The road from Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Odisha, to Konark takes you through a pleasant scenery of palm trees, rice fields and small villages with colourful temples. India’s infrastructure improvements haven’t reached this part of the country yet – that’s why it takes 1.5 hours to cover the 67km by car. I had opted for an “Uber Intercity” today, a scheduled ride to and from the Temple with an hour’s waiting time. 

As I had seen Modhera’s Sun Temple two days before, I was expecting something similar. But this one is much more grand. When you enter the town of Konark you can already see the top of the temple popping out above everything else, even when it's Vimana (the tower that covered the sanctum) collapsed some 200 years ago. The site is surrounded by an enormous souvenir market and entrance roads are closed to vehicles. I arrived at about 10.30 and found it busy with thousands of visitors. It turned out that the entrance was free today, because of World Heritage Week!

Photos of the site usually display the intricately carved wheels (they are indeed the highlight of the site), but there is more to it, of course. I am not exactly sure what happened to the seven horses that pulled the chariot forward; I only saw one more or less complete specimen, it stands to the left when you face the temple. There are also two intriguing large sculptured war elephants on a separate platform to the side. One seems to be throwing away an enemy warrior by holding him in his trunk.

What everyone does here is slowly walk around the main temple and admire the carvings. You are not allowed into the interior: it was filled up with sand by the British in 1903 to stabilize the construction; the ASI is now in the process of slowly trying to remove it. Metal bars have been placed all around to keep visitors at a meter’s distance from the sculptures as Indians love touching everything. I was happy that I brought my superzoom camera as suggested by one of the previous reviewers: many interesting smaller sculptures are high up. The carvings were made in 3 types of non-local stone, harder to work on than the sandstone at Modhera.

The main complex now is considered an archaeological site and the locals entered the dancing hall and other subsidiary buildings without taking off their shoes. This in contrast to Modhera, which is almost as dead but the local custom is different. At Modhera there is a niche on the outside of the sanctum where people pray in front of a painted Surya statue (it holds a candle and a flower offering as well). At Konark, prayers are conducted outside of the main complex at the Navagraha temple  – you will pass this when you walk to the Exit.