My flight from Port Blair to Calcutta left shortly before noon on the 23rd. I couldn't get a window seat, but from my aisle seat I did get a view of Port Blair and Ross Island shortly after takeoff. We soon were in clouds, probably as we crossed over the main chain of the Andamans on our way to Calcutta. The flight took two hours. After landing, the toothless old man next to me had great difficulty getting out of his seat belt. He couldn't figure out how to undo it, so he opened it as wide as he could and then tried to get his legs through it. I noticed it as soon as his granddaughter (I think) in the seat next to him and she undid it for him.
Calcutta airport has a brand new modern terminal, opened only about a month earlier. It was quite cold inside. I took the hour long bus ride from the airport to the city center. The last two times I've taken that bus, after flights from Bangkok, the first thing I've noticed is all the garbage along the streets. This time I didn't, no doubt because I'd been in India over five months and am quite used to seeing garbage everywhere. I checked into the same friendly hotel I've stayed in during previous stays in Calcutta and then walked to a nearby bookshop. Calcutta felt relatively cool compared to Port Blair, though I suppose the temperature was in the 90's. I got trapped in the bookstore when a big rainstorm hit. I didn't have my umbrella and so tried to wait it out. It got dark and the rain continued. During a slight decrease I made a run for it and got a little wet on my way to a barber shop near my hotel, where I got a much needed haircut. The rain had stopped by the time I was finished and the evening felt cool. I meant to go to bed early, but stayed up reading newspapers in the hotel lobby. I'd seen hardly any newspapers during my month long stay in the Andamans.
The next morning I walked past the busy street side chicken market, and then the fruit and vegetable market a block or so north, on my way to the bus station to check on buses to Murshidabad. I came back for breakfast and then took a taxi to Sealdah Railway Station and bought a ticket for the 11:15 train north to Murshidabad. A large crowd had gathered on the platform as the train pulled in, with young men jumping into the open doors of the still moving empty train as it pulled in. I waited till it almost came to a stop and muscled my way in, getting a window seat. The train was crowded, with three people seated on seats made for two, and hot, though there was a fan over me, which helped. We left on time heading north through Calcutta and its suburbs and satellite towns. It took about an hour and a half until we reached the green countryside, with rice, bananas, and many other crops. My seatmates were pretty disgusting, hoicking and spitting all the time. I noticed that almost all persons in the carriage were young men. We passed through several cities and towns, including Plassey (as the sign at the train station spelled it; the official spelling is now Palashi). Plassey was the site of the 1757 battle in which Robert Clive of the East India Company defeated the Nawab of Bengal, leading to British rule in Bengal and eventually all of India.
The train reached Murshidabad, 120 miles north of Calcutta and former capital of Bengal under the Nawabs, at 4:30. Surprising to me, there was no station and we got off in what seemed a rural area. Murshidabad is now just a small town, with something like 40,000 people instead of the million or so it might have had in the mid 18th century, but I still expected a train station. I found a bicycle rickshaw to take me the couple of miles or so to the hotel I wanted to stay in on the Bhagirathi River next to the former palace of the Nawabs. I got one of the nicest rooms, with a balcony overlooking the wide river and a view of the palace a bit downstream. The hotel is right on the river, with a very nice garden all around it. I watched the sun disappear into the clouds over the trees on the other side of the river just after 5 and then walked to the palace complex just downriver.
The huge palace was built in 1829-1837, well after the Nawabs had become figureheads under British rule, and is in what is called Italinate style. It's facade is more than 400 feet long, with columns at the top of the stairs leading up to the main door. Two lions stand guard at the base of the stairs in front of plaques in English and Arabic script. The palace is called the Hazarduari, meaning "thousand doors." Apparently, it has a thousand doors, real and fake, inside and out. Across a wide plaza is an even longer building, the white painted Imambara, housing the tomb of the Nawab who built the palace. The buildings face each other rather than the river. There is a small and pretty multi-domed mosque on the river and another small domed building between the Hazarduari and the Imambara. A European style clock tower also stands between the two big buildings. The buildings were closed, although quite a few Indians were strolling around the big open space. It was humid, with no breeze. I strolled into the adjacent town, with newer buildings among ruins of mosques, gateways and other buildings. Families were living in one of the ruined buildings. A muezzin began the evening call to prayer just after 6, which must have been just after sunset. I walked back to the hotel and met the very friendly owner. He told me he built the hotel 20 years ago. I appeared to be the only guest. He showed me around his garden just at dark, showing me jasmine, lemon grass, and a bright orange flower. I had dinner at a simple restaurant in town and had a not very good thali. My bed had a good mosquito net and a fan, and I opened wide the windows to the veranda, but it still was hot when I went to bed. It cooled off over the night.
The next morning I awoke about 5 and went out on the balcony to look at the morning mist over the river. The Bhagirathi flows from the Ganges, which is about 10 or 15 miles to the north. Bangladesh is just beyond. The Bhagirathi eventually flows into the Hooghly, which also flows from the Ganges and passes by Calcutta on its way to the Bay of Bengal. I think they are both considered distributaries, rather than tributaries, of the Ganges. I went back to bed and got up for good about 6 to sit on the balcony in the morning cool. The wide river flows quite rapidly. Boatmen came downriver from the little village a little upstream. I walked to the palace grounds in the morning sunshine. It was already getting hot. There was no wind. People were exercising on the palace grounds and one couple were even doing yoga at the top of the steps to the Hazarduari. Gardeners were trimming hedges. I walked a short distance along the river to a newer, smaller, but decrepit palace,dating from the 1890's I think. It was right on the river and had a couple of European style statues in front. It was cooler along the river, with flowering trees, orange and purple. I walked further downstream, past another small riverside mosque and the remains of what may be walls of a former fort until I reached a large, two story, white gateway just inland from the river. Just beyond it was an overturned truck on its side, full of sand. Men were shoveling out the sand while one man worked on the undercarriage, draining gas.
I walked back to the hotel to find the breakfast I had ordered the night before had already been prepared and was cold. So I ate a cold omelet and buttered toast, but did get a hot cup of tea. After breakfast I sat on my balcony until about 10. There was now a slight breeze off the river and I watched the birds, butterflies and squirrels in the garden and the boats on the river. Utpal, the friendly owner, came by and I chatted with him for a while. He took me on his motorcycle about a mile east of town to the ruins of the large 1723 Katra Mosque, made of bricks with two remaining very thick minarets. The Nawab who built it is buried under the steps to the courtyard, a sign of his humility. I walked around the grounds and then walked back to town, stopping at an even more ruined mosque, much smaller, with bamboo growing in front of it. Its domed roof was mostly gone. People along the way were friendly and I arrived at the Hazarduari about noon. It is now a museum, and air conditioned, and I spent a couple of hours inside. I didn't count the doors, but I did enjoy the architecture and the collection of memorabilia. It is three stories high, but you spend almost all your time on the middle story, with a long banquet hall and a central durbar hall with a throne. On display were all sorts of weapons, a palanquin made of ivory and sedan chairs made of ivory and silver. There were lots of paintings, including all the Nawabs from about 1700 and several Britons, including Cornwallis, with wide black eyebrows under thinning gray hair.
I had another poor thali lunch, though it had some fish, and then walked downriver to the newer palace. People were living in the ruins of its backside. I climbed the stairway at the back to the open corridor above the rooms where people now live, disturbing a pack of dogs that had had the area to themselves before my arrival. I also explored the ruins of another large building further behind the palace. I walked a bit more downriver, past the large, two story gateway, and then returned to my hotel about 4:30. I sat on my balcony, then looked around the garden, and finally found a place to sit right on the river until dark. Utpal came by and I chatted with him. He sent one of his workers to buy me a small watermelon, which was delicious. Three of his friends showed up for their nightly game of bridge in the lobby of the hotel and I went off to another unsatisfactory thali dinner. A full moon was rising to the east.
I slept well and got up at six the next morning and sat on my balcony until I went down for breakfast 15 minutes before the 8 o'clock scheduled time for my breakfast. Again, it was already prepared, but fortunately for me still hot. Afterward, I sat on the river and enjoyed the breeze off the water. Utpal came by about 9 and at 9:30 took me by motorcycle a bit more than a mile north to Katgola, the mansion and garden of a rich Jain merchant. I wandered around the grounds, also containing a temple and the ruins of another large building, and visited the mansion, filled with old furniture and photos. I think the mansion, four stories high, must date from the late 1800's. It had chandeliers, a billiard table and a library with encyclopedias, multi-volume histories, a book on the 1922 attempt to summit Everest, and volumes of the works of Shakespeare, Ruskin, Scott, and Thackeray. There were quite a few photos of the descendant of the original builder who was a Congress party official in the 50's and 60's.
From Katgola I walked back to Murshidabad, visiting several sights along the way, although what I enjoyed most was seeing the everyday life of rural Bengal. People were very friendly. They don't see too many foreign tourists here. Utpal showed me his foreigner registration book and I doubt he has had more than 50 foreigners staying at his hotel over the past three years. On the way back to Murshidabad I stopped at a small and uninteresting home of a former financier named Jagat Sett and the much larger and more interesting palace, filled with colorful idols, of a former collector awarded the title Raja Bahadur. A little further on I explored the family cemetery of Mir Jafar and his descendants, including his four sons (three of which succeeded him as Nawab, and later descendants, recent Nawabs now resting in colorful tile tombs of pink and green. Mir Jafar betrayed his nephew the Nawab Shiraj-ud-Daula at the battle of Plassey, helping the British win the battle. Shiraj-ud-Daula was assassinated after the battle and Mir Jafar became Nawab. His two wives were also buried near him, but in walled tombs. I asked the caretaker why their tombs had walls, and he said he didn't know the English word but it was because of purdah. The day was hot and sunny, with mango trees and rice paddies along the way, and I passed by the ruins of another mosque before arriving back in Murshidabad for another desultory lunch about 1:30.
The sky darkened in the afternoon, with a few drops of rain. I walked through town for quite a way until I reached a ferry crossing to the other side. The crossing on the motorized, bamboo floored ferry cost all of two rupees. I watched an approaching ferry offload two very heavily laden bicycle rickshaws with towering loads of jute, maybe 15 feet high. I crossed myself, sharing the small ferry, without rails, with a car and many people, including a lot of uniformed students heading home after school. On the far side, bicycle rickshaws loaded with jute were waiting for passage across the river.
I started walking to Khosbagh, the garden tomb of Shiraj-ud-Daula, and was soon offered a lift by a teenage schoolgirl on her bicycle. I was a little dubious, but sat Indian style on the rack on the back of the bike as the strong girl pedaled us along the bumpy road. My perch seemed precarious, especially when cars came by and she swerved to the lip of the asphalt. I was afraid of falling backward and conking my head. I did get bumped off just as we were arriving at the walled garden. I thanked her and said goodbye before going inside. The small building inside the garden apparently was built to house the grandfather of Shiraj-ud-Daula, and they both are buried there, along with other family members. A small mosque sits at the far end of the garden, behind the building with the tombs. I looked around and then walked back to the ferry landing, a 20 minute walk as the sun was reappearing. People were quite friendly on the way, seemingly surprised to see me.
I reached the ferry crossing and spent about 45 minutes there before crossing. It was quite interesting to watch the jute loaded cycle rickshaws and some motorized small vehicles also loaded with jute getting on the ferry. Several straining men had to brace the overloaded rickshaws as they skittered down the steep decline and onto the rickety ferry. I also watched a woman shampooing her long hair in the river. I finally crossed about 5, sharing the ferry with another overloaded rickshaw and only a few people. The almost toothless boatman seemed pleased to have me take his photograph. It took me about half an hour to walk back to my hotel on a humid, windless, late afternoon. I watched the sun disappear into the clouds over the trees on the other side of the river just after I got back and then talked with Utpal until his 7 o'clock bridge game. The game finished about 8 and he dropped me off by motorcycle at a fairly good restaurant in town on his way home. I walked back along the river under a full moon after dinner.
The next morning I was up about 6:30 and sat on the balcony until breakfast. Afterward, I sat in the garden and talked with Utpal until about 10, when I checked out and took a share jeep south to the big city of Behrampore, a 45 minute trip. The driver leaned on his horn almost the whole way. At 11:30 I left on a hot and crowded bus bound for Malda to the north. The scenery along the way was flat with ugly development along the crowded and bumpy highway. I did see rice growing. After about 3 hours we crossed over the very wide Ganges via the Farraka Barrage, built to control the downstream flow of the Ganges. Both the highway and the railroad cross the river via the barrage. Downstream are big white sandbanks in the middle of the river, while upstream there are none. At places along the barrage you look down and see roiling water, where water was being released through the barrage. More than an hour after crossing the Ganges we reached Malda. I took a cycle rickshaw to an okay hotel on the dusty main road. The afternoon was very humid.
I had come to Malda to see the old Bengali capitals of Gaur and Pandua. About 8 I found the bus heading to Gaur, about ten miles south, but it was incredibly small, with almost no leg room. So I hired a taxi to take me there and back for 600 rupees, about $11. Bengal had Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms before the 13th century Muslim conquest. The ruins at Gaur are all from the Muslim period. We stopped first at a large mosque built in 1526 of brick with stone facing. Nearby are the remains of a five story brick gateway to the city, built in the early 15th century. Designs are on the bricks and the walls adjacent to the gate are now nothing but dirt mounds. Mango trees, heavy with mangoes, were everywhere. I was told June is when they ripen and are harvested. We drove on to the over 80 foot high Firuz Minar, made of brick with a few remaining tiles. A huge banyan tree stood nearby, full of noisy birds. At the next stop were the ruins of another mosque and a domed mausoleum, all of brick. A large gateway nearby had some colorful tiles remaining. We walked through a large grove of mango trees to the excavations of the old palace and the remaining portions of very high brick city walls. Next, we drove through another gate further south to two more very nice mosques, the final one with many remaining colorful tiles, both inside and outside. We were only about two miles from the Bangladesh border when we turned back to return to Malda. Gaur was sacked in 1537 and abandoned after a plague in 1575. I got back to Malda about noon.
At 2 I took a bus north about ten miles to Pandua, first visiting the ruins of the enormous Adina Masjid (Mosque) built in 1364. It is said to be the largest mosque in Bengal and one of the largest in India. The grassy quadrangle is surrounded by 88 brick arches. The main wall is brick and stone, with the stone mihrabs (prayer niches) carved with beautiful designs. Inside the long prayer hall, only about half of which still has a roof, is a large raised platform for the king and his family. I walked all around and then followed the little road that led past farmhouses with friendly people to the Eklakhi Mausoleum, so called because it cost 100,000 rupees to build. It was built in 1412 of brick with stone lintels with the remains of Hindu gods. Nearby is the Qtub Shahi Mosque, dating from 1582. I walked back the way I came and stopped to watch some women making bidi, the cheap cigarettes sold all over India. The friendly women seemed to enjoy having their photos taken, and enjoyed even more seeing the photos. Along the way back, children were playing cricket, grain and cow dung were drying on the road, and people were relaxing after a day's work. Everybody was very friendly and I think I enjoyed the walk more than the ruins. I caught a bus back to Malda about 6 and had to stand on the half hour trip.
Shortly before 9 the next morning I left Malda on the long, 8 hour bus ride north to Siliguri, 160 miles away. The window seats had little leg room, so I took an aisle seat on what became a very crowded and slow bus. For the first half of the journey there was a lot of traffic on the poor road, with many stops and much horn blowing. Once we reached a new four land highway we moved more rapidly. The flat landscape was not at all scenic, with rice and corn and other crops and lots of ugly highway development. Nearing Siliguri we passed through the narrow wedge, maybe 15 miles wide, between Nepal and Bangladesh and started to see some tea estates about 20 miles before Siliguri. It was overcast most of the day, but with some sun. It didn't seem quite as hot as previous days, with an occasional cool wind, probably coming down from the nearby Himalayas. Siliguri, at about 400 feet elevation and with more than 700,000 people, is a transport center. I think the people are largely Nepali. Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who first climbed Everest with Sir Edmund Hilary, has a prominent statue in town. I found a decent hotel near the big bus station and looked forward to getting up into the mountains.
Calcutta airport has a brand new modern terminal, opened only about a month earlier. It was quite cold inside. I took the hour long bus ride from the airport to the city center. The last two times I've taken that bus, after flights from Bangkok, the first thing I've noticed is all the garbage along the streets. This time I didn't, no doubt because I'd been in India over five months and am quite used to seeing garbage everywhere. I checked into the same friendly hotel I've stayed in during previous stays in Calcutta and then walked to a nearby bookshop. Calcutta felt relatively cool compared to Port Blair, though I suppose the temperature was in the 90's. I got trapped in the bookstore when a big rainstorm hit. I didn't have my umbrella and so tried to wait it out. It got dark and the rain continued. During a slight decrease I made a run for it and got a little wet on my way to a barber shop near my hotel, where I got a much needed haircut. The rain had stopped by the time I was finished and the evening felt cool. I meant to go to bed early, but stayed up reading newspapers in the hotel lobby. I'd seen hardly any newspapers during my month long stay in the Andamans.
The next morning I walked past the busy street side chicken market, and then the fruit and vegetable market a block or so north, on my way to the bus station to check on buses to Murshidabad. I came back for breakfast and then took a taxi to Sealdah Railway Station and bought a ticket for the 11:15 train north to Murshidabad. A large crowd had gathered on the platform as the train pulled in, with young men jumping into the open doors of the still moving empty train as it pulled in. I waited till it almost came to a stop and muscled my way in, getting a window seat. The train was crowded, with three people seated on seats made for two, and hot, though there was a fan over me, which helped. We left on time heading north through Calcutta and its suburbs and satellite towns. It took about an hour and a half until we reached the green countryside, with rice, bananas, and many other crops. My seatmates were pretty disgusting, hoicking and spitting all the time. I noticed that almost all persons in the carriage were young men. We passed through several cities and towns, including Plassey (as the sign at the train station spelled it; the official spelling is now Palashi). Plassey was the site of the 1757 battle in which Robert Clive of the East India Company defeated the Nawab of Bengal, leading to British rule in Bengal and eventually all of India.
The train reached Murshidabad, 120 miles north of Calcutta and former capital of Bengal under the Nawabs, at 4:30. Surprising to me, there was no station and we got off in what seemed a rural area. Murshidabad is now just a small town, with something like 40,000 people instead of the million or so it might have had in the mid 18th century, but I still expected a train station. I found a bicycle rickshaw to take me the couple of miles or so to the hotel I wanted to stay in on the Bhagirathi River next to the former palace of the Nawabs. I got one of the nicest rooms, with a balcony overlooking the wide river and a view of the palace a bit downstream. The hotel is right on the river, with a very nice garden all around it. I watched the sun disappear into the clouds over the trees on the other side of the river just after 5 and then walked to the palace complex just downriver.
The huge palace was built in 1829-1837, well after the Nawabs had become figureheads under British rule, and is in what is called Italinate style. It's facade is more than 400 feet long, with columns at the top of the stairs leading up to the main door. Two lions stand guard at the base of the stairs in front of plaques in English and Arabic script. The palace is called the Hazarduari, meaning "thousand doors." Apparently, it has a thousand doors, real and fake, inside and out. Across a wide plaza is an even longer building, the white painted Imambara, housing the tomb of the Nawab who built the palace. The buildings face each other rather than the river. There is a small and pretty multi-domed mosque on the river and another small domed building between the Hazarduari and the Imambara. A European style clock tower also stands between the two big buildings. The buildings were closed, although quite a few Indians were strolling around the big open space. It was humid, with no breeze. I strolled into the adjacent town, with newer buildings among ruins of mosques, gateways and other buildings. Families were living in one of the ruined buildings. A muezzin began the evening call to prayer just after 6, which must have been just after sunset. I walked back to the hotel and met the very friendly owner. He told me he built the hotel 20 years ago. I appeared to be the only guest. He showed me around his garden just at dark, showing me jasmine, lemon grass, and a bright orange flower. I had dinner at a simple restaurant in town and had a not very good thali. My bed had a good mosquito net and a fan, and I opened wide the windows to the veranda, but it still was hot when I went to bed. It cooled off over the night.
The next morning I awoke about 5 and went out on the balcony to look at the morning mist over the river. The Bhagirathi flows from the Ganges, which is about 10 or 15 miles to the north. Bangladesh is just beyond. The Bhagirathi eventually flows into the Hooghly, which also flows from the Ganges and passes by Calcutta on its way to the Bay of Bengal. I think they are both considered distributaries, rather than tributaries, of the Ganges. I went back to bed and got up for good about 6 to sit on the balcony in the morning cool. The wide river flows quite rapidly. Boatmen came downriver from the little village a little upstream. I walked to the palace grounds in the morning sunshine. It was already getting hot. There was no wind. People were exercising on the palace grounds and one couple were even doing yoga at the top of the steps to the Hazarduari. Gardeners were trimming hedges. I walked a short distance along the river to a newer, smaller, but decrepit palace,dating from the 1890's I think. It was right on the river and had a couple of European style statues in front. It was cooler along the river, with flowering trees, orange and purple. I walked further downstream, past another small riverside mosque and the remains of what may be walls of a former fort until I reached a large, two story, white gateway just inland from the river. Just beyond it was an overturned truck on its side, full of sand. Men were shoveling out the sand while one man worked on the undercarriage, draining gas.
I walked back to the hotel to find the breakfast I had ordered the night before had already been prepared and was cold. So I ate a cold omelet and buttered toast, but did get a hot cup of tea. After breakfast I sat on my balcony until about 10. There was now a slight breeze off the river and I watched the birds, butterflies and squirrels in the garden and the boats on the river. Utpal, the friendly owner, came by and I chatted with him for a while. He took me on his motorcycle about a mile east of town to the ruins of the large 1723 Katra Mosque, made of bricks with two remaining very thick minarets. The Nawab who built it is buried under the steps to the courtyard, a sign of his humility. I walked around the grounds and then walked back to town, stopping at an even more ruined mosque, much smaller, with bamboo growing in front of it. Its domed roof was mostly gone. People along the way were friendly and I arrived at the Hazarduari about noon. It is now a museum, and air conditioned, and I spent a couple of hours inside. I didn't count the doors, but I did enjoy the architecture and the collection of memorabilia. It is three stories high, but you spend almost all your time on the middle story, with a long banquet hall and a central durbar hall with a throne. On display were all sorts of weapons, a palanquin made of ivory and sedan chairs made of ivory and silver. There were lots of paintings, including all the Nawabs from about 1700 and several Britons, including Cornwallis, with wide black eyebrows under thinning gray hair.
I had another poor thali lunch, though it had some fish, and then walked downriver to the newer palace. People were living in the ruins of its backside. I climbed the stairway at the back to the open corridor above the rooms where people now live, disturbing a pack of dogs that had had the area to themselves before my arrival. I also explored the ruins of another large building further behind the palace. I walked a bit more downriver, past the large, two story gateway, and then returned to my hotel about 4:30. I sat on my balcony, then looked around the garden, and finally found a place to sit right on the river until dark. Utpal came by and I chatted with him. He sent one of his workers to buy me a small watermelon, which was delicious. Three of his friends showed up for their nightly game of bridge in the lobby of the hotel and I went off to another unsatisfactory thali dinner. A full moon was rising to the east.
I slept well and got up at six the next morning and sat on my balcony until I went down for breakfast 15 minutes before the 8 o'clock scheduled time for my breakfast. Again, it was already prepared, but fortunately for me still hot. Afterward, I sat on the river and enjoyed the breeze off the water. Utpal came by about 9 and at 9:30 took me by motorcycle a bit more than a mile north to Katgola, the mansion and garden of a rich Jain merchant. I wandered around the grounds, also containing a temple and the ruins of another large building, and visited the mansion, filled with old furniture and photos. I think the mansion, four stories high, must date from the late 1800's. It had chandeliers, a billiard table and a library with encyclopedias, multi-volume histories, a book on the 1922 attempt to summit Everest, and volumes of the works of Shakespeare, Ruskin, Scott, and Thackeray. There were quite a few photos of the descendant of the original builder who was a Congress party official in the 50's and 60's.
From Katgola I walked back to Murshidabad, visiting several sights along the way, although what I enjoyed most was seeing the everyday life of rural Bengal. People were very friendly. They don't see too many foreign tourists here. Utpal showed me his foreigner registration book and I doubt he has had more than 50 foreigners staying at his hotel over the past three years. On the way back to Murshidabad I stopped at a small and uninteresting home of a former financier named Jagat Sett and the much larger and more interesting palace, filled with colorful idols, of a former collector awarded the title Raja Bahadur. A little further on I explored the family cemetery of Mir Jafar and his descendants, including his four sons (three of which succeeded him as Nawab, and later descendants, recent Nawabs now resting in colorful tile tombs of pink and green. Mir Jafar betrayed his nephew the Nawab Shiraj-ud-Daula at the battle of Plassey, helping the British win the battle. Shiraj-ud-Daula was assassinated after the battle and Mir Jafar became Nawab. His two wives were also buried near him, but in walled tombs. I asked the caretaker why their tombs had walls, and he said he didn't know the English word but it was because of purdah. The day was hot and sunny, with mango trees and rice paddies along the way, and I passed by the ruins of another mosque before arriving back in Murshidabad for another desultory lunch about 1:30.
The sky darkened in the afternoon, with a few drops of rain. I walked through town for quite a way until I reached a ferry crossing to the other side. The crossing on the motorized, bamboo floored ferry cost all of two rupees. I watched an approaching ferry offload two very heavily laden bicycle rickshaws with towering loads of jute, maybe 15 feet high. I crossed myself, sharing the small ferry, without rails, with a car and many people, including a lot of uniformed students heading home after school. On the far side, bicycle rickshaws loaded with jute were waiting for passage across the river.
I started walking to Khosbagh, the garden tomb of Shiraj-ud-Daula, and was soon offered a lift by a teenage schoolgirl on her bicycle. I was a little dubious, but sat Indian style on the rack on the back of the bike as the strong girl pedaled us along the bumpy road. My perch seemed precarious, especially when cars came by and she swerved to the lip of the asphalt. I was afraid of falling backward and conking my head. I did get bumped off just as we were arriving at the walled garden. I thanked her and said goodbye before going inside. The small building inside the garden apparently was built to house the grandfather of Shiraj-ud-Daula, and they both are buried there, along with other family members. A small mosque sits at the far end of the garden, behind the building with the tombs. I looked around and then walked back to the ferry landing, a 20 minute walk as the sun was reappearing. People were quite friendly on the way, seemingly surprised to see me.
I reached the ferry crossing and spent about 45 minutes there before crossing. It was quite interesting to watch the jute loaded cycle rickshaws and some motorized small vehicles also loaded with jute getting on the ferry. Several straining men had to brace the overloaded rickshaws as they skittered down the steep decline and onto the rickety ferry. I also watched a woman shampooing her long hair in the river. I finally crossed about 5, sharing the ferry with another overloaded rickshaw and only a few people. The almost toothless boatman seemed pleased to have me take his photograph. It took me about half an hour to walk back to my hotel on a humid, windless, late afternoon. I watched the sun disappear into the clouds over the trees on the other side of the river just after I got back and then talked with Utpal until his 7 o'clock bridge game. The game finished about 8 and he dropped me off by motorcycle at a fairly good restaurant in town on his way home. I walked back along the river under a full moon after dinner.
The next morning I was up about 6:30 and sat on the balcony until breakfast. Afterward, I sat in the garden and talked with Utpal until about 10, when I checked out and took a share jeep south to the big city of Behrampore, a 45 minute trip. The driver leaned on his horn almost the whole way. At 11:30 I left on a hot and crowded bus bound for Malda to the north. The scenery along the way was flat with ugly development along the crowded and bumpy highway. I did see rice growing. After about 3 hours we crossed over the very wide Ganges via the Farraka Barrage, built to control the downstream flow of the Ganges. Both the highway and the railroad cross the river via the barrage. Downstream are big white sandbanks in the middle of the river, while upstream there are none. At places along the barrage you look down and see roiling water, where water was being released through the barrage. More than an hour after crossing the Ganges we reached Malda. I took a cycle rickshaw to an okay hotel on the dusty main road. The afternoon was very humid.
I had come to Malda to see the old Bengali capitals of Gaur and Pandua. About 8 I found the bus heading to Gaur, about ten miles south, but it was incredibly small, with almost no leg room. So I hired a taxi to take me there and back for 600 rupees, about $11. Bengal had Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms before the 13th century Muslim conquest. The ruins at Gaur are all from the Muslim period. We stopped first at a large mosque built in 1526 of brick with stone facing. Nearby are the remains of a five story brick gateway to the city, built in the early 15th century. Designs are on the bricks and the walls adjacent to the gate are now nothing but dirt mounds. Mango trees, heavy with mangoes, were everywhere. I was told June is when they ripen and are harvested. We drove on to the over 80 foot high Firuz Minar, made of brick with a few remaining tiles. A huge banyan tree stood nearby, full of noisy birds. At the next stop were the ruins of another mosque and a domed mausoleum, all of brick. A large gateway nearby had some colorful tiles remaining. We walked through a large grove of mango trees to the excavations of the old palace and the remaining portions of very high brick city walls. Next, we drove through another gate further south to two more very nice mosques, the final one with many remaining colorful tiles, both inside and outside. We were only about two miles from the Bangladesh border when we turned back to return to Malda. Gaur was sacked in 1537 and abandoned after a plague in 1575. I got back to Malda about noon.
At 2 I took a bus north about ten miles to Pandua, first visiting the ruins of the enormous Adina Masjid (Mosque) built in 1364. It is said to be the largest mosque in Bengal and one of the largest in India. The grassy quadrangle is surrounded by 88 brick arches. The main wall is brick and stone, with the stone mihrabs (prayer niches) carved with beautiful designs. Inside the long prayer hall, only about half of which still has a roof, is a large raised platform for the king and his family. I walked all around and then followed the little road that led past farmhouses with friendly people to the Eklakhi Mausoleum, so called because it cost 100,000 rupees to build. It was built in 1412 of brick with stone lintels with the remains of Hindu gods. Nearby is the Qtub Shahi Mosque, dating from 1582. I walked back the way I came and stopped to watch some women making bidi, the cheap cigarettes sold all over India. The friendly women seemed to enjoy having their photos taken, and enjoyed even more seeing the photos. Along the way back, children were playing cricket, grain and cow dung were drying on the road, and people were relaxing after a day's work. Everybody was very friendly and I think I enjoyed the walk more than the ruins. I caught a bus back to Malda about 6 and had to stand on the half hour trip.
Shortly before 9 the next morning I left Malda on the long, 8 hour bus ride north to Siliguri, 160 miles away. The window seats had little leg room, so I took an aisle seat on what became a very crowded and slow bus. For the first half of the journey there was a lot of traffic on the poor road, with many stops and much horn blowing. Once we reached a new four land highway we moved more rapidly. The flat landscape was not at all scenic, with rice and corn and other crops and lots of ugly highway development. Nearing Siliguri we passed through the narrow wedge, maybe 15 miles wide, between Nepal and Bangladesh and started to see some tea estates about 20 miles before Siliguri. It was overcast most of the day, but with some sun. It didn't seem quite as hot as previous days, with an occasional cool wind, probably coming down from the nearby Himalayas. Siliguri, at about 400 feet elevation and with more than 700,000 people, is a transport center. I think the people are largely Nepali. Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who first climbed Everest with Sir Edmund Hilary, has a prominent statue in town. I found a decent hotel near the big bus station and looked forward to getting up into the mountains.
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