Digha Tour

“Tring Tring” The Intercom bell rang on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It was my ever-enthusiastic carom partner — Suman Pal.

“Saurav, we are going to Nicco Park. Would you people like to join us?”

I immediately declined the offer as I had already visited Nicco Park and also advised Suman not to go there in the afternoon as it gets closed by 5 PM. 

A few minutes later, the Intercom bell rang again and it was him once more — this time with a new offer. “Would you like to join us for a Digha trip this weekend?”. This time I had to relent as I had not been to Digha earlier and weekend trips do not disturb the office factors. 

 

I usually do a lot of planning before our tours, but this time it was a lot different. Suman was taking all the pain. By evening, he booked the hotel rooms, and next day he was ready with a list of all the do’s and don’ts — we were supposed to carry bed-sheet, mosquito repellant, and ample drinking water.

Saturday morning – 15 December, 2012

We started off at 5:15 AM on Suman’s car, with him on the driving wheel.  The earlier night, he had done a night-shift, but there were hardly any signs of lethargy. Digha was a little more than 200 kms from Kolkata and we reached there by 9:45 AM.

We checked into Hotel Greenland Inn in New Digha and immediately proceeded for the sea-shore on a motor van. On the way, we had our breakfast at a road-side dhaba.

The beach was slightly crowded, but we managed to find some space and privacy for ourselves. The weather was bright and sunny, and the water was warm. The sea was there to mesmerize all and sundry.

I did not have my swim-gear on and had no plans to wet my clothes. Yet, sitting dry beside the sea was simply impossible — the waves were so irresistible. All of us, including Suman’s ‘small wonder’ Tathai,  played with the waves, and Suman seemed to enjoy the most. There was no stopping him as he did whatever a non-swimmer could do in water. 

Old habits die hard and so we clicked lots of photographs from various angles, forgetting that no photograph can capture the beauty of the forever dynamic Bay of Bengal.

After our fascination with sea was over, we had lunch at Sonar Bangla restaurant and then went to Udaipur beach, which was nearby, but belonged to Orissa. At the Udaipur beach, we hired two bikes for Rs 50 each and drove to the estuary (commonly known as mohana in Bengali). Driving bike along the sea was an exotic feeling — something that we thought only film actors could experience. 

Mohana & the ‘sinking’ feeling

We parked our bikes at the mohana, and just as we were enjoying the beauty of the moment, my bike fell down as the ground was weak. I had heard about the presence of chora baali or quick sand in Digha, and so I immediately tried to move the bike to a safer place. However, the more I tried to start the bike, the deeper it went into the sand. Suman came for rescue and noticed that in the tense moment, I had forgotten to switch on the bike. Somehow, he managed to pull it off and park safely. We were safe, but the ‘sinking’ feeling had marred the beauty of nature and disturbed the feeling that I could reminisce.  

The bikes were our property only for half-an-hour and so we had to quickly return to the main beach. There, we found many star fishes and Suman even captured a snail. The beach was calm with almost no waves on the sea, but the crowd was mostly drunk and ill-mannered.

We returned to the hotel by evening and had a stroll in the hotel lawn. Considering the room rent (Rs 800), our hotel (Greenland Inn) was too good. It also had a restaurant where we had our dinner.

Sunday– 16 December, 2012

We checked out at 10 AM and headed straightaway for Talsari (Orissa), which was 8 km from New Digha. At Talsari, we boarded a hand-driven boat and went to a nearby island. The island had dry white sand, lots of greenery, and was inhabited mainly by red crabs, which played hide and seek with the visitors.

From Talsari, we went to a park in New Digha wherein we took a toy-train ride across the park. I had heard about the toy train and had expected it to be along the sea, but unfortunately it was not so.

By 3:30 PM, we were done with Digha and hence thought of visiting Mondarmoni as well. Mondarmoni was 23 kms from Digha and 12 kms from Chalkhola, which was on our way back to Kolkata. So, overall we had to travel only 12 kms extra, though I must say, the road was too narrow and replete with bumpers and speed-breakers.

We were aware that Mondarmoni is an over-rated and over-publicized place. However, it had many big hotels on the sea-beach itself and provided the unique option of driving cars on the beach; Suman was too excited to take that opportunity. Some other adventurous sports as well like para-gliding and sea-scooter were also on offer, but did not fit the bill.

We left Mondarmoni at 5:15 PM. On our way back, a major traffic jam at Kolaghat consumed half-an-hour and so we could not reach home earlier than 9:30 PM.