Odisha — Bhubaneswar, Puri, Konark & Chilika

The largest working temple in Bhubaneswar, built in the eleventh century and still the centre of religious life in the old town. The tower stands about 55 metres above a walled compound holding dozens of smaller shrines. Entry is restricted to Hindus, but the viewing platform on the outer wall gives a clear look at the whole complex.

• See the tower from the viewing platform
• Walk the lanes of the old Ekamra quarter
• Stop at Bindusagar tank next door

A tenth-century temple, small enough to walk around in ten minutes and carved well enough to keep you there for forty. The arched torana gateway in front of it is the piece everyone comes to see — there is nothing quite like it elsewhere in the state.

• Look closely at the torana arch
• Find the carved monkey and lion panels
• Walk across to the Siddheshwar temple beside it

Two facing hills honeycombed with rock-cut cells that Jain monks lived in from about the second century BCE. Udayagiri holds the better carving, including the double-storeyed Rani Gumpha and the Hathigumpha inscription left by King Kharavela. Khandagiri, across the road, rewards the climb with a view over the whole city.

• Walk through Rani Gumpha
• Find the Hathigumpha inscription
• Climb Khandagiri for the city view

The hillside above the Daya river where the Kalinga war is believed to have been fought, and where Ashoka afterwards had a set of edicts carved into the rock face. The white peace pagoda on the crest was built much later, in the 1970s, by a Japanese Buddhist order working with local monks.

• Read the translated rock edicts
• Walk the pagoda terrace
• Look out over the Daya river plain

An eleventh-century temple built from the warm reddish stone that gives it its name, standing alone in a lawned enclosure. There is no image inside and no worship here now, so it is looked after as a monument. The tower is ringed with figures of women, musicians and the guardians of the eight directions.

• Circle the tower to see all eight guardians
• Photograph the temple across the lawn
• Sit out the hottest hour in the garden

Worth an hour on the way back for its palm-leaf manuscripts, tribal collection and the stone sculpture gathered from sites across the state.

• See the palm-leaf manuscript gallery
• Look at the tribal art section
• Browse the stone sculpture hall

Built in the thirteenth century under Narasimhadeva I and shaped as the chariot of Surya, with twenty-four carved stone wheels along its base and teams of horses at the front. The main tower fell long ago, so what stands today is the great assembly hall, packed from plinth to roof with carving. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

• Study the wheels, which work as sundials
• Walk the full circuit of the base carvings
• Visit the small ASI museum by the gate

A wide, largely empty beach three kilometres from the temple, where the old pilgrimage bathing ground was. A good place to eat and stretch before the last hour of the drive.

• Walk the sand
• Late lunch at a beach stall
• Watch the fishing boats come in

A twelfth-century temple whose wooden images of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra are replaced every few years in a ceremony that draws the whole state. It is the starting point of the Rath Yatra chariot procession each summer. Entry is for Hindus only; phones, cameras and leather items must be left at the lockers outside.

• Join the darshan queue, or view from the library roof
• See the Aruna Stambha pillar at the gate
• Walk Grand Road, where the chariots run

A single village lane about fourteen kilometres from Puri where nearly every household paints pattachitra — cloth scrolls prepared with tamarind paste and painted in natural colour. Palm-leaf engraving and papier-mâché masks are made here too, and the houses themselves are painted outside.

• Watch a pattachitra being painted
• See palm-leaf engraving up close
• Buy directly from the artist

A very wide stretch of sand running east from the town, busiest around sunset when the food stalls open. The sunrise is the better hour if you can manage it.

• Sunrise from the hotel end of the beach
• Eat at the evening stalls
• Watch the sand sculptors at work

A motorboat trip across the eastern arm of the lagoon towards the channel where Chilika drains into the Bay of Bengal. Irrawaddy dolphins live in this stretch and surface briefly rather than leaping, so it takes a patient eye. Early boats do better than late ones.

• Watch for dolphins near the sea mouth
• Stop on the sand bar
• See the fishing stakes and net lines

In winter the lagoon fills with migratory birds — flamingos, pelicans, waders and duck arriving from as far as Central Asia. Outside those months the water is quieter but the boatmen still know where the resident birds sit.

• Carry binoculars in winter
• Ask the boatman for the shallow feeding areas
• Photograph the flocks at the shoreline