Encounters with the tribes of Orissa

Trip Start Feb 27, 2006

Trip End Mar 29, 2006

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Flag of India Southern Orissa, India
Monday, March 20, 2006

Sarat from Discover Tours picked me up from the hotel early Monday morning in a big white Ambassador car. Sarat had been recommended to me by another frequent traveller to India from Spain. Born a Brahmin (highest Hindu caste), Sarat had grown up surrounded by Orissan tribal villages and had often accompanied his father, a teacher, to the villages. He speaks a number of the different tribal dialects plus excellent Oria (language of Orissa), Hindi and English. As one of the first ever guides some 20 years ago to take tourists into tribal areas, he has been called upon by many researchers and government bodies to help document and guide in tribal areas and their traditions. My contact in Spain had pointed me in the direction of a book called 'Goddess in the Stones' by Norman Lewis which is an exploration of the main Hindu sites and the tribal areas in Orissa, written in the early 90's. Sarat had been Lewis' guide and he was mentioned quite a bit in the book, so it was rather weird reading the book and each morning learning things about Sarat's life in his early years of guiding

Harvest carnival

. For example, his desire to marry a tribal girl from a village where he had been help captive for the night until he made the appropriate sacrifice to the stone goddess. In the end he followed his family's wishes and was married off to a Hindu girl - they now have 3 children but his heart is still very much with the tribes. Our gentle driver Punnar had grown up in a tribal village but when the Christian missionaries had come to his village offering education, clothing, food for anyone who converted, his father chose to become a Christian for the sake of his family.

We stopped at a number of Hindu villages all preparing for a Harvest celebration bringing their portable colourful shrines to different villages to join in a competition for the most decorative one. The streets were alive with processions, martial arts and dancing. Later, Sarat pointed out a little temple on a hill dedicated to Kali, goddess of destruction of evil - if you think that the Indiana Jones movie was pure fiction, think again as a few years back and certainly over the centuries, children have been kidnapped and sacrificed here to pacifiy Kali - obviously this is illegal but a few Kali devotees still try to practice.

These lowlands of Orissa were lush with rice paddy fields in the middle of the first harvest cycle, various methods were being used to irrigate the fields

Irrigating the paddy fields

. We stopped for lunch at a ouside roadside dhaba for a mound of rice and thali served on a plate made of sal leaves made by the Kondh tribes. I attempted to mush it all up and like the men around me, I shovelled it into my mouth with my right hand - not a chappati in sight to help this process - very messy! This technique was perfected throughout the week as all our breakfasts and lunches were consumed in similar grimy fast turn-around dhabas (canteens) filled with truckers and labourers.

We drove for a few hours and then stopped to visit a few villages of the Suda Kondh, who look very much like Hindu Indians in their dress and appearance. The children were delighted to see us and followed us down the basic paths flanked by mud dwellings and animal enclosures. Several hours later we arrived in Baliguda to spend the night in a very basic guesthouse with Indian toilet and a bucket for a cold wash.