Puri: Pahandi Bije ritual concluded Thursday with Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra ceremonially seated atop their respective chariots — Nandighosa, Taladhwaja and Darpadalana — ahead of their annual journey to the Gundicha Temple.
The ritual began with the ceremonial procession of Lord Sudarshan, followed by the Pahandi of Lord Balabhadra, Devi Subhadra and Lord Jagannath from the Srimandir to their respective chariots.
The Pahandi procession unfolded amid the resonant sounds of traditional instruments, including the ghanta (gong), kahali (trumpet) and telingi baja, as priests chanted Vedic hymns and Odissi dancers welcomed the deities. Adorned with ornate tahias — traditional floral headpieces — the Deities were ceremonially escorted from the Srimandir for their nine-day sojourn to the Gundicha Temple.
Devotees will begin pulling the chariots at 4 pm after the traditional chariot sweeping by Puri’s titular king Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingha Deb and Puri Shankaracharya Swami Nischalananda Saraswati’s visit, a temple official said.
The temple town has been blanketed by a multi-layered security cover with the deployment of around 13,000 personnel from the state police, central forces, Indian Navy and Coast Guard, while special focus is on crowd control, traffic management and emergency response, the officials said.
The administration has made elaborate security arrangements to prevent any untoward incident and taken steps to tackle waterlogging along the route that the chariots will take.
Puri received a staggering 143.8 mm of rain on the eve of the iconic chariot festival, and the weather department issued a warning for downpour and thunderstorms for Thursday.
Special arrangements have been made to drain out rainwater from the Grand Road and facilitate a smooth procession, as devotees will pull the chariots of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra along the thoroughfare from the 12th-century shrine to the Shree Gundicha temple, around 2.6 km away.
