Wacky Races

Monday. We are woken by brilliant sunshine and a cloudless sky. We get a little light blogging done until is time for breakfast.  The lodge seems much quieter today and we eat alone (except for the flies). We now have packing down to a fine art and are pretty well sorted when Mr Bannerjee, the guide, arrives 15 minutes early for our 9.30 meeting. We agree a programme and ask the reception desk to book a car for 11 a.m. He makes the call and announces that the car will be here in 15 minutes. Duh! Fortunately Mr B is on hand to intervene and things get sorted.

With some time to kill we take a stroll out into the town, taking care to avoid the puddles. The economy here seems to be highly dependent on mobile phone kiosks and bicycle repair shops. We exchange hellos and good mornings with many people and get stared at a lot. It is a school day today and there are special cycle rickshaws for transporting the little darlings.

We spot a small shop selling sachets of various things including Sunlight Soap Powder. We procure two of these for a rupee each. Amongst the Bishnupur Lodge's many shortcomings their dhobi walla failed to appear yesterday and we are getting a little light on clean clothes. Next door a man is preparing paan leaves. We know to give these a wide berth. Our meanders take us down to the market before it is time to hop a rickshaw back to the hotel. The final insult from the Lodge is an attempt to bill us for last night's supper which was settled cash at the time. After some to-ing and fro-ing the waiter who took our money appears and confirms that we paid. He looks as if he has been dragged out of his scratcher and seems none too pleased.

Mr B appears as does the car which will also be taking us on to Asansol later on. We set off on our excursion to Panchmura and Mr B points out places of interest as we go. We take the back roads which have little traffic but very variable road surfaces. We are told that the road was built as part of a major project to service a large poultry farm but that maintenance is now the responsibility of the local panchyats or village councils who lack funds and resources. En route R spots a man driving an ox plough in the field. D has been trying to get a photo of this for four trips and not yet succeeded. The driver stops and a suitable photo is taken. This is possibly the only upside of road travel in India versus rail travel. Plus 0.5 points to Dr. Rudi. (IndiaMike joke)

After about an hour we arrive at our destination and we are taken to various houses to see various parts of the process including making tiles from moulds, tiles with hand crafted relief figures, large pot statues such as elephants and horses made by joining together several smaller pieces and straightforward potmaking on a wheel.  The pottery here is more sophisticated than in Orissa and they use a permanent underfired kiln rather than a pit for firing. The speciality piece is the Bankura Horse but they do a wide variety of other figures. R buys a few souvenirs and hands out plenty of sweets but Mr B is not for dawdling. 

He sets a cracking pace as we head off to view a 13th century temple that is maintained by the government.  The locals use the goat proof enclosure to dry their washing. This heralds the end of our tour, quite short but very interesting.  We drive back to Bishnupur rather faster than the outward journey and settle up with Mr Banerjee, who asks that we recommend him to family, friends and colleagues,  which we do. We hope that he has other sources of income. We agree a half hour lunch break with our driver and set about retrieving our bags.

On our way out of town we experience a first. Our driver actually reverses and pulls off the road to allow another vehicle to pass. It was a rather wide and unmaneouverable ox cart but still an occasion to note. When we hit the highway it seems to be quite a good road but it doesn't last for long and we soon hit the ruts and potholes. Our driver subscribes to the horn and accelerator school of driving, treating the brake pedal as an implement of last resort. The last twenty minutes of our trip is along the Grand Trunk Road which stretches from Kolkata to Delhi and on to Lahore in Pakistan. This is a dual carriageway but with police speed restriction gates every kilometre or so. It is like participating in Wacky Races with everybody trying to position themselves for a clear run at the next chicane.

We survive to reach the Asansol turn off and soon spot the Hotel Asansol International where we plan to while away a few hours and have a meal before catching our train. We are shown to the restaurant where we order tea and pakodas and are clearly an object of great interest to the staff. The room is quite small and windowless but the AC is set at a comfortable level and nobody seems to be in any great hurry. Sadly the wifi is not working but you can't have everything.  We spin out the tea and then order beer and poppadoms which last another hour. By 6.30 we are quite hungry and order a meal - mutton kofta, peas pulao, yellow dal and plain raita. It is the best meal so far on this trip. D buys a fee more minutes by ordering Butterscotch ice cream. Eventually we run out of ways to stall and have to pay and leave