This extraordinary cruise on holy waters is stranger than fiction
At a cafe in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, India, I ask a waiter for a menu. What should be a simple exchange – I want menu, he provides menu – becomes an elongated comedy of manners, in which 15 minutes later, I still have no menu.
I’ve been to India before. I’ve read many books about it and watched a lot of films set there. I have often thought some portrayals of local mores were exaggerated for comedic effect, to the point, perhaps, of being insulting.
Now here I am, experiencing one of these endearingly flummoxing moments for myself. The truth, they say, is often stranger than fiction and I decide then, that for me, from here on, it will be “namaste” to come what may. I’ll soon be reminded that this is a great mindset to have when experiencing a country known for chaos, crowds and cacophony.
I’m here with APT on its 10-day Kolkata and Lower Ganges cruise trip. This Australian tour company offers four Lower Ganges cruise itineraries of 10 to 19 days’ duration. The two longer itineraries include the Golden Triangle as a precursor to the Kolkata and cruise segment.
The latter, which I’m on, is a new itinerary. APT has previously chartered the river ship involved, the Ganges Voyager, however the offerings upon it have changed. The Indian company, Antara, owns and runs the Ganges Voyager, and it is its crew, which is operating those offerings on behalf of APT.
In this instance, our group of 16 is joining a similarly sized group that’s already been on the road with the Golden Triangle itinerary, so they’re probably more match-fit than me when I dive into one of the first excursions of our newbies’ sector: to Kolkata’s Mullick Ghat Flower Market, India’s biggest.
We set off not long after 6am from our two-night pre-cruise base of Kolkata’s lovely Taj Bengal. The early morning light is misty and golden as we descend from the Howrah Bridge, itself once one of the biggest of its kind, into the market below, and collide with a mass of bustling humanity and intoxicating fresh flora.
While no place for the timorous, I soon lose my heart – and thanks to frenetic traffic almost my toes – to this hectic yet balletic metropolis of nearly 16 million people, known as the “City of Joy”.
Kolkata’s quirkiness and unpredictability in turn prepares me for what’s to come when it’s time to board the Ganges Voyager, our river-plying home for seven days. Soon we set sail up the – Ganges? Really?
Once I’ve dusted out of my hair the chrysanthemum petals we are showered with as we cross the threshold onto the ship, I head up to the bow to enjoy the sail-away. It’s just the bridge personnel and me up there, and we gasp as we see one of India’s endangered river dolphins briefly breach. “You are lucky,” a crew member says.
I put my burning question to him. “We’re sailing the Hooghly River, right?” You only have to look at a map to see it’s not the Ganges but the Hooghly, the westernmost distributary of the Ganges, that runs through West Bengal, past Kolkata to the Bay of Bengal, and it is this waterway upon which we are setting out. “No madam,” he says, with a soft, don’t-be-ridiculous laugh. “Ganga.”
It won’t be long before I find out how right he is and wrong I am.
Cruising such as this remains a novelty to the locals and, in testament to it, there are many moments of waving, squealing and calls of “Hello!” from the villagers bathing in the river as we pass.
Subcontinental river ships are still a rarity, and the Ganges Voyager and identical twin sister ship Ganges Voyager II are best in this class.
With her upper deck given over to an undercover outdoor patio that’s used for both lounging and onboard entertainment, and an indoor lounge where excellent coffee is served all day, as well as a small spa and gym tucked behind the bridge, the ship makes relaxation easy.
Its cabins, with French balconies (basically doors that slide open with a wrought-iron fence in front of them) are spacious, pretty, supremely clean and meticulously kept by cheery room attendants. Its beds are big and luxuriantly comfortable.
While it is sturdy and well-maintained, its colonial-inspired decor is a bit old-fashioned for my tastes, with its stairways steep and no alternative means of moving between decks. It can be noisy too. In my cabin, the sound of a pump that turns on and off repeatedly is audible 24/7, but I actually sleep well as I travel with quality earplugs.
The meals served from the ship’s kitchen – three a day – are excellent, with one passenger, while a little miffed by the limit on alcoholic beverages, rates the ship’s crew “10 out of 10 on all measures”. I agree. The all-male crew and our two female tour guides are a delightful bunch for whom nothing is too much trouble.
But of course, the real star of this trip is the river, and the extraordinary access travelling on it affords to an India it would otherwise be difficult to experience – which is not to say the experiences we have are easy.
This is rural India, where we will see few (if any) other Western tourists for seven days – a rare privilege, but also a situation that means little infrastructure to meet certain Western sensibilities.
India is confronting – sanitation issues and seeing children bathe (and dolphins swim) in a river basically used as a dumping ground for everything from old shoes to human ashes has me feeling both immense gratitude for my own standard of living and a helplessness at the state of the planet.
I suffer a good old case of Delhi belly despite eating, sleeping and travelling on my impeccably clean and comfortable ship. The source of said bug remains a mystery. Those frollicking kids seem totally immune and just get on with it.
Agriculture dominates the pretty landscapes and villages we pass. Rice, sugar, wheat and banana plantations abound. So too fishing. Small black boats bob serenely on the murky water.
Brickworks that look like ancient ruins punctuate the riverbanks, where industry takes advantage of alluvium. The sometimes smoggy, often misty sky masks a searing sun, producing pastel backdrops to a remarkable cavalcade of scenes that seem to be from a time long ago.
It’s unseasonably hot and humid for the northern spring in West Bengal – and for the first few days of our river journey it is Holi, the Hindu festival of colours where anyone and everything is fair game for getting covered in coloured powder.
The heat and the festival combine to make some travellers wary of shore time. But even from the Ganges Voyager, as we travel up the river, we can hear the music, dancing and celebrations.
“Happy Holi!” kids call out as we pass them bathing off the powders that are thrown over heads and plastered by hand onto faces. “Happy Holi!” we call back.
Our crew holds their own Holi party on deck. We’re given T-shirts to join in as they dance, giggle and douse each other in the sacred colours.
I’m curious about the temples and other structures and land formations we pass. There’s never any announcement regarding these. My $5-a-day roaming means I can consult Google maps, which becomes a bit of an obsession. And I’m kept busy imparting my findings to my new friends.
Our village visits are mostly just that. We go to shore on our “country boat”, a small chugging craft with wooden seats that ties up where it can. Crew members hold a long stick of thick bamboo steady as a rail as we tenuously walk her gangplank, also made of bamboo.
They clean our shoes after every visit (along with offering a cooling drink and cold towel) and provide surgical booties for taking off shoes in temples.
We wander enclaves of rustic dwellings, vegetable and wet markets, industrious workshops, little barber salons where cut-throat razors whip expertly, and open-air samosa bakeries. Some men pull their shops peddling miscellany door-to-door on bicycles.
Others whittle in front yards. Women in colourful saris wash cookware outdoors or take children by the hand to their small schools. The dogs are surprisingly friendly, relaxed and well-fed, the cats disdainful, as cats universally are. It’s a painterly delight – and one of our group is deftly recording his experiences in watercolour.
Each village we visit has something special about it though: one makes saris by hand, another metalware.
There are few big monuments, other than in Kalna, home to the mystical 1809 Naba Kailash Mandir comprising 108 stunning Shiva temples constructed in two geometric circles. And then there’s the new temple at the world headquarters of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness or ISKCON, in Mayapur.
After years of construction – and a bill in part footed by the great-grandson of Henry Ford – it is almost finished and takes the current honours for being the biggest religious monument in the world. Its gargantuan blue dome reflects attractively on the river, albeit perhaps incongruously.
Meeting the surprisingly friendly and welcoming locals as they go about doing what they do is both the honour and the gift of this journey.
The most impressive temple, however, is the living river itself – and I’ve come to understand why that crew member said the Hooghly River was indeed “Ganga” as we set off.
Technically, he has a point. At Farakka in northern West Bengal, the Ganges splits into two, the Hooghly going south into West Bengal, Padma east into Bangladesh. “It’s the same water,” our cruise director, Runjoy, insists.
There is that, and for the Hindu people who live along it, this river is the Ganges, no question.
As the sun sets on these holy waters, colouring everything a misty, muted saffron – the hue of the robes of the sadhus – I hear bells and music, singing and chanting from the temples on the banks nearby. I can feel “Mother Ganga” as the Hindus call the river herself, unequivocally the spiritual and cultural lifeblood of West Bengal.
The details
Cruise + tour
APT’s 10-Day Kolkata and Lower Ganges Cruise is a Kolkata-return itinerary. It includes seven nights aboard the Ganges Voyager and two nights’ luxury accommodation in Kolkata; 24 meals, plus Freedom of Choice and Signature Experiences. From $7295 a person. See aptouring.com
Fly
Singapore Airlines flies daily to Kolkata via Singapore. From Changi Airport the flight time is four hours and 10 minutes, and 10 minutes more the other way. Be aware that connection times for onward flights can be tight, especially if you have to transfer to a different terminal.
See singaporeair.com
The writer travelled as a guest of APT and Singapore Airlines.