It was 4:30 am in the morning when I left my place for the trip, I reached Sealdah to catch my train Kanchanjunga Express which would leave at 6:35 am. I waited in the queue for the ticket again for the seat as it was unreserved as me & my friend did plan it 3 hours prior to leaving. Eventually somehow we did reach Santiniketan by 9:30am. We did find a lodge by the noon and got ready for visiting all places to visit over there.
As little we did not know that we would not be allowed to get inside Visva Bharati campus before 2pm, we waited until we finally were able to visit as classes at santiniketan ended at 2pm. We did get to see several places & artifacts inside the campus after which we headed for lunch.
Later, we came to know about the folk dance "sautali" was performance nearby so we headed over there not far from there, maybe 3km approx. from Visva Bharati campus. We did head for the dance performance, luckily it was Saturday and they had folk market called "Haat" on that day.
We did dance with folk-women & bought few folk items like ornaments & cloth pieces. It was evening by then as it was winter day, sun set at 5pm. After which we headed back to our room & took some rest as we did not sleep the night earlier.
After taking some rest we did go to check out the local market & to try local food found there, the local stores were not much different than in kollkata however local sweets also known as gurer rosogolla were found in abundance which were too good.
As the night grew we felt hungry as the last we had food was around 3pm within the Visva Bharati campus for snacks which was not so delightful. Finally looking for many stores one caught our eye & we had bread "roti" & chicken curry "chicken kasha" the food was too good over there so I feel like mentioning the name of the restaurant "krisna hotel" after which we head for our room for a night's sleep.
Next day, it was 7am in the morning we woke up & got ready by 8am to visit a nearby river named Kopai & over there we did try local sweetner "gur" made from the sap of date palm. From there we headed towards the Nature Art Museum where we did get to see a lot of interesting pieces of art in form of wood & stones formed naturally. I was awestuck by the creation of nature, it could be so beautiful as it is not everyday one gets to see formations like these.
After we were mesmerized by the beauty of the art museum we headed for the Ballavpur Wildlife Sanctuary where we saw Spotted deers & even 2 species of migratory birds flocking in the wetlands of the sanctuary. At the sanctuary item store we got ourselves a set mementos of the place. As we did complete our quests of visiting all the places around Bolpur, we headed to our lodge & packed our bags & left for the train station to head back to Kolkata.
While this time I was wondering about the experiences we had on our trip & was feeling a bit low leaving the place as it is said Santiniketan has its own magic "Santiniketaner hawa tai alada, ekhankar hawai jadu ache" who comes here once never forgets this place "ekhane je ashe shey bhole na, sob kichu nijer jayga moto thik hoye jaye", at 6pm we got onto the train.
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