I still remember the last trip to Mandarmani quite vividly and the trouble we had run into over there. But that didn't stop me from going back to the calm and serene beach.
We had made the plan for a while, but it was crystallized once we made an advance booking and to my surprise it was the same place I had stayed on my last visit. So we left on the early morning of 22nd December. Early as in at about 6.30 am we finally were on our way. It didn’t take us too long before we were on the Vidyasagar Setu and paying the Rs. 10 Toll at the Toll Plaza. Once past the Toll Plaza I was glad to see that the Kona Expressway had been repaired and the drive from there to the Mumbai Highway was much shorter than I expected. I missed the turn off left to get on the Mumbai Highway due to some really thick fog and got onto the flyover, which took us on the opposite side to the Delhi Highway. But a few hundred meters down I took a u-turn and we were back on track heading towards Kharagpur according to the Road signs. Shortly we were at the Toll Plaza of the National Highway and Rs. 30 got us through onto that long stretch of well-constructed and plain black stretch of tarmac. I was tempted to step on the gas. And so I did.
Before long and I must really say before long, we were at the Kolaghat Flyover and we turned off the Mumbai Highway towards Kolaghat. From here the road starts taking a turn for the worse. The highway is still under construction. So it’s a four-lane highway all right except that all the four lanes were on one side. So we kept oscillating from one side of the highway to the other after every couple of kilometers. OK to make it a bit clearer, the highway was being constructed one side at a time, but they weren’t constructing the entire one side at a time, so sometimes we were driving on the right side, which was constructed, and sometimes on the left side. At one point there was no highway at all, just a mud track.
We finally came upon the round about I had been waiting for and from there we took the road going to the right. It wasn’t a pleasant turn into that stretch. The road seemed non-existent and only filled with bricks to even it out a bit. But we managed to get through the mêlée of traffic at that turn and then headed through a narrow highway lined on both sides by villages and lots of trees. Ponds were a common sight on both sides when we came upon settlements. We stopped for some tea finally. Our maiden stop for tea and sandwiches that had been thoughtfully prepared, served as breakfast. A little later one road caught my imagination. We came upon it and suddenly it was like a black serpent running through the fields and the only thing that kept it at bay was a line of tall eucalyptus trees on either side.
We finally came upon the last bridge up a winding road and then over it onto an elevated road through fields that seemed would get flooded when the tide was really high. I say so because there were fishing boats in the fields and the only way I could possible see them getting there was if the fields were inundated. Once we had done this narrow stretch, it was a turn off for the worst. A left turn, which if you didn’t really know would probably drive past. This was the last 14 km stretch through absolutely ‘kuchha’ village road to Mandarmani. Parts were metalled and mostly it was a dust track. We drove through this till we came upon the Bund, which separated us from the beach and sea, which lay on the other side. This was the final tricky part, wherein I had to step on the gas and race through the final incline of the Bund through loose sand, which I did, and then over the hump and downwards with the entire stretch of sea in front of us. Once over I turned right and started driving down the beach, making sure I stayed on the tracks that had been embedded in the sand and made it hard. If I strayed off this track my car would get stuck in the sand and I knew this from past experience.
We drove for a bit and finally came upon our hotel. Hotel Debraj looked all too familiar and I knew exactly what the place was going to be like. But I have to add; it’s seen a drastic change sine the last visit. New cottage and the so-called swimming pool had water. I parked the car in the parking lot and it had clocked exactly 200 kms on the electronic trip meter, since we left Kolkata. We had arrived a bit early. Since check out time was 12 noon, and we had arrived at about 10.30 am, we were given a temporary room to freshen up. Finally when we got our rooms, we put our stuff in and hit the beach, but not before placing our lunch order.
