Gadiara on the Ganges

21 picnickers went to Gadiara on Sunday 5th March on a dolphin sighting expedition. The size of the group ensured that all expenses were covered. The weather was beautiful and balmy breezes accompanied us all day.

We took George, who was on time, but hasher from Chennai missed his wake up alarm. After my call at 7:45, Anurag managed to reach us in twenty minutes. In the meantime, Patrick gave us details of Gadiara, which is the confluence of the Hoogly, Haldi and Rupnarayan rivers where three different species of dolphins have been spotted – gangetic, irawady and hump back dolphin. Chips, apples, newspapers and crosswords had been brought along for the bus journey. We took a 1 km detour to have brunch at the Azad Hind dhaba recommended by Rajesh Nath. There we sat at 3 long tables and everyone went Dutch for a brunch of naans, paranthas, tarka, dahi, and egg bhurji. Rakhi's son Deep who was starving by ten when we pulled into the Bharat Petroleum station beside the large and airy Azad Hind dhaba even had his chicken butter masala! Emmanuelle de Corse who has joined the French Association had her first Kabuli Naan. Our table had the Telegraph Sunday papers and we laughed over Patrick Pringle's account of his first 60 days in Calcutta. After polishing off the paranthas and posing for a picture and making various pit stops, we got back in the bus to continue to the riverside.

We reached the sprawling Roop Narayan Tourist Lodge at 12. Carl had booked a room and we left our bags there and after refreshing ourselves took the ferry to the opposite shore to Nupur. We spotted dolphins from the belly of the ferry on the way in and back. Rakhi and her friends, Anirudh, Margarette and Sohini stayed on board with Stan and Anurag while 7 of us got off the gangplank and visited Nupur which has a Missionaries of Charity Brothers center. We thought we'd be able to visit the gardens but the watchman at the asylum prevaricated or "quibbled". We ended up having tea at a stall overlooking the waters killing time until the ferry returned. Emmanuelle showed us all the pictures she'd taken of the villagers and the fishing boats. Though we'd imagined that the others were toing and froing on the ferry catching glimpses of the dolphins, unable to walk the rickety gangplank, they had got off on the mainland. Some had taken a smaller nouko but rather than majhi songs were inflicted with horrible hindi songs.

We caught up with them back in room 103 overlooking the palm trees where a poker game was in progress with matchsticks as stakes. The real tournament was to be the Scrabble competition and we took the board down to the lawn in front of the lodge. Deep single-handedly lugged the plastic tables and chairs out and then sat to play with us with Sohini/Lilly/Rakhi helping him. Anirudh won the first match and Margarette turned the tables in the second. By then we'd ordered onion bhajis and tea. Rakhi who runs Kewpie was horrified at the sloppy tea service and sent the waiter back to get clean cups and a teapot. We were all set to leave at 5 when we learnt that 6 of the group had missed the 5:10 ferry and would be taking the 6:10 ferry back to us. This created much consternation as evening plans had to be cancelled and Sohini had much explaining to do to her parents. Luckily, I had brought Odomos against the mosquito attack in the dark. We continued to play a crazy game of Crazy 8 while Lilly and Rakhi went to buy fresh galda chingri (crawfish) at Rs.400 a kilo. This was rapidly put into the now empty beer cooler. When the others finally arrived around 6:30 we hurried them into the bus and we took off at 6:45. It took us 2 hours to get back into town.

We had such a wonderful time on this excursion that we decided to plan a return with the hashers who missed the opportunity. We could also take children, of the art school we visited, on this outing. The children had done a project on the river and this could be an opportunity for the hashers to take the kids on a picnic. A 50 seater bus could be organized along with a picnic lunch from hash cash. Tentative date could be 1 month from now on April 9 th.

Let's not miss spring at the Botanics on the Sunday before Holi. Meet at the Botanics at 7:30 am. We can decide then decide the hash schedule until Bengali New Year mid April.