[arin_12]

Originally Posted by thebagchi

One cannot stop at Farraka.
Taking photographs at Farraka is prohibited.

Yes, thats true. But Before starting the Bridge you can stop the vehicle and Walk along the Bridge. Even in the left side of the Bridge you can see few more Gate which divert the actual Ganga's Water through a artificial Canal.
And in the early morning it is really nice view.

[thebagchi]

yup View from Farraka is very beautiful.
Unfortunately one can't capture the moments

[sanjoy50]

Kolkata to Puri

It was 16th of May,09 at 5 am , we started from our residence, four adults and a three year girl in our Dezire VDI. Sky was slightly overcast and we wanted to reach Kolaghat Bridge as early as possible .The traffic snarl at the Bridge, was our first mental obstacle. However down the Vivekanand Setu and Kona Expressway , we smoothly drove through without any traffic at all. We reached Kolaghat and surprise of surprises , zipped through minus any JAM.at around 6.15 am. It was 71 km from our residence. We did stop at a Mid- Dhaba after the Debra Toll for Breakfast/ Toilet. Service was very slow so 45 mnts stoppage time. We reached the famous Flyover at Kharagpur where you find two forks,one leading to Kharagpur and the other to NH60. Please follow the same route which you have been driving and go underneath the Flyover. We were amazed to find NH60 totally concrete and one of the best surface laid road . You pay another toll further down and we really tasted our VDI Turbo at 145 km. Small towns like Belda / Danton wear a sleepy look and you will wonder whether any living beings are there.
Now we reached Orissa Border at Sonakonia and we were anticipating that Orissa MVD will charge some entry tax which other BHP members had to pay. But to our surprise, though there was a big traffic snarl of Trucks, we were allowed to go through without even exchanging a single word. The border crossing was done at 196 kms. We crossed Jaleswar at 201 km . Suddenly the beautiful road ended and diversion started, single road with local traffic/ cattle and total disregard to any traffice rule. Naturally the speed slowed down to 60 avg. Baleswar came at 259 km and Soro town at 293 km which was the worst road surface part. At 307 km the double lane resumed and the proper highway started at NH 5. we crossed Bhadrak at 322 km and Jajpur at 364 km. Toll gate at 367 and again at 423 km. we reached Cuttack at 430 km and at peak office traffic time but fortunately traffic was very thin since it was Election Announcement Day. Mahanadi Bridge was crossed at 433 km and we reached Bhubaneswar at 11.30 am. Had leisurely lunch at a family restaurant but again consumed too much time due to slow service. We started for Puri at 1 pm and the entire stretch between Bhubaneswar and Puri was empty since everybody was glued to their TV sets. But the road was full of cattle so had to drive very carefully at a lower speed and reached Puri at 2.30 pm.

We stayed for three nights at a new hotel at Marine Drive, after the Light House. Since the Hotel was bang on the beach , we lazed around most of the time except driving one morning to Mandir for offering puja. We mostly had our food at the Hotel which was quite decent and tasty. Only for one lunch, we ventured to the opposite end , Chung Wa
Restaurant, which is a food lovers paradise.

Our return journey was on May 19th at 7 am from Puri and we reached home at 5.45pm.

With breakfast break at panthanivas, bhubaneswar at 8,15am and lunch break at Sher I Punjab, kolaghat at 4pm.

Total distance covered 1047 km including puri town consuming 51 ltrs diesel at 20.53 avg.

Seven toll gates to pay - Rs.300/plus each direction.

Excellent road surface most of the journey and one can easily cover the distance Within lunchtime to Puri .

[hyper-VTEC]

I am thinking of traveling to Mukutmonipur around 16-17 Jun, for a casual time out with family. I need suggestions.

Place to stay: I contacted Peerless Inn resorts and they quoted 1500 + tax for a AC room which i feel is decent. Any other options?

Driving route: I would drive down. I browsed the internt and found that there are 2 ways to reach Mukutmonipur
1. Kolkata - Kharagpur - Chandrakona Road - Goaltore - Sarenga - Simlapal - Khatra - Mukutmanipur
2. Kolkata - Shaktigarh - Durgapur - Ranigang - Bankura - Mukutmanipur

Which of these routes would be better in terms of road conditions. I know that NH2 (Durgapur Highway) is excellent, but wanted to know the condition of roads in the other route (KGP) as well.

Thanks in advance.

[Sudipto-S-Team]

Originally Posted by hyper-VTEC

Which of these routes would be better in terms of road conditions. I know that NH2 (Durgapur Highway) is excellent, but wanted to know the condition of roads in the other route (KGP) as well.

Thanks in advance.

I had taken part of the second route to go to Bishnupur recently. It was quite nice, except for a few negligible stretches. I am told the first one is nightmarish. But it's second hand information, of course. I think Bagchi has the latest info on that road. But isn't that more distance that way?
I think asking Peerless for their route suggestion would be best.

[AyAn!]

Originally Posted by hyper-VTEC

I am thinking of traveling to Mukutmonipur around 16-17 Jun, for a casual time out with family. I need suggestions.

Place to stay: I contacted Peerless Inn resorts and they quoted 1500 + tax for a AC room which i feel is decent. Any other options?

Driving route: I would drive down. I browsed the internt and found that there are 2 ways to reach Mukutmonipur
1. Kolkata - Kharagpur - Chandrakona Road - Goaltore - Sarenga - Simlapal - Khatra - Mukutmanipur
2. Kolkata - Shaktigarh - Durgapur - Ranigang - Bankura - Mukutmanipur

Which of these routes would be better in terms of road conditions. I know that NH2 (Durgapur Highway) is excellent, but wanted to know the condition of roads in the other route (KGP) as well.

Thanks in advance.

Take the 2nd route..Durgapur Expressway is no doubt fantastic.But don't take the Raniganj route.Its messy.Take a left from DVC crossing just before Duragpur.Thats the barrage route to Bankura.Shorter and better.Nice roads.

[thebagchi]

oops bit late on this one

[sumitkalindi]

Did you forgot the fav spot of Kolkata people??
DIGHA/SHankarpur/Mondarmoni??

[noidea]

And there is bakkhali about 3 and a half hours from kolkata

[black_panther]

Chandipur -- 14 kms off Balasore on Kolkata-Chennai GQ

Maithon -- NH2 (240 kms approx from Kolkata)

Mayapur -- 3.5 hours drive from Kolkata (8kms off NH34 after Krishnanagar)

Taki -- 1.5 - 2 hours from Science City (EM Bypass)

[scuderiamania]

Hey guys, need your help.

I was thinking of going to Gangani for a couple of days with family friends sometime in the first week of june. Thing is, I can't find any place to stay. Can someone help. Also, how easy will the drive be. I understand that its about 180kms from Kolkata. But the issue is that even though my father is used to driving long distances, the people who are coming along with us in their cars have virtually no experience in road trips. So I'd prefer to keep away from places where it is difficult to drive.

Any other places that I should look for?

[rahul4640]

Originally Posted by scuderiamania

I was thinking of going to Gangani for a couple of days with family friends sometime in the first week of june. Thing is, I can't find any place to stay. Can someone help. Also, how easy will the drive be. I understand that its about 180kms from Kolkata. But the issue is that even though my father is used to driving long distances, the people who are coming along with us in their cars have virtually no experience in road trips. So I'd prefer to keep away from places where it is difficult to drive.

Gangani is possibly only 25 KM from the town of Bishnupur and it may not be difficult to reach that place, if you can drive safely. For staying you may consider Chandrakona Road (possibly 12 KM away) as an option but I guess Bishnupur has better hotel facilities.
Regards,
Rahul Biswas

[scuderiamania]

yes, I was thinking in the same lines. Btw, I particular hotel that you may recommend??

[rahul4640]

Originally Posted by scuderiamania

yes, I was thinking in the same lines. Btw, I particular hotel that you may recommend??

You may consider staying at Bishnupur Tourist Lodge, run by West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation. The rooms are spacious and clean, the rate being reasonable. There is a restaurant serving good Bengali food and online booking facility is available.

[scuderiamania]

Hey guys, Chucked the idea of going to Gangani. Decided to head for maithon instead. A very close friend of dad works at dvc. He helped us get rooms in Mazumder Niwas [dvc guest house]. We decided to go on tuesday the 21st of june and return on thursday the 23rd of june. The rather wierd time for vacation [slap bang in the middle of the week!] was chosen as unfortunately different people had different problems on the weekends.

Anyway, we set off for maithon at around 6:30 on the 21st of june. There were 12 of us. We took along three cars: Abhijit uncle's 2004 esteem vxi, my dad's '08 swift vdi and Pranab uncle's '11 jetta. We stopped for breakfast at shaktigarh for about half an hour and were at maithon by 11 in the morning. I thing that I should mention is how lucky we were to avoid the rain. Just the night before all of us were having apprehension about the rains that were lashing down big-time in and around kolkata. To our surprise, we never had to put up with a single drop of rain on the whole trip!

As I am not too good at narrating I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Sometime around 7:30am. Just before reaching Shaktigarh. It was cloudy at first but from then on it was mostly clear skies after we reached maithon

My dad is very particular about driving at exactly at 100kms/hr. We realise that going at around 100kms gives the perfect mix of mileage and speed. At these speeds we get around 20kmpl on the highway and takes us around 3hr 15mins to reach shantiniketan [we go there often as a relative recently bought a house there] . Driving any faster merely saving 10 to 15mins. Thing is, the guy driving the esteem, a very close friend of mine, drives with a rather heavy foot, if you know what I mean! But even he wasn't a problem. Pranab uncle, who is almost unbearably slow in the city was flying around. Thing is, The jetta cruises at around the 130-140 mark with ease, whereas the esteem adn the swift starts to run out of breath at these speeds. To keep up, my father was having to push to, which led to us getting only 17.6 kmpl this time round!

Traffic was unusually high that day. Dont know why.

After the right turn from the Barakar truck checkpost

At the DVC entrance.







We had to park our cars on the road and walk across this bridge to reach the guest house which is on an island in the reservoir!









A nice boat ride in the evening.

Beautiful sunset!



Mazumder Niwas



Photography was strictly prohibited on the dam. But my father could not resist clicking this picture!

Very close to the reservoir is Kalyaneshwari Mandir. After offering a puja, we went through a small door on the side of the temple which led to this amazing place.