Annual sojourn: Know why the Holy Trinity in Kankana Sikhari travel on chariot-boat

Nachuni: Bahuda Jatra (return journey) of the sibling deities was held at Kankana Sikhari yesterday after the morning rituals were performed and the Lords were taken to a chariot-boat on Chilika lake.

Kankana Sikhari is an abode amid Asia’s largest brackish water Chilika lake. Chariots of the sibling deities are pulled on roads all over the world. However, the Holy Trinity at Kankana Sikhari near Nairi village under Balugaon tehsil of Khurda travel on chariot-boat during the nine-day sojourn every year.

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It is so believed, the idols of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Goddess Subhadra in Puri were shifted to Kankana Sikhari as a hideout of the deities during an attack on the 12th-century shrine by a foreign invader. The lagoon had once accommodated the deities for quite a long time in a local temple.

Notably, as a token of the divine rituals, the deities travelled around the Jagannath temple at Kankana Sikhari on chariot-boat for seven times and then returned to the abode. Thousands of devotees from Khurda district and outside thronged the island in Chilika to pay their obeisance to the Holy Trinity.