DIGHA Kiss Me Quick

Going through a bad spell.    

As cyclone Bulbul raged outside, we spent 48 hours in our five star Digha hotel, mostly experiencing room service and a power cut.

Before lights out.

Bulbul was a big national event, it hit the Sundarbans hard and even made the BBC News (they probably blamed it on Jeremy Corbyn).

A  largeish seaside town, Digha was more Morecambe than Brighton, with a load of new hotels (well, building/demolition in progress anyway) behind the main road, shops, park and huge promenade.

Prom queens.

When we first ventured outside Hotel Le Roi the storm had abated and things seemed a bit humdrum.

Proud hotelier.

As the sun broke through the clouds the locals thronged onto the sand, lapping up their weekend break, like a traditional British bank holiday on the beach. Ices, donkey rides, coconuts and much splashing about fully clad in the waves.

Our hotel was a minute from the train station, from where we waved a relieved but happy goodbye to our weird weekend.

Cutest thing you'll see today.

Red submarine.

Subliminal advertising.

Snake in the lake.

MANDARMONI Paradise. If... You're Drinking Bacardi

The number one beach resort for Kolkatans, but only four hours out of Kolkata on the bus, so it was never gonna be the Copacabana.

Fly-blown and faded, charitably at best it was Caister on a very bad weekender.

The beach was a very long, very flat, very grey-brown strand, the sea flat as a pancake and, while I would like to wax lyrical about the dawn coming up like thunder outer Burma* 'crost the Bengal Bay, it really only drifted up slowly from behind a hazy mist.

To be fair it did have some quirkiness to it, like this random temple which shared a field with a decomposing polystyrene replica of itself.

A sandy lane ran along the back of the beach, and the resorts had been developed down to the sand, but had mostly been left to fade, as Indian schemes seem to do, which was a shame.

Then the holidaymakers chuck all their rubbish everywhere, including the seashore they are standing on, which is just insane.

Yep, he was empty.

So much for that much-needed down time, but we did soften the edges with a bottle of Bacardi.

He loved having his ears scratched.

 Kim saw some wildlife on her travels.

Three nights at the SunView Resort and we were off to Digha for another couple of nights, then we leave West Bengal for Puri, Odisha on the night train. (Please let there be a nice beach).

FarTy owls

*Non-PC poetic licence

SUNDARBANS With The Beetles

A bus, a boat, a tuktuk, then a smaller boat took us back to nature, to our eco village out in the wide blue yonder.

A massive mangrove archipelago, mostly in Bangladesh but with a decent swathe in India, the Sundarbans are a world away from Kolkata's chaos.

We took a long day's boat ride out with our superb guide MJ (Manjeet, top) and a local government walla, looking fruitlessly (inevitably) for tigers, but did see more deer, hogs, snakes, monitor lizards, birds and a couple of crocs.

The landscape was unique, hot, harsh blue sky and blazing white sun.

Then a couple of village walks and a cooler night cruise around the waterways, where Kim and the girls experienced the muddy riverbanks first hand. I stayed on the boat to guard the flipflops.

It was a great experience just to get away from it all, living the simple life in our little straw hut.

In the evening we tasted a little baule music, played by four local musicians - a sad and happy, reflective and esoteric song form, very authentic and emotional stuff.

The Fab Four, plus one

I was minded of The Beatles and how they may have felt 50 years ago. Something strange and other in the gloaming of a warm Indian evening, the proximity and intensity of the performers drawing one in. Man.

Aye, anyway, we enjoyed the Sunderbans very much. Even the something rooting around in our room at 3am - rat or mouse for sure, I didn't lift the mosquito net to find out.