Driving northwest from Malda (West Bengal) to Bhagalpur
(Bihar) the landscape seemed a little drier than in north western Bangladesh
(it’s still pretty wet as it’s the wet season).
There are many more trucks on the road, which is in more variable
condition, with some very bad patches.
There were many people out and about in the villages and
towns we passed through, and plenty of things to buy if we’d been inclined.
Chai stand
Fruit stand
Rickshaw stand
As well as the cows and buffalo on the roads (and goats, in
villages) in many towns there were chickens in coops. These were often just outside restaurants or
butchers – we once saw a small herd of goats outside a butcher’s too: D felt
they didn’t show much initiative to just sit there, untethered, while they
await reincarnation.
Restaurant with fresh chicken
At one point we ran into a huge traffic jam (which was
actually incredibly well organised: the large trucks queued on the outside of the
road in a line about 2km long by the time we arrived, smaller vehicles queued
inside them, and bikes roamed between) which stopped us for 15 minutes or so –
we were lucky, we got to it late. Once
we could drive no further forward we parked and wandered round, waiting for the
traffic to move again. Once the road
opened everyone raced back to their vehicles and we had an mini traffic jam
when everyone wanted to get ahead! As the
traffic moved we saw that a truck had overturned: it was one of three overturned
trucks we saw on the six hour drive.
Traffic jam en route to Bhagalpur
Truck driver ready to start
We arrived into Bhagalpur to find that our phones couldn’t
connect to a network and the hotel had no internet of any kind. It felt like travelling back in time!
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