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| | | Message 17 of 20 in Discussion |
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2009: Jan 5th: We got ready to leave for Bargarh. It was midmorning before we got away. The drive was long and Nilu thought I wanted the AC on. He couldn't get it through his head all I wanted was the fan. With this head-cold the AC was kicking my ass, and we still had jetlag to boot. It was a seven hour drive and I was miserable in a tiny car. Sigh. At one point we had a flat tire, and I was able to get out of the cramped little car and walk around. I found a good place to take a leak, back up the road a bit. Took some nice photos while walking too. Life is good after all�?or it was until I had to get back in that wretched little car. Good news is, the flat was away from cities. We had long since left Cuttack, and were not yet anywhere near to Angul.
We stopped at a dhaba (truck stop) for lunch, and the driver got the flat tire repaired while we ate. Cooking is done over open coals. When I say coals, I mean hot coal. Literally, they use raw coal to burn for cooking. A tandoor (oven) was used to make the flat bread. If you've never cooked over hot coal, let me tell you, _ it _ is _ hot! In fact, it gets white hot. I got photos of the cooks at the dhaba that show the hot coals. They really put on a show for me too, the hams, but the food was way too rich for me to eat. It was very heavy with ghee (clarified butter) and oil, not at all good for my heart. Neither of us finished our meal. Dhabas seem to be going for fancy rich food nowadays. Pity. They used to be great places to eat.
Traffic through Angul was very heavy and we traveled at a crawl, way too many pedestrians in the road along with the cars, scooters, and bicycles. Between Angul and Sambalpur the road is lined with large old trees on both sides. The trunks are painted white so people don't run off the road and hit them, but the trees totally block the view around curves. The road is also not graded on the curves and people drive fast going both ways. Not at all a good highway to drive at dusk! There were signs every so often warning to not drive too fast. I don't scare easy, but our driver scared the heck out of me when he crossed the road almost to the opposite shoulder before regaining control of the car!
Traffic was heavy again in Sambalpur. Nilu took a back-road 'shortcut' to the highway for Bargarh. It was around 6:00 PM and well after dusk: We were totally beat by the time we pulled up at the Hotel Ganapati in Bargarh. Randeep was not there to meet us either, but the hotel staff seemed to be expecting us.
I'll work on this more later. I'm already losing track of the days in Bhubaneswar! |
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