This fishing-village-cum-beach-resort hasn't left me with a lasting impression, but perhaps that's a bit unfair because the weather has turned, and I've only seen it amidst the storms that seem to be hitting the Bay of Bengal this week. And my luck has turned in other ways too, so that I'm now finding myself a day late for everything - the music festival at Konark's Sun Temple, the market days coming up in south Orissa, and future train connections no longer seem to fit.

The word beach really means fishermen's latrine here, or it could mean animal cemetery given the number of them washed up on the shore. My guidebook comically states, "paradise it ain't". They are not wrong.

But there are redeeming features; otherwise I wouldn't have come here. The Sun Temple and Konark's beach were definitely worth a visit. And the Indian weddings going on in the evening streets of Puri were worth seeing too, with tricycles carrying flashing lights and caged musicians beating out some crazy rhythms to which the following procession were going wild. And a night at Chilika Lagoon (India's largest) with a balcony gave me some time to catch up on reading and laundry.

With the weather being so dull, I couldn't drum up the enthusiasm to join the hoards of Indian tourists boarding boats to see the Irawaddy dolphins, and I bottled out of crossing the lagoon by public ferry when I saw what a deathtrap it is. Only the other day 41 passengers were stranded on it and had to be rescued.

And the weather has also made the photo album of this area a bit thin. The wedding processions were difficult to capture. The fishermen battling the huge morning waves in the pouring rain went un-photographed. And neither sunrise nor sunset did anything worthy of draining the camera battery.

Onwards then, and turning West, first to the tribal regions of Orissa.