Unlike other beaches in India, the Golden beach of Puri is different from others. The ocean waves here are so calm and low. They never hit the shore of the beach wildly. The beach entertains its visitors in an austere yet alluring way with its beauty and charm. Besides appreciating nature by the sunrise and sunset, there are a lot more things a person can explore in this particular beach in day times because the night times are even prettier. But, a person can encounter only a few things in day times and the beauty is incomparable with the charm at night times. Hence, here I got you people, a little tour with the clicks I snapped when my sister and I hit the beach for three continuous days during our trip.
Because the beach is the only destination in Puri, a person can visit hell a lot of times and explore new things every time he visits. The beach is actually in the heart of the city. There are some other beaches in Puri, but this particular beach is the most happening one. If you visit this beach, you surely fall in love with the view at first sight. Exploring people, including exploring people one important thing, a person must do here. The flow of people to Golden beach is always heavy and you can see various characters of people visiting the beach and enjoying their way. Well, not to forget, the vendors on the beach, actually entertain with their wide range of selling activities. The beach is nearer to the Puri Railway station, hardly 5 Km and one can hire an auto or rickshaw from there because the cab services are unavailable in the city of Puri. You must bargain, but mostly the auto dealers come with fixed price tags.
Things to do:
To start with, soon after you step in the warm sand of the Golden beach, you will find, many tilted plastic chairs arranged near the shore, sometimes with the beach tents (mornings) and sometimes in the open air (evenings). You must hire a chair for at least an hour to feel the vibes of the beach. It surely gives you some mental peace and makes you feel relaxed. The chairs can be rented for 30 rupees in the mornings per hour and 20 rupees in the evenings per hour. The chair vendors will be available from morning 6 am tonight at 10 pm. You can sit on the sand, but the little escalation to a chair will make you realize the beach view differently.
If you are lovers of animal rides, this beach is the best to hop on the backs of camels and horses. Mostly, you can find camels and the camel riders always accompany too many camels, always roaming here and there to make you feel the experience of riding a camel in the sand on the shore of the beach. A camel ride will cost you 100 rupees per person for some particular distance and for some particular time. These emotionless camels, get into work from mornings to nights. So, if you feel like giving a tip, you can feed a camel, you wanted to ride on.
Also, the stray dogs are harmless in the beach. If you come across them, please do not shoo them away. Instead, interact with them by offering some food. They are too good and play around you, like your pets. They can make you feel the beach as home. Only dog lovers can understand this. They are too cute and listen to you no matter what language you speak.
It is a sad thing to put it into words, but the child labor in Puri is mostly seen in the beaches where kids may be forced or entitled to sell colorful balloons with their innocent smiles. They approach you and ask you to buy a balloon which costs 10 rupees. It is not good to encourage child labor, but all you can do is to buy a balloon and support them with little money.
You can also encounter pearls and gems vendors. They approach with shiny pearl necklaces and shimmery gems. Most of the people buy stuff from them, but I didn't as I felt them fake. Pearls cost more than thousands, but if you want pearly souvenirs, you can buy them but the gems can be real. As most of the vendors are either fishermen or sailors, they can get you the best gems. It is heard that the gems in Puri beaches are kind of real.
It sounds weird, but you can also get approached by these body masseurs who can make you feel relaxed by pressing your body muscles and these services make you feel good in the mornings under the hot sun. And also some people approach you by letting them clean your ears. This service is kind of different, but yeah, people exist here to clean your ears neatly.
And next comes the food. On the beach road, there would be many restaurants and on the beach footpath, there would be many stalls waiting for you to taste various kinds of food, especially fish, but on the shore near the beach, you come across, some mobile food stalls, where these vendors carry with them and offer you food right before your feet.
Yes, you must taste the Jhalmudi ( puffed rice with various spices, lemon, peanuts, and sauces), the delicious cotton candies, some homemade sweets and hots like Samosas, Kaaja, and other milk products and milk sweets. I hardly found Ice cream vendors, maybe because of the winter season. But, you almost find crazy junk food on the shore.
Before exploring the whole beach, you must sit for a while and appreciate the beauty and also after exploring the beach, you will surely feel tired and hence, you can count on the beach chairs to feel energized, relaxed and fit to explore some more of the beach, because it's too big to handle. All these are the daily moments and nights are completely charming and make you feel tired of visiting hell lot of stalls that pop up on the beach, beach footpaths and beach road too.
You can experience all these fun moments and encounter all these people if you take a chair for an hour and relax on it by just viewing the beach and people who come across your chair. Trust me, the feeling is too good to miss. So, don't miss all these fun moments, if you ever visit or plan to visit the Golden beach of Puri, Odisha!
