Deul Park Garh Jungle Road Trip Travelogue

babuchand

25th & 26th Of July 2009 I have made a short weekend trip to garhjungle Deul Prak in the bordering are of Bardhaman & Birbhum. Adjacent to Ajoy River(southern bank) this place is near Durgapur and Panagarh (Darjeeling More). Here is an account of our journey...

Garh jungle Deul Park travelogue

Claustrophobic as we are, being the dweller of cosmopolitan Kolkata, any opportunity to breathe fresh jungle air is always welcomed by our group of friends. The occasion this time was Naru’s homecoming. He was residing in Adelaide for last one and half years and when he came to Kolkata for a couple of weeks, we readily tried to fix a weekend outing. We decided on Deul Park on Tuesday and on Wednesday booked a cottage with 3 rooms. We decided to embark the journey on 25th & 26th Of July 2009. Satya joined us with his 2003 Alto Lx and I was having my 2005 Alto Lx always roaring to go. With more than four competent drivers and 2 Altos our driving appetite was sure to be met.

Now a days, Abhijeet is staying in Durgapur for his job and he proposed a Friday evening journey to Durgapur from where we can go to Deul Park on Saturday. The positive was one more night of enjoyment and the negative was an evening journey relying on weak headlights of the tiny cars. Also Satya was concerned as he had never driven in highways at night. But the adventurous soul in us reigned over and we settled for a 7pm start from Kolkata on 24th evening to give Abhijeet the pleasure of being our host.

Leaving office around 6pm I picked up Amarnath from Salt Lake sector V and Naru from Sealdah Station at 630pm. Then we parked at Maniktala as Amarnath went home to prepare his wife Mayurika. I filled the fuel tank and went to pick Amarnath from his home after paying a short visit to my house to pick up my SLR camera. Meanwhile Satya and Suvajit came to Amarnath’s place and we started towards Dunlop amidst heavy office time traffic at 730pm…already late by half an hour.

We took the Nivedita Toll Bridge to speed things up and when we were crossing the NH2 Toll at Dankuni it was 820pm. Myself and Satya were at wheels of the two cars and with an aim to reach Shaktigarh by 9pm we pushed the throttle hard. A speeding swift was encouraging enough for me to trail and we cruised at 110 – 120kmph while Satya followed us. We parked at “Koushik Ghosh’s Langcha Shop” at the farther brink of Shaktigarh. We took some 15 minutes break and called Abhijeet who was busy in Durgapur arranging a hotel for our stay and dinner. Abhijeet told us that as our estimated time of arrival was 1030pm he would not be able to come to Muchipara crossing, rather he would give us instructions over mobile on how to reach the spot he would be waiting. Amarnath expressed interest in driving till Durgapur and I obliged while Satya continued to drive. This time Satya moved ahead as Amarnath took some time to get accustomed to Alto and the highway at night.

The road quality was awesome except some 3kms in Panagarh where the 4 lane highway bypass is still on papers. We cruised on as Amarnath gained confidence and the journey was almost uneventful except one incident where an Indica suddenly came out of a cut out in the highway from the opposite lane and Amarnath had to slap the breaks vary hard. The car squealed and stopped. Fortunately there was no car tailing us close so a high speed accident situation was evaded.


We reached Muchipara at 1025pm and found Satya, Suvajit and Naru waiting. They had reached 5 minutes before. We crossed Muchipara and then took a left turn which went to the northern side of the highway through an underpass. We went straight till we reached HDFC bank and then took a left turn to find Abhijeet waiting for us beside a food joint. We chilled ourselves with some cold drinks and then went into hotel. The dinner was readily served and after a bellyful of rice with chicken and mix veg curry we went to our rooms. We refreshed ourselves after a hectic day in which we traveled 200km after slogging in office. Thereafter we smoked, drank beer and chatted till 1am, when we went to bed.

Next day we woke up by 8am, had our morning tea and then left the lodge at 1030am. We went straight to a nearby food joint and had breakfast with poori and sabji. Then it was time again for a drive. This time to Deul park resort. Naru took control of my car while Abhijeet, ushered us out of Durgapur in Satya’s alto.

We again reunited at Panagargh to have a tea break and then took the way towards Ilambazar through Panagarh - Morgram state highway. At a place called “11 Mile” we took a left turn towards Deul Park. The road from “11 Mile” was one lane village road but with excellent surface quality. It was made under the “Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojna”. The nice asphalted road continues till a large village called Ayodhya, after which it was a non metal road which goes through the jungle to reach Deul Park. Extremely picturesque, this unpaved road was made up of local red soil and we were capable of doing 20-30kmph on that.

We reached Deul Park resort at 1145am and quickly occupied our cottage which has 3 interlinked AC rooms. After a quick bath in a hot & humid day we went for lunch. It was a marvelous Bengali lunch. After that we sat in the shade at the lawn outside dinning hall and chatted for an hour. When the Sun went under thick cloud we set off for a stroll towards the adjacent Ajoy River. On the sandy banks we saw a truck stuck in the soft sands. The truck went there to pick up sands that will be used as house building material. The crews of the truck were working hard to give it mobility. We captured their effort in camera and then went ahead to the even softer sands on the edge. We hardly enjoyed half an hour when the Sun came out again which made us reluctantly walk back towards the shore. At shore we went to a brick temple nearby, named as “The Temple of Ichai Ghosh” after its founder. It was 430pm by then and we thought a trip in the dense forest beyond the resort was called for. We took out our cars and went ahead, our initial aim was to go to the Garh jungle temple, an ancient one, but soon after entering the dense forest at the brink of dusk, the terrible road condition deterred us from venturing any further.

We embraced this situation as an opportunity to explore the jungle by walking. We parked our cars and then went off the road to find a “nullah” through which water flows in rainy season. Now dry, this “nullah” provided us the right path to trek and we went deeper. The eerie silence was only to be perturbed by our voice. We saw some birds, some lizards and a few spiders webbing their net. We returned after an hour in jungle and then moved on to Ilambazar to fetch some food and drinks.

We returned to the resort around 730pm and then enjoyed ourselves indoor. We made use of the food and drinks bought and some more “pakoras” supplied by the resort. We went out around 10pm for dinner and thereafter ambled towards the riverbank. It was a cloudy night, absolutely dark. We spent around 30 minutes there and then came back to our resort and went to sleep.

Next morning after breakfast and bath we checked out by 11am and went to Garh jungle again in search of the old temple. It was still not raining which enabled us to negotiate the appalling road. After some 2km of bumpy ride we came across another red soil track which was of far better quality. Probably it was coming straight from Durgapur city. As we went deeper into jungle the ambience became more eye catching and once we stopped for a photo session also. Finally we reached Garh jungle temple of Devi Shyamrupa. We came to know about the history of this temple from the priest whose family traditionally performed the rituals at this temple.

The temple dates back to the era of Laxman Sen (1179 to 1206 AD). While he took refuge in a place near the Ajoy river, he founded the temple where human sacrifice was practiced. Later poet Joydev showed him a face of Shyam ie Krishna superimposed on the Kali deity and influenced the king to stop human sacrifice. These days, besides regular rituals, Durga Puja is performed in this temple in autumn.

Our Plan was to return to the Deul Park resort for lunch. But while returning we got stuck merely 1km short of the resort due to a truck which stood still blocking the narrow road. The crew informed us that there had been some technical glitch and it would take long time to resolve. He also advised us to turn around, take the first left turn going ahead which would land us up on a paved road. We followed their direction and found ourselves at a mess as rain started pouring heavily and the road condition became worse. Some times the bottom of our small cars were scratching against the rough road, frightening us even further. We were initially scared of losing the trail and that was enhanced by a pool of water blocking the entire road. We had to come out of the cars and throw some tree branches on the pool to gauge the depth, when it looked fine we went ahead. After negotiating the terrible path at snail’s pace we found one village. It was still raining heavily. We asked a villager who advised us to continue with the road to find village Ayodhya one km ahead. We reached the asphalted road at Ayodhya amidst heavy rain and decided to skip the lunch at Deul Park as the non metal road could prove dangerous for our tiny cars with tiny wheels.

When we reached 11 mile it was 2pm and we discussed our options. Suddenly Amarnath gave an idea to visit Shantiniketan where he had never been before. We appreciated and took left turn from 11 mile towards Ilambazar. From Ilambazar the road bifurcates… the left one goes to Morgram via Siuri and the right one goes to Bolpur. We took the right one and then followed the road to another crossing from where we had to take a left turn to reach Shantiniketan. The road quality was good despite it being a 2 lane state highway. We cruised at 70-80kmph, some times interrupted by herds of cows and goats.

At Shantiniketan we went to the house of Tagore, which had been converted to a museum. Rain has stopped after a burst and the climate was too humid to be comfortable. After some sight seeing at Shantiniketan we went to a group of shops selling locally made handicrafts the place is famous for. Satya, Amarnath and Mayurika bought some of the handicrafts while rest of us cooled our selves off with coke. At around 530 we left for Kolkata.

Amarnath took the mantle of driving my car while Satya drove his. We came back to Panagarh in an hour and took a tea break. Then driving responsibilities switched again. At Shaktigarh we took and extended break to savor our taste buds with some langcha and bought some more for our homes. When we met again at Maniktala to bid adieu to each other it was 1030pm.

It has been a good outing to relieve our minds from the clots of everyday city life. The tour had etched in our mind a long lasting impression of the jungle. Especially the detour that we had to make in the rain was exciting enough to be discussed a number of times in our lives.

__________________
Njoy

babu
visit : http://www.webmania.co.za/travelmania/babu/index.shtml

"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget."

mousourik

Fantastic, Babu, I liked it a lot.

But the webpage didn't open. Pics please.

SUJIT_PAUL

Thanks a lot for sharing this fantastic weekend trip details. I am eager to see this place. Please let us know how to book Deul Park resort+ any phone numbers. also how to go there by train / bus / public vehicle .

Thanks ....
Sujit

babuchand

i have added the details in another thread "weekend gataways around Kolkata" in west bengal forum.