West Bengal
Apply for your eVisa- Code:WB
- Type:state
- Population:91.3M (2011)
- Area:88,752 km²
- Elevation:500 m
- Capital:Kolkata
Introduction
West Bengal is one of India's most populous and culturally influential states, home to more than 90 million people along the eastern edge of the subcontinent, and it packs an astonishing geographic range into a single elongated territory. From the Himalayan tea gardens and cloud forests around Darjeeling in the north, the land runs down through the fertile plains of the Ganges — here called the Hooghly — to the Bay of Bengal and the vast mangrove delta of the Sundarbans in the south. Its capital, Kolkata, is widely regarded as the cultural and intellectual heart of India: the home of Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, of the filmmaker Satyajit Ray, and of a proud tradition of literature, art, theatre, music, football and the endless café conversation Bengalis call adda. Bengali is the state language and among the world's most widely spoken; rice, fish, jute and tea drive the rural economy; and the annual autumn festival of Durga Puja turns the whole of Kolkata into an open-air gallery of sculpture and light.
Overview
Kolkata is the reason most travellers come and the reason many fall for the state — a grand, weathered, intensely literary city of tram lines and colonnades where the conversation never stops and the street food is a discipline in itself. But West Bengal stretches far beyond it. In the north the Darjeeling hills climb into tea country beneath Kanchenjunga, the world's third-highest peak, reached by a narrow-gauge “toy train” that is itself a World Heritage Site; in the south the tiger-haunted waterways of the Sundarbans form the largest mangrove forest on earth. Between them lie Tagore's university town, terracotta temple villages and an old riverside capital on the Ganges. The cool, dry months from October to March are the time to see any of it.
Discover West Bengal
Kolkata rewards slow, curious wandering more than any checklist. The white-marble Victoria Memorial, set in landscaped gardens, is the city's signature landmark and now a fine museum of the region's history and art; nearby St Paul's Cathedral, the vast green Maidan where cricketers, goats and morning walkers share the grass, and the old racecourse give the centre its airy scale. The Indian Museum, founded in 1814, is the oldest and largest museum in the country, with celebrated archaeology and natural-history galleries. The commercial quarter around BBD Bagh keeps street after street of grand nineteenth-century façades, while College Street — the largest second-hand book market in the world — leads to the century-old Indian Coffee House, still full of students and argument. Ride what remains of Asia's oldest operating tram network, cross the iron Howrah Bridge at rush hour, and watch the light on the ghats along the Hooghly at dusk.
Ways to Experience This Destination
Kolkata's Victoria Memorial, the 1814 Indian Museum, the grand nineteenth-century streets of BBD Bagh and College Street's book market and Coffee House — a dense, walkable core of the city's history, art and intellectual life.
The UNESCO-listed spectacle of Durga Puja, the idol-makers of Kumortuli, Tagore's Shantiniketan and the living traditions of literature, film, music and adda that make Kolkata India's self-styled cultural capital.
Darjeeling and Kalimpong beneath Kanchenjunga — world-famous tea estates open for tastings, the UNESCO “toy train,” the sunrise over the peaks from Tiger Hill and hillside Buddhist monasteries.
Boat safaris through the world's largest mangrove forest in search of the Royal Bengal tiger, estuarine crocodiles and a wealth of birdlife — a UNESCO World Heritage delta reached by cruise from Godkhali.
Freshwater fish in mustard, the rice-and-fish everyday table, invented-here kathi rolls, and the sweets Bengal is proudest of — rosogolla, sandesh and mishti doi — eaten across Kolkata's markets, Park Street and neighbourhood shops.
The Kali temples of Dakshineswar and Kalighat, the harmonious Belur Math on the Hooghly, the terracotta temples of Bishnupur and the riverside palace-city of Murshidabad — pilgrimage and history along the Ganges.
Frequently asked questions
Cities in West Bengal
Visaja keeps this page's contact details and visa guidance under continuous review — still, requirements can change at short notice, so confirm the essentials with the mission or the official government portal before you travel.