Golden Triangle of the East, 5 Nights

You are met at Biju Patnaik International and driven twenty minutes to your hotel. The afternoon walks the old town around Bindusagar tank: the ornamental gateway of Mukteshvara, the sandstone figures of Rajarani, seventh-century Parasurameswara, and the view of the great Lingaraj tower from the north-wall platform. Your guide carries a torch for the carving — you will understand why.

Morning at Dhauli, where Ashoka’s rock edict sits below the white peace pagoda above the Daya river plain — the battlefield that is said to have changed him. Then the first-century BC Jain cells cut into the Udayagiri and Khandagiri hills, including the double-storeyed Rani Gumpha. The afternoon closes at the Museum of Tribal Arts & Artefacts, the best introduction to the state’s sixty-two tribes.

Drive out through Pipili’s appliqué lane and on to Konark. Two hours at the Sun Temple with an ASI-licensed guide — the chariot wheels as sundials, the seven horses, the carved musicians of the dance hall — then a walk on Chandrabhaga beach below the lighthouse. The marine drive brings you into Puri by late afternoon, in time for sunset on the sand.

An early start beats the queue at the Lion Gate for darshan of Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra; non-Hindu travellers see the complex from the Raghunandan Library roof instead, and nobody misses out on the Ananda Bazar mahaprasad afterwards. The afternoon and evening are yours on the beach, where the whole town comes out to promenade after five.

An hour’s drive south to Satapada and out onto Chilika in a licensed boat — two to three hours across the lagoon to the Irrawaddy dolphin grounds near the sea mouth, with the winter bird rafts working the shallows. Sightings are the norm in season and still not a promise; the lake is the show either way. Back in Puri by late afternoon for a free evening in the bazaar.

Check out after breakfast and stop at Raghurajpur, the single-street village where every house paints pattachitra — watch the work, buy from the artist if something takes you. The drive on to Biju Patnaik International takes about ninety minutes; we time the departure to your flight.