‘Nature Camp Chhotkei’ situated near the banks of the Mahanadi river within the Satkosia Tiger Reserve . 18th Nov. 2013.

The next leg of our trip : heading to the ‘Nature Camp Chhotkei’ situated near the banks of the Mahanadi river within the Satkosia Tiger Reserve. 18^th Nov. 2013.  

If you sought the assistance of Google maps or Aunty ( my trusty MapMyIndia GPS ) to go from Puri to Chhotkei within the Satkosia Tiger Reserve, you would be advised to take a left turn at Pipli and then proceed in a more or less NW direction to approach Chhotkei from the SE direction and saving a good 36km of the alternate route which involved going N from Puri, passing Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack before turning towards the West to head towards Chhotkei from the NE direction. The extract from google maps shows the suggested route in blue, and the alternative ( longer ) route in grey.

Google Map of the Route from Puri to Chhotkei

 In the hope of avoiding traffic heading towards the capital city of Odisha ( Orissa in days gone by ) and one of the bigger cities of the state, I chose the former route expecting to see more countryside and avoid traffic. I succeeded in both these aims, though the road could only be described as Terrible. In all my driving experience, only the road ( a loose term to describe the red mud path strewn with deep craters )  towards Siliguri that we were to encounter on our next leg of the journey was worse than this one. Still worse, the ‘road’ got kept deteriorating as we went along getting progressively “worser” by the minute. Fortunately, our Scorpio was equal to the task, and other than proceeding at a little-better-than-walking pace, we were doing fine and getting more excited as the route got wilder and more adventurous. At one point I saw this tribal boatman in his boat on the Mahanadi river, and had to stop to take pictures at full 250 mm zoom ( the maximum I had at that time ).

Taken at full 250 mm zoom. 

Taken at full 250 mm zoom. 

But after a few hours I began to wonder if I had done something wrong and finally ( after stopping once to crosscheck the MapMyIndia route with GoogleMaps on my laptop, I finally listened to my wife and called the lady who did the reservation for us. In the 20 odd days since we had sent a DD by registered post to the Forest department in Angul to confirm our booking at Chhotkei, I had completely forgotten the instructions that we were supposed to go to Angul and pick up a permit before heading to the tiger sanctuary. After speaking to her and checking my google map again I realised that we were (1) About 100 km away from Angul ( 2 ) That the appropriately named river Mahanadi was between where we were and Angul with no sign of a bridge across it

The river Mahanadi

and (3) that I had only about 3 hours until 5 pm when the Forestry office closed for the weekend to get there and collect the pass.

Adversity, it is said brings out the best in you, and I must say that Aunty ( my GPS ) and the Scorpio responded manfully to the challenge ! Aunty found a route with a bridge over the river, and the Scorpio made short work of covering the distance. So much so that we had time to stop for a cup of Tea at Angul before going to collect our pass at least 45 mins. before the deadline.

The road from Angul to Chhotkei was surprisingly good, and we covered the 55 km in just about an hour, reaching our destination after the sun set, but well before dinner time.

 As I took the precaution of taking a picture of the route at the forestry office, this time there were no hiccups along the way.