Today I had gone touring to Julpia when the LHT completed 2000 kms. At the end of the day it was showing a total of 2002.9 Km on Garmin Connect. Well done LHT.
I wanted to go to Julpia for some time now. The peon on our floor, Asis Naskar comes every morning from there and goes back in the evening covering more than 40 Km every single day. I saw on the map that from Julpia there was a connecting road to Baruipur. So I decided to do a round trip. Finally today I managed to do this trip. This trip is also a tribute to the thousands of Naskars who are doing such trips on a daily basis in pursuit of a living. I have tremendous respect for their zeal to survive.
I started the journey at 5.45 am. It wasn't dark at all. Winter is yet to set in. From Tolly Metro one goes towards Karunamoyee and the roads were fairly empty. Near Keorapukur Bazar one can see a small path on the other side of the Adi Ganga. Asis had told me to take this. I found the narrow concreted path was mostly broken and the stagnant river is really really dirty. What was once the mighty Ganga is now just a sewage canal with water hyacinth covering it in most parts.
There are small footbridges every now and then. I soon came out on the main road to find a large whole sale vegetable market. After this came Kabar Danga. There is a huge whole sale fish market here. I am not sure if they sell for retail customers but the prices seemed quite cheap. Topse, for example was being sold at Rs 200 a kilo. I think in Lake Market it is more than Rs 500. I didn't stop here as it was milling with people but I could see virtually all types of fish being sold including prawn and shrimp.
After Kabardanga the road becomes a little more rural. There were signboards showing the way to St Xavier's College's Raghabpur campus. There were many small bamboo bridges across the canal leading to people's homes.
The road condition was really bad here forcing me to go back to the concreted path across the canal. That path soon ended and I had to come back to the main road. The road condition improved from a place called Bakeshwar where there is a Christian burial ground.
After this came Nepalgunge. One of our old teachers in school used to live here and he would commute to and from our school on his old cycle. He was a gritty man.
At around 18 Km came Julpia. I had expected it to be a very busy small town. It seemed quiet. It's basically a T junction. On the extreme right hand of this road would be Amtala on Diamond Harbour Road and on the extreme left is Baruipur. The connecting road seemed extremely smooth. I stopped for a small tea when I finished the two boiled eggs. Tea was Rs 5 served in a very small paper cup.
From Julpia to Baruipur was a very smooth 7 Km. I turned left from the bypass. This new road goes straight upto Kamal Gazi where there is a new flyover taking one to EM Bypass. Although I took it initially I had to soon abandon it due to the terrible state of its disrepair. But the main road wasn't very comfortable either. Although the surface wasn't so bad, it was chock-b-block full with traffic. Near Narendrapur i once again went back to the canal side road to take the flyover. If I had stuck to the main road and came back via Garia/Jadavpur it would be a much shorter distance. But I wanted to clock 50 Km and hence chose the detour of Abhishikta.
When I reached home it was just above 50 kms.
No comments:
Post a Comment