its not a destination, its for passing, its for people pursuing other mundane destinations, quite unlikely to sound impressive to people who are in the habit of bunching a few tourist spots together for their itinerary.
usp#2: you re not bumping into he usual tourist or maoist (although news has it that maoists are tracing it on their maps as an exit route)