Hello Hivers,
This post is about my trip to Odisha a state on eastern coast of India. On first day of our trip we landed in Bhubaneshwar and headed for our stay in Puri. Will cover more about Puri and other places we visited during this trip in coming blogs but for today lets get to know about not so popular but amazing, breathtaking and expansive 'Chilika Lake' that we visited on our first day.
Chilika lake is largest brackish water lake in Asia and second largest coastal lagoon in the world. The vast expansion of this lake is spread across Puri, Khurda and Ganjam districts of Odisha state. I never knew about this lake before I visited here. The lake is shallow water and a wide range of flora, fauna is observed in and around this lake.
It hosts number of small islands and interestingly there are islands named as 'Honeymoon Island' and 'Breakfast Island'. The lake is home to special Chilka Dolphins which is a major attraction here.
After our early morning flight from Delhi we reached Bhubaneshwar at around 10:00 am from there we headed to our stay in Puri and after some rest and meal we left for our journey to Chilika.
I was not very much sure about what kind of experience it is going to be. After reaching the spot we booked a boat ride and set off for the first of its kind experience.
Though its shallow water but the wave forms with boat and the splash it creates when boat rides on these waves, creates wonderful and adventurous experience like sailing on the sea.
We were excited, initially little scared too as little under the lake it was just water everywhere the vast expansions of lake makes the experience more of like being lost in the waters.
After some time the boat man drew our attention towards some splashes at some distance, yeah they were dolphins and now we were chasing those dolphins. It was first experience of witnessing dolphins in their natural habitat.
The journey within the lake was exciting, enthralling and adventurous. We saw some islands, farming on those islands, people doing fishing in the lake. We stopped at a halt where some locals were selling pearls and other stones.
Don't know how many of you have seen or experienced it, but seeing harvesting of stones and pearls live was a unique and mesmerizing experience. The person had a bucket with him filled with some water and a handful of oysters and he harvested some peals and stones in front of us from those oysters.
Headed from there we reached to our final destination in farthest in Chilika the 'Chilika Sea Mouth'. It is the place where the lake mearges with the sea. Red carbs were very common there on the sea shore. Little walk from where the boat left us and it was the giant roaring sea on the other side was chilika's calm and shallow water.
That's all for the day. Chilika has so much to offer that its hard to cover all in one day and for the nature lovers its a paradise to delve in. This is one of the places where you would like to visit again and again.
Thanks for reading all through it.
Keep reading, keep posting, keep growing.
