Gopalpur-on-Sea

Gopalpur was a real port. Through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth it handled rice, jute and the ships that carried Odia labourers to Burma and Malaya, and the wrecked stumps of its pier still stand offshore, a line of concrete going out into the waves. When the trade shifted to Paradip the town went quiet, and what remains is one of the calmest stretches of the Odisha coast: broad, clean sand, low dunes bound with creeper, casuarina belts, and a working lighthouse you can climb in the late afternoon for a view along the whole shore.

The fishing village at the northern end is the town's clock; boats go out before light and come back mid-morning to be hauled up the sand while the catch is auctioned on the spot. Thirty kilometres north, the Rushikulya river mouth hosts one of the world's largest mass-nesting sites for olive ridley turtles, when tens of thousands of females come ashore over a few February or March nights in the arribada, and the hatchlings emerge weeks later. Inland, Taptapani's sulphur springs steam in a forest fifty kilometres away, and Berhampur, sixteen kilometres off, has woven Berhampuri patta silk saris in its weavers' lanes for generations.