For Vaishnavs visiting Keonjhar, Orissa

Keonjhar is a historical place in Orrisa. It is district around 250 kms away from Bhubneshwar. How to reach: There is a regular train that goes in the morning around 7:45am from Bhubneshwar reaching Keonjhar at 11:35am. It returns back at around 1:45pm and reaches to Bhubneshwar at around 6:40pm. It might get delayed by around 15-20 minutes as it starts from Puri and ends at Barbil. There are also bus options and ofcourse taxi but the road is not very good and it might take at around 5-6 hours to reach Keonjhar. Temples: There are three important temples. One is very ancient Lord Jaganath temple built in 16 AD by the kind of Keonjhar. It is very beautiful, huge and carved out of stone. For a person like who was starved of darshan, this temple is a great relief and a paradise. It houses Lord Balbhadra, Lord Jaganath and Shri Subhadra which are huge dieties. Spend some time in the temple campus and feel the divinity and calm around. Thn there is Shri Radha-Krishna temple in the mid of the sabji market. This temple too is very beautiful as it has the dities of Shri Radha-Krishna and Asht-sakhis. There is one small diety of Radha-Krishna which was got from Vrindavan. Have darshan there and feel relaxed. The third important temple is of Shri RamChandra temple. Radha-Krishna temple and Shri RamChandra temple are around half kilometer from each other. If you ask anyone, you would be able to reach there very easily. Accomodation: There are some decent hotels for stay. I would rate Hotel ShreeKshtra and Hotel Sans the best in its category. There is also a Orrisa tourism guest house called PanthNiwas. The room types with rates starts from Rs.800 to Rs.2550. I think Delux room of Rs.1550 is quite good for stay. These hotels generally give around 20% discount so dont forget to ask for that. For Food: Most of the above hotels offer both veg and non-veg food hence for Vaishnavs not a good option. However, there are some very good pure vegetarian restaurants run by Gujratis that are well kept and offer hygenic and tasty vegetarian food. If you tell them to prepare dishes without onion & garlic they would express their happiness for doing so. There is one Bhojnalay called "Jalram Bhojnalay" that provides complete thali without onion and garlic. I came to know about it only on the last day hence could not experiment the food out there. There is a small ISKCON upcoming base also. I think you can get without onion-garlic food out there. Some dabhas are also there such as Swagat bhojnalay that can offer without onion garlic food, but it is very small place and am sure you would not like the hygience and cleanliness factor of the place. The food/prasadam coupon is also available from the temples of Shri Radha-Krishna and Ramchandra temple. Shri Radha-Krishna has only five food coupons of Rs.30/- each; hence you need to book for your prasad a day in advance. In Shri Ramchandra temple the afternoon prasad is also provided against coupon with some seva. In this temple greater number of prasad coupons are available. But it is good to book a day in advance. People: As the place is calm so are its people. They are peaceful and comfortable to speak to. You would find some difficulty in making them understand you, but i guess you would not find much problem to understand them. The people here are very helpful, no cheating at all anywhere. They have a very customer friendly attitude. I was surprized the hotel people, the travel agency and the Geetabjali restaurant guy were exceptionaly helpful to me.