My Travel Blog

Was having a chat with Sunita, a Nepali woman who runs a small shop on the roadside. Tea-coffee-chowmein-momos are available in the shop. She stays in nearby Chalsha with her mother-in-law and little daughter. Her husband works in Jalpaiguri. Sunita opens her shop everyday at 11am. Tourists throng into her shop in the evening. At around 8pm, she closes down the shop and heads home.  We are into the tour of North Bengal since the last five days, but didn’t get any scope to take rest in the afternoon. Either we had to head to book the forest safari tickets right after checking in the hotel, or checked in the hotels at the evening.  Is there a place where we can spend the whole day taking abundant rest?  Just as we were searching the ideal place to take rest, Google gave us the information about Murti. Murti is somewhat a lesser known place as compared to Buxa-Jayanti, Jaldapara and Garumara. It’s not so popular among the tourists as we easily got...

"Stop, Stop the car now.” Hearing my loud voice the driver immediately applied breaks. I simply rushed out of it.  “What’s the matter? What happened?” enquired my family members, who were simply bewildered.  “Just look at that side,” I was unable to hide my excitement.  It’s the Kanchenjunga.  Our first sighting of Kanchenjunga in this trip.  We were heading towards the Jalpesh Temple from Lataguri. Though we were moving southwards, but I was constantly keeping my eye on the northern side as well. Himalayas are on that side. I heard that, on a clear day the Kanchenjunga can be seen from the plains of North Bengal. Monsoon has totally retreated from North Bengal. Though the sky was partially cloudy for the past few days, but on that particular day, it was absolutely clear. So I believed that we could finally get a glimpse of the peak.  Just on the outskirts of Maynaguri town, I sighted the...

“Have a look at him. He is going far away crossing the river. Probably he is very sad.” No, he is not a man, but a rhino. He is crossing a small stream. A bird is enjoying the slow ride, sitting on his back. We are thoroughly enjoying the scenes.  Jaldapara and Garumara are the two main National Parks of Dooars. After sighting four rhinos in Jaldapara, the day before, we have now come to Garumara with the hope of seeing more. Just where the Garumara forest ends, there is a small hamlet named Lataguri, comprising mainly hotels.   After checking in one of those hotels, we had to rush to Lataguri Nature Interpretation Center to book the safari tickets. The counter opened at 12’noon.  Tourists can get tickets of various points in the National Park like Madhla, Khunia etc, but the first choice is always the Jatraproshad Watch Tower. But the demand for Jatraproshad is so high that one should consider himself or herself extremely lucky, if he or she c...