This year (2006) the 25th Dec fell on a Monday. Hence I had a long weekend to enjoy. So I thought of a trip to Goa with my friends. But as luck would have it..there were no affordable flight tickets to goa..and also no availability of lodging facility as every place under the shed had already been booked...So we planned for a trip to Vizag.. Once again problems cropped up...one of my friends had to back out because of health problems....and likewise some or the other problem bogged down others too!!
Finally the only people who were not ready to give up were myself and another friend Jayabroto (shall be addressed as Jobu as we like to call him) from Kolkata.He was a part of the previous 2 plans as well... So we planned for a trip to the Bengal countryside...And what better than the District of Murshidabad we thought, which would not only serve the purpose of visiting a countryside, where one could have a real feel of the village folklore, but also could use his time to explore the Mughal remains...after all this was the very place where Britishers made their first footprints of thier almost 200yrs of rule on the Indian Mainland. The plan was an immediate hit with both of us and we were on!! We planned to make my maternal house in Murshidabad as our mainstay. 
Since I had to start from Bhubaneshwar, I had to get my tickets for Kolkata while Jobu had just to accompany me from Kolkata onwards.... I reached Kolkata on 23rd morning around 9'o clock, midway pickin up my brother also from another place...
According to the communication that I had had with Jobu he was supposed to be there at the station by 9'o clock, so that we could proceed without wasting much of our time..however, due to some communication gap he had thought that he had to be there at the station by 10'o clock..This one communication gap added to the delay a couple of more agonising hours as there was no train till 12 noon...but there was no other option left...so we chatted till around 11.30a.m and then proceeded to the tkt counter only to be told that the train that we were supposed to take had been cancelled for the day...
There are quite a few ways to reach to reach the village where my Maternal House is present...One is catch a train from Kolkata to Burdwan and then catch a bus to the place..Second is to catch a train to Katwa and then move towards my village...And in case none of the trains are available catch a train to Bandel and then move towards Katwa and then proceed....
Anyways we were supposed to take a direct train to Katwa which had got cancelled.. so there was only the last last option left..Move to Bandel and then catch a train to Katwa.. Luckily we had a train at 11.58a.m to Bandel...We reached Bnadel within an hour..after reaching there we came to know that the next train to Katwa was at 2.30p.m...So we thought of utilising this time in fillin the empty space in our stomachs...Since Bandel is not that big a place we knew that finding a good hotel nearby was going to be a pain..Just outside the station though we found a series of small roadside hotels...So we went to have our lunch there...We oredered for a veg meal each, but couldnt even gobble up half the plate as the environment inside was really bad...with our stomachs half filled we proceeded back for the station...the train arrived right on time and we were more than happy boarding the train this time. Around 5.30 in the evening we reached Katwa...We were told before that the last bus to my village was at 5p.m and the only way to go ahead was book a taxi..With much ado we thought to check out at the bus stand itself!! Thankfully the last bus was at 6'o clock. Finally we reached home at around 8 at night.
Once we reached home we knew that the day was over for us and the only thing left to be done was a good dinner, which we were sure would be innumerable times better than what we had at lunch.
The next morning we were up by 6 as we had to move for our trip to The Mughal Lane of yester years...
The details of the trip are there in my next post.
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