Odisha is the subcontinent's most overlooked state, which is remarkable given that it contains one of the world's most extraordinary temples, the largest brackish lagoon in Asia, and a living tradition of Pattachitra painting that has been producing narrative scrolls since at least the 12th century.
Konark's Sun Temple, built by King Narasimhadeva I in the 13th century as a stone chariot drawn by seven horses on twenty-four carved wheels, is one of the most formally ambitious buildings ever attempted in India. Oriented to receive the first rays of the sun through its eastern gateway, built from khondalite stone that turns golden in dawn light, it was designed to function as an astronomical instrument as much as a religious monument. The ruins, ravaged by centuries of salt air and deliberate destruction, are still among the most powerful things on the subcontinent.
The Chilika Lake — 1,100 square kilometres of brackish water behind a bar of sand on the Bay of Bengal coast — is the largest wetland in Asia and one of the world's most important sites for migratory birds: flamingos, herons, and Irrawaddy dolphins in the brackish reaches. The Jagannath temple at Puri, one of the four dhams of Hinduism, receives over five million pilgrims annually and its kitchen — the largest in India — feeds up to 50,000 people a day in the temple langar.
The Odissi dance tradition, derived from the devadasi temple dance of the Jagannath temple and systematised in the 20th century after a period of near-extinction, is the most sculptural of India's classical dance forms — performers taking the poses of the figures carved on the Konark and Bhubaneswar temple walls and animating them with a vocabulary of movement that the temple sculptures seem to anticipate. Watching Odissi performed in the Mukteshvara temple courtyard in Bhubaneswar, where the carvings that inspired the form are visible in the background, is one of the most contextually complete cultural experiences available in India.