Guys in Orange

Kawarians

The first thing we noticed in Bhubaneswar (BOO-ba-nesh-war) was thousands of men and some women dressed in orange walking barefoot on the road carrying water. This is very telling of life in India: Our guides didn’t realize that they had to explain who these people were. We have a very good city guide who gave us a thorough history of Bhubaneswar but we had to ask about the “guys in orange” because these sorts of things happen here all the time that the thousands of people marching barefoot along the road did not strike any of the Indians on the bus as out of the ordinary. After some prodding, we learned that these men and women are knows as Kawarians and are on a devotional walk from the Amanadi River to a Shiva temple in Puri. The walk is 60 K. They don’t eat garlic or onions and all their food is provided as snack stations along the way. Once they’ve delivered the water, they get rides back home. Most of the walkers are men who look twenty-something but there were a few women mixed in. They all carry the water in coconut jugs hanging from a stick balanced on one shoulder, decorated with all sorts of symbols of the Lord Shiva.

Water jugs