Orissa, The Bay of Bengal

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This past weekend, Kim and I and a few friends headed off to Orissa.

Caitlin works for a non-profit organization (NGO) that feeds malnourished children in rural India. Basically they take very poor children who are dangerously underweight for their age and feed them a highly nutritious liquid food supplement that fattens them up. She fattens kids up for about $8 each, if you would like to pitch in.

Tina works for a non-profit that identifies entrepreneurs working in businesses that have lasting long-term positive effects on large groups of people. They help these entrepreneurs grow faster with funding and advice so they can affect more people faster. One of her entrepreneurs was just featured on the cover of a popular Indian business magazine.

Brian works for a profit that provides video feeds to news media when they are announcing significant changes occurring at companies. They contact the companies and obtain video feeds of their facilities or directors and they provide that to the news media so they can show the footage when announcing significant changes at a company, world-wide.

Orissa is a state in India along the northeast coast in the Bay of Bengal.

Visually, Orissa reminded me a little of Goa which is not surprising because they are both on the beach. The major difference being that Orissa is less inhabited by international non-Indian tourists. We counted only 10 non-Indian tourists on the visit and that includes the jet ride there. The landscape was surprisingly big and beautiful. Warm silky clean air, big beautiful blue skies, expansive rice fields surrounded by palm trees and large trees. The beauty of India outside of New Delhi never ceases to amaze me.

Other things of Note on this trip:

1. We visited a lake of fresh water dolphins and saw many of them swimming in the water. “The number of endangered Irrawaddy dolphins in Orissa’s Chilika Lake has increased to 138 against last year’s 135, an official said here Wednesday.”
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/enviornment/endangered-irrawaddy-dolphins-number-goes-up-in-orissa-lake_10021803.html

2. “A major turning point in world history took place in Orissa. The Kalinga War that led emperor Ashoka to embrace non-violence and the teachings of Buddha was fought here in 261 BC.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orissa

3. “Orissa has several popular tourist destinations. Puri, with the Jagannatha's temple near the sea, and Konark, with the Sun Temple, are visited by thousands of tourists every year. The Lingaraja Temple of Bhubaneswar, the Jagannatha Temple of Puri, the Sun Temple of Konark and the Barabati Fort of Cuttack are important in the archaeological history of India.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orissa

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Photos

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Clockwise from left side: Brian, Dan, Kim, Tina, and Cait