7 Places to Visit in Puri

The town has been continuously occupied as a place of worship since at least the 12th century CE, when the Ganga king Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva commissioned the current temple structure around 1135 CE, though the presiding deity — Lord Jagannath, a form of Vishnu worshipped alongside his siblings Balabhadra and Subhadra — has origins that predate the present temple by many centuries and may incorporate pre-Vedic tribal traditions of the Shabar people of Odisha.

The town operates on a dual economy: pilgrimage and beach tourism. The two rarely overlap physically. The pilgrim town spreads through its labyrinthine lanes around the temple's north, south, east, and west gates, where pandas (hereditary priests) maintain centuries-old records of family visits and where the smell of marigold garlands, camphor smoke, and frying malpua dough is pervasive. The beach town — Grand Road's eastern terminus — offers a 7-kilometre arc of dark gold sand that descends steeply to rough surf, popular with domestic tourists from West Bengal and Jharkhand, and lined with small hotels and seafood restaurants serving Puri machha (freshly caught pomfret and prawns).

The Rath Yatra festival, when the three deities are placed on massive wooden chariots and pulled by devotees down the Grand Road to the Gundicha Temple, transforms the city each June or July. The chariot of Jagannath — the Nandighosa — stands 13.5 metres tall and requires 4,200 metres of rope for its pulling. For ten days the population of the city multiplies several times over. Outside festival season, Puri is a manageable, walkable coastal town with excellent food and one of Odisha's best connected rail stations.