Old Podampetta Beach

Jayamangalhill, Odisha, India

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Old Podampetta Beach is located in Jayamangalhill in Ganjam District of Odisha, India, adjacent to what is now known as Odisha's "ghost village" of Podampetta, a once-thriving fishing community that has been largely abandoned due to severe coastal erosion.

Since 2017, nearly all of the village's 200 families have been forced to migrate to nearby villages, including New Podampetta, where the government provided each family with land and Rs 3 lakh compensation for relocation. The sea has engulfed approximately 200 houses in Podampetta, leaving another 100 houses in dilapidated condition that slowly crumble into the sea, creating an eerie, abandoned landscape with crumbling walls and overgrown vegetation.

Old Podampetta Beach now stands as a haunting reminder of coastal erosion's devastating impact, with neighbors from surrounding villages still gathering at the ruins to socialize or gaze at the sea, while only one family (C.H. Paindi's family of seven) remains, finding it easier to fish from the location. Coastal Odisha faces severe erosion, with 196 kilometers of shoreline—almost half the state's coast—eroded between 1990 and 2015, and 74 villages severely affected, the highest number in India.