01The search for the daru
When an extra Ashadh falls in the Hindu calendar, every twelve to nineteen years, Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra and Sudarshana take new bodies of neem wood. The search party, the Banajaga Yatra, leaves Puri and walks to Kakatpur first. The Daitapatis sleep in the temple and pray to Mangala, and the Devi, they say, comes to their chief in a dream and names the place where each tree is found, with the marks the shastra demands: a conch and chakra on the bark, a snake’s hole at the root, a hermitage and a cremation ground near. The last Navakalebara, in 2015, began here as all before it.
02Jhamu Yatra
In the month of Chaitra the temple keeps its own fierce festival, the Jhamu Yatra, when devotees under vow walk barefoot across a trench of burning coals before the Devi. Tuesdays, Mangala’s day, bring the largest crowds through the year. The Prachi valley around Kakatpur is thick with old temples, and the Varahi of Chaurasi stands a few kilometres upstream.
The life of this place
- 1996The Banajaga Yatra for that year’s Navakalebara begins with prayers at Kakatpur.
- 2015The Daitapatis again seek Maa Mangala’s guidance for the Navakalebara of 2015.
Kakatpur is about 60 km from Puri and 55 km from Bhubaneswar by road; Tuesday mornings are crowded.
