Tracking Dolphins in Chilika
Satapada... Satapada… Satapada…’’ Tourist officer Bijaya Kumar Jena passes wireless messages to the boatmen onboard cruising on Chilika Lake. Sitting in his office at Yatri Nivas in Satapada, he instructs a particular boatman to reach the jetty immediately. “Sir, another half an hour, please bear with us,” Bijaya tells me, turning off the wireless set.
I wait at his desk, glancing through some brochures and maps of Chilika, the largest brackish water lagoon on the East coast of India. A gentleman walks in and hands over another brochure, this one with a dolphin’s picture on the front page.
“What would you like to have for lunch, sir?” a man in uniform asks me. It’s hardly 11, and I’m not hungry. I look at Bijaya. “You have to place your order in advance. The cruise will take three hours. Once you come back, you will be hungry,” Bijaya explains. What should I order? “Try our crab and prawn. Everything we get here is fresh,” says the man in uniform.
We walk to the jetty; on the way, I see a man with a bamboo basket sitting on the side of the road, selling crab. I request him to take the crab out of the basket and he obliges. He picks one out from the grass (which is supposed to cool the crab) and it immediately begins to unfurl its legs. If you like seafood, then this is your place. There is a huge variety of fish in Chilika, and the livelihood of the people who live around the lake depends mainly on fishing.
We get into a newly painted boat. The smell surrounding us is a mix of kerosene and turpentine. I change my camera lens — from a 50 mm normal to a 35-200 mm zoom. As the boat moves, I put my hand down and carry some water to taste it. Sure enough, it’s salty.
It has now been 40 minutes into the journey, and our boatman, sitting on a parapet, is suffering from the sun. Occasionally, he keeps in touch with other boatmen and the head office through the wireless set. If you ask him something, he will take his hands off the accelerator and come right over to you to answer your query, because of the noise the engine makes. For that moment, the boat will lose its rhythm.
After one hour of our three-hour cruise to Sea Mouth, our boatman suddenly stops the engine of the boat. He spots a movement somewhere in the waters. Dolphins come and go like lightning. One comes peeping out of the waters about 10 feet away from the boat, while another just takes a triple jump by the back of the boat. But the moment you ready your camera, the action is over.
A Chilika Development Authority brochure says that the number of Irrawaddy dolphins in Chilika comes to around 110. Commonly identified with blunt, bulging foreheads, the Irrawaddy dolphin belongs to a rare species that is now facing extinction. Its skin is dark gray, and it is very similar to beluga.
When diving, its head appears first, then disappears, and then the back emerges, but the tail is rarely seen. They rarely swim in groups. I get onto the parapet of the boat to try my luck. Luckily, one appears close to the boat and I click. Even in the next two or three seconds, you won’t know where he is going to appear next. Photographing the dolphin is tricky fun, which you will realise once you expose your film rolls; you may just end up with negatives showing only water and not a trace of dolphin.
We move on and reach Sea Mouth by 2 pm. Here, a stretch of Chilika meets the Bay of Bengal. As I land, an old man invites me to taste his special jhal mudhi. “Sir, chilled beer and fish fry?” another one asks as he approaches me. Behind him, many people are busy frying fish. They clean the fish, paste the masala over it and wait for two minutes. When the fish is put into the pan, the air fills with an aroma that can even increase a non fish-eater’s appetite.
Nearby, a group of college students is having a feast, alternating cold beer with fried fish. Occasionally, someone from the group comes near the pan to get some fish served directly onto his plate. (A word of caution: In Orissa, you have to be careful while eating fish. If you are not a skilled fish-eater, you may face some problems. Most of the fish here have thorny flesh, so you need to be an expert to eat it; else, you may just end up throwing away a lot of flesh with the thorns. So wait patiently and observe how the locals handle the issue.)
I walk up to the mouth and come back. The frying pan is still not empty, more fresh fish is waiting to be fried, and the queue is ever-active. It’s time to leave. The boatman pulls the rope on the motor. He tries it a couple of times, but the boat refuses to start. Time passes; it is soon 5 pm, and I am starving. Will the resort keep my crab masala and prawn for me?
My boatman seeks the help of other boatmen, but that doesn’t help. Finally they tether my boat to another, which is full of tourists, mostly from the northern parts of Orissa. The boats move slowly, and I see people still cooking by the banks of Chilika. A herd of buffalo swims past. The rays from the setting sun fall over the waters of Chilika and its numerous fish farms. My cell phone display shows “Satapada” on the screen. It’s getting darker, and the half-moon pops up in the sky.
At 7:30 pm, we reach the jetty. I walk into Yatri Nivas, and the dining hall smells of crab. A table in the middle of the room has a mountain of crab shells left by someone. “The food is ready, sir”, the manager says — sweet words.
The crab masala tastes different from that found in the South. “We grind cashew into the masala,” the cook tells me. I am hungry, so I barely take in what he says. It takes less than 10 minutes for me to polish off a plate of crab masala, prawn fry and rice.
Getting there
Chilika lagoon lies in the districts of Puri, Khurda and Ganjam of Orissa, along the East coast of India. The lagoon can be divided into four natural sectors based on depth: the southern zone, central zone, northern zone and the outer channel. There are a number of islands in the lagoon; prominent among them are Krushnaprasad, Nalaban, Kalijai, Somolo, Honeymoon, Breakfast and Birds Island. Chilika is also home to migratory birds from different parts of the world. The Orissa Tourism Development Corporation (OTDC)
offers dolphin cruises, sea-mouth cruises and bird sanctuary cruises in Chilika.
The lake is well connected to Chennai and Kolkata through National Highway 5, and the Chennai-Kolkata rail line passes along the western bank of the lagoon, called Balugaon. If you are travelling from Chennai by train, you can even alight at Balugaon. There are boat services from Balugaon to Satapada between 6:30 am and 9:30 pm. The OTDC organises package tours to Chilika from most cities in Orissa. Chilika lies about 115 km from Bhubaneswar and 52 km from Puri.
Log on to www.orissatourism.gov.in or
call Birja Kumar Jena (office: 06752-262077; mobile: 094371-99506), the manager of Yatri Nivas, Satapada, for more information.
I wait at his desk, glancing through some brochures and maps of Chilika, the largest brackish water lagoon on the East coast of India. A gentleman walks in and hands over another brochure, this one with a dolphin’s picture on the front page.
“What would you like to have for lunch, sir?” a man in uniform asks me. It’s hardly 11, and I’m not hungry. I look at Bijaya. “You have to place your order in advance. The cruise will take three hours. Once you come back, you will be hungry,” Bijaya explains. What should I order? “Try our crab and prawn. Everything we get here is fresh,” says the man in uniform.
We walk to the jetty; on the way, I see a man with a bamboo basket sitting on the side of the road, selling crab. I request him to take the crab out of the basket and he obliges. He picks one out from the grass (which is supposed to cool the crab) and it immediately begins to unfurl its legs. If you like seafood, then this is your place. There is a huge variety of fish in Chilika, and the livelihood of the people who live around the lake depends mainly on fishing.
We get into a newly painted boat. The smell surrounding us is a mix of kerosene and turpentine. I change my camera lens — from a 50 mm normal to a 35-200 mm zoom. As the boat moves, I put my hand down and carry some water to taste it. Sure enough, it’s salty.
It has now been 40 minutes into the journey, and our boatman, sitting on a parapet, is suffering from the sun. Occasionally, he keeps in touch with other boatmen and the head office through the wireless set. If you ask him something, he will take his hands off the accelerator and come right over to you to answer your query, because of the noise the engine makes. For that moment, the boat will lose its rhythm.
After one hour of our three-hour cruise to Sea Mouth, our boatman suddenly stops the engine of the boat. He spots a movement somewhere in the waters. Dolphins come and go like lightning. One comes peeping out of the waters about 10 feet away from the boat, while another just takes a triple jump by the back of the boat. But the moment you ready your camera, the action is over.
A Chilika Development Authority brochure says that the number of Irrawaddy dolphins in Chilika comes to around 110. Commonly identified with blunt, bulging foreheads, the Irrawaddy dolphin belongs to a rare species that is now facing extinction. Its skin is dark gray, and it is very similar to beluga.
When diving, its head appears first, then disappears, and then the back emerges, but the tail is rarely seen. They rarely swim in groups. I get onto the parapet of the boat to try my luck. Luckily, one appears close to the boat and I click. Even in the next two or three seconds, you won’t know where he is going to appear next. Photographing the dolphin is tricky fun, which you will realise once you expose your film rolls; you may just end up with negatives showing only water and not a trace of dolphin.
We move on and reach Sea Mouth by 2 pm. Here, a stretch of Chilika meets the Bay of Bengal. As I land, an old man invites me to taste his special jhal mudhi. “Sir, chilled beer and fish fry?” another one asks as he approaches me. Behind him, many people are busy frying fish. They clean the fish, paste the masala over it and wait for two minutes. When the fish is put into the pan, the air fills with an aroma that can even increase a non fish-eater’s appetite.
Nearby, a group of college students is having a feast, alternating cold beer with fried fish. Occasionally, someone from the group comes near the pan to get some fish served directly onto his plate. (A word of caution: In Orissa, you have to be careful while eating fish. If you are not a skilled fish-eater, you may face some problems. Most of the fish here have thorny flesh, so you need to be an expert to eat it; else, you may just end up throwing away a lot of flesh with the thorns. So wait patiently and observe how the locals handle the issue.)
I walk up to the mouth and come back. The frying pan is still not empty, more fresh fish is waiting to be fried, and the queue is ever-active. It’s time to leave. The boatman pulls the rope on the motor. He tries it a couple of times, but the boat refuses to start. Time passes; it is soon 5 pm, and I am starving. Will the resort keep my crab masala and prawn for me?
My boatman seeks the help of other boatmen, but that doesn’t help. Finally they tether my boat to another, which is full of tourists, mostly from the northern parts of Orissa. The boats move slowly, and I see people still cooking by the banks of Chilika. A herd of buffalo swims past. The rays from the setting sun fall over the waters of Chilika and its numerous fish farms. My cell phone display shows “Satapada” on the screen. It’s getting darker, and the half-moon pops up in the sky.
At 7:30 pm, we reach the jetty. I walk into Yatri Nivas, and the dining hall smells of crab. A table in the middle of the room has a mountain of crab shells left by someone. “The food is ready, sir”, the manager says — sweet words.
The crab masala tastes different from that found in the South. “We grind cashew into the masala,” the cook tells me. I am hungry, so I barely take in what he says. It takes less than 10 minutes for me to polish off a plate of crab masala, prawn fry and rice.
Getting there
Chilika lagoon lies in the districts of Puri, Khurda and Ganjam of Orissa, along the East coast of India. The lagoon can be divided into four natural sectors based on depth: the southern zone, central zone, northern zone and the outer channel. There are a number of islands in the lagoon; prominent among them are Krushnaprasad, Nalaban, Kalijai, Somolo, Honeymoon, Breakfast and Birds Island. Chilika is also home to migratory birds from different parts of the world. The Orissa Tourism Development Corporation (OTDC)
offers dolphin cruises, sea-mouth cruises and bird sanctuary cruises in Chilika.
The lake is well connected to Chennai and Kolkata through National Highway 5, and the Chennai-Kolkata rail line passes along the western bank of the lagoon, called Balugaon. If you are travelling from Chennai by train, you can even alight at Balugaon. There are boat services from Balugaon to Satapada between 6:30 am and 9:30 pm. The OTDC organises package tours to Chilika from most cities in Orissa. Chilika lies about 115 km from Bhubaneswar and 52 km from Puri.
Log on to www.orissatourism.gov.in or
call Birja Kumar Jena (office: 06752-262077; mobile: 094371-99506), the manager of Yatri Nivas, Satapada, for more information.
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