Advertisement
Published: April 2nd 2012
Edit Blog Post
08.00 Hours Thursday 29 March.
Up early to go to the mouth of the Hooghly River where it enters the Bay of Bengal.
The Galaxy Guest house is run by 2 Sikh brothers and one of them Surinder is out side when I am going and he tells me that he is going home and will drop me at Sealdah station where I have to go to get the train.
I jump on the back of his scooter but not before he insists on me putting a crash hat on that he has put a couple of serviettes into to stop my head getting dirty.
We wiz through the streets of Kolkata and arrive at Sealdah station in double quick time. As it is so hot the pink paper in the crash hat has struck to my head and he laughs as I try to remove it.
Into Sealdah I go which is extremely busy as it is the middle of morning commute. Sealdah has 3 stations Main, North and South. I want south but it is difficult to tell the difference until I see an information window and join the queue. I ask for Diamond
Harbour and am told “Platform 10 to 14 go straight; go straight waving his hand to the right”.
I go the way he told me and see an electronic information board with the train on, 08.45 departures, it’s 08.40. Quickly I join the queue for a ticket and pay 13 rups not bad for a 35 mile ride.
I run to platform 12 and get the train which is jammed packed, but I get a seat. A very hard wooden seat, no frills on this line a dead backside beckons.
We set off, just another tough journey in India as the train stops at every station and the people crowd on. It takes over 2 hours to get to Diamond Harbour. There is all manner of Beggars, Hawkers and Vendors get on the train, selling everything you can think of and more.
Some of the station platforms you can hardly see for all kinds of stalls and they like just like a market. A few words yet again will fail to describe the amazing journey.
Once in Diamond Harbour I take bicycle rick further down the river which down here is more then a mile
across. I am looking for one of those Bay of Bengal ferries that we seem to hear of at home that sink with alarmingly regularity after being overloaded with passengers. Not at this time of year as the river is not swollen with monsoon rain and looks quite scenic.
I see a ferry landing and buy a ticket to god knows where (it turns out to be Kukrahati on the other side of the Bay).
I go below decks and sit down; the ferry is full but not too bad. It takes 50 minuets to cross the river and as I get off a young lad asks me where I am going. Nowhere in particular I reply and he tells that there is nothing in Kukrahati and that he is on the way to Haldia which his home is and that there is more to see. It’s an hour on the bus so I decide to give it a go.
Sometimes in India you just go with things and not know how they will turn out.
I get on the bus and sit down and he gets up and says he will
be back, the bus starts to leave and he jumps back on. He had gone and brought me a packet of biscuits as I had said that I had not had lunch and would eat in Haldia.
Again just another hour of semi torture as the bus bounces its way to Haldia.
We get off in Haldia which as the boy said does seem to have more going for it then Kukrahati but he forgot to tell me that it was a major port and looked like Immimgham except that it was 10 times hotter, 20 times bigger and 100 times more polluted.
Well he meant well, I have some lunch in stone cold air conditioned hotel while he goes off somewhere. He returns and takes me to meet his father who works for the port fire brigade. He shows me the control room and I ask when they last had an incident. 1989 the reply, it looks like it has not changed much since.
He takes me to see the coastguard station which is halfway interesting as they have 2 Hovercraft, but we are not allowed to take any photos.
I have
worked out that it will take me over 5 hours to get back to Kolkata
So I say goodbye to Abishsek and get on the bus back to Kukrahati. The bus journey back is worse then the one coming and takes 1.5 hours as the traffic is bad even in the country.
As we get back to the bus stand near the jetty, everyone runs to the ticket office. So I rum too, I get a ticket for Diamond Harbour and run down the landing stage and there are 3 ferries waiting. One is empty and the one to my left has just gone. The men waiting have a different colored ticket to me, so my ferry must be the other one to my right. I turn to see it leave and as I approach it it’s 8 feet off the jetty. A women screams something and waves her arms and the ferry returns to pick us up . I jump on board and sit on the bow, this ferry is packed. I watch the sunset as we cross back across the bay and it’s getting dark as we near Diamond Harbour.
I walk back
to the railway station and wait for my train. I see a boy making some kind of wrap with egg and stuff that will do me as I am starving and still have 3 hours to get back to Kolkata.
The train back is livelier then the one coming, but all is good as I get back to my guest house in one piece.
PS The first photo is of my laundry that I give to the guest house and saw a couple of streets away hanging out to dry.!!!!!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.096s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 10; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0591s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb