Kankrajhore is a small tribal village in the extreme south west corner of West Bengal, now in Jhargram district, bordering Jharkhand. It has about 4/5 places for tourists like us to stay. Resorts, you may call them. Other than that it has nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a small tea shop. For the three days that we stayed there we didn't see any commercial transaction happening anywhere.
By our conventional standards it must be very poor. But I do not think the conventional standards or benchmarks for evaluating poverty and wealth should be used to judge the quality of life of the tribals here. The question is are they happy? We didn't stay there long enough to find answers to these deep questions. But the local population didn't seem very unhappy. Or it would have shown.
Kankrajhore, it must be mentioned, was in the grip of a very violent Maoist movement for decades. Except for security forces no one went there for a couple of generations. Naturally, it is quite detached from the rest of the civilisation which I think has done it some good. Kankrajhore still retains its traditional way of life. It is reflected in everything around and most particularly in its traditional home architecture. You will thankfully not see a single ugly concrete building in Kankrajhore. All the village houses are traditional tribal buildings.
Phone connectivity is non-existant except for Jio. Perhaps BSNL also works but no one uses it any more.
But what it has in abundance is natural rustic beauty and simple local tribal folks. It has silence. Something that is very rare in India these days. Kankrajhore is two kilometers away from Amlashole - a village that hit the headlines a few years ago for hunger deaths. Locals say it was a hyped up incdient. The deaths happened due to consumption of poisoned country liquor.
Coming back to our trip - four of us went there for a very short weekend trip in the first week of February 23. Rituparno Majumdar, Prabir Mukherjee and Suman Das. Ritu is a geologist from Jadavpur University and now the eastern India head of Indian Bureau of Mines. He is quite junior to me. Prabirda is a retired government servant in his mid-sixties. They live in the Dum Dum area. Sumon is a financial adviser who lives in Garia. I got to know two of them - Sumon and Ritu - at the BWS Majua camp. Prabir-da came through Ritu. Two more persons were to go but were last moment drop outs. Sukanta - Ritu's neighbour and Shankha of Asansol (I knew them from the Majua camp).
As things turned out I had to take my car out and do the driving duty. I gladly took the opportunity. I like to stay in control of my mobility. Sumon being a Garia-ite came to Rashbehari Morh and we proceeded towards Salt Lake Sector V to pick up Ritu from his office. We would pick up Prabirda from the airport area. Our target was to leave the city by 1-1.30 pm. I was a bit nervous about it because I do not like driving in the night. My speed suffers. And Kankrajhore would certainly take at least 6/7 hours.
Ultimately all worked out fine and we reached our destination - Buru Sadam - before eight, despite the delay in starting off and the Fastag card fiasco where I was told at the toll gate there was no cash in my card (it's a very complicated process to fill cash into the card with 30 vehicles lined up behind you). Our route was like this. Calcutta - Kharagpur - Lodhashuli - Jhargram - Daijuri - Binpur - Shilda - Belpahari - Kankrajhore. The road condition was good. Last year after the Pujas we went to Ajodhya hills by taking a little different route. We chose to go via Kanak Durga mandir which is a left turn just before Jhargram. That route goes through beautiful jungles. This route, straight through Jhargram, is less desolate.
The last bit from Belpahari to Kankrajhore - a distance of about 22 Km - was through a narrow road. On this road we stopped at a small hamlet called Bali Chuwa for tea. It was totally dark all around and only the shop had a small light but at least 10/15 locals. They gathered around us asking various curiosity questions like where we were coming from and where we would go. All of them were very obviously drunk and were reeking of country liquor.
There was a white cock there with one of its legs tied with a thin rope to the pillar. I asked if it was a fighter cock - cock fight with blades tied to their feet is a very popular sport among the tribals. The owner picked it up and said yes it was. There was some silent pride in his yes. Others were all praise for the cock saying it had won many fights. It was a winner. The owner quietly left the place with his cock in his lap as a mother holds her toddler. I was later told by someone else that here people are very protective about their prized possessions like a winner cock and they are also very superstitious. He possibly didn't want any jealous, evil eye to curse his cock and he thought I might cast some spell on the cock. Which is why he probably left.
Here I also met a youngish boy in his early twenties. He had a very nice athletic build and was wearing a jersey. He asked us where we were from. He said, "Oh Calcutta. I had just been there yesterday." I said for what? You went to play in some tournament? He said no I had an interview near EZCC. Now I got a bit curious. I said where did you have the interview? He said TCS. This was a jaw dropping moment for me. You have no idea how incongruous it sounded in that small tea shop in the middle of that darkness - both literally and figuratively. The boy soon disappeared somewhere behind the tea stall.
I wished him well mentally and after finihsing the extremely sweet tea we left Bali Chuwa. Our next stop was at Udul Chuwa. Another little hamlet. Here we saw a small sweet meat shop. We stopped to check out what they had. Two ladies were frying fresh goja. We had two each, fresh off the cauldron. It is perhaps the most delicious goja I have ever had. They didn't have rosogolla, as milk is in short supply they said. But someone showed us another shop which apparently seemed locally famous for rosogollas. We went there of course. The rosogolla turned out to be not that great. It tasted more like a soft danadar.
Udul Chuwa had a small primary health center and these shops. Nothing else. We continued our drive through the pich dark road. A few motorcycles passed us from the other side and perhaps the odd car or two. There was nothing else.
Buru Sadam is a small property being run by a young man from Jhargram called Kaushik Singha Biswas (8918952236). He studied in Ramkrishna Mission and is very pleasant to talk to. His hotel/resort/homestay is quite new, having started during Durga Puja of '22. It has two cottages with sleeping arrangements for four in each room. There are three permanent canvas tents as well that are slightly cheaper. The system of leaving open space for guests to put up their own tents, as is very common in the west, has still not caught on in India.
Being new, the property is yet to have its own wooded areas or any major greenery. Kaushik has planted some trees. Hopefully in another few years it will not look so barren as it does now. The land used to be a stone quarry in the past. Bringing up a garden here will not be easy for him though. We advised him to try with local trees like saal and segun. I think he could do with some specialist advice on what to plant and how to take care of them. He is trying with Australian trees that can seriously jeopardise his water table underneath. I hope he can work it out for himself. He is a first generation hotelier and we must encourage such entrepreneurs.
He seems like a bit of a reluctant entrepreneur. He doesn't have whatsapp or facebook and is generally absent on social media except for an instagram account. I don't really know how good that is for his business in today's world. But he was extremely coopoerative over phone when I called to understand the motor route to his property.
The cottages are built in the traditional local style and are quite tastefully done. They have decent, clean bathrooms with geysers. There is a dining room with spartan arrangements. There is ample space for parking. And it is just ootside the main village. As you come from Belpahari, it comes on your left hand side before the village.
Birding in Kankrajhore
We had gone to Kankrajhore with the specific objective of birding. We wanted to see a certain owl, to be more precise. The Brown Wood Owl. It's not a very common owl. It's rather rare actually. In fact scores of birders from all over West Bengal and perhaps outside have come to Kankrajhore to see it. The owl can be seen in a particular wooded area there around dusk. When we arrived it was well past dusk but in our enthusiasm we went ahead to check out the place even late in the evening. It's about two kilometers from Buru Sadam, near a Shiva temple inside the forest. There is an eerie feeling when you reach the old temple in the middle of the jungle. The owl was calling from a tree nearby but we couldn't see it. After more than an hour of desperate effort to see the single owl we gave up hope of seeing it came back walking.
An almost full moon in a clear sky showed us the way. We had to cross a small rivulet of sorts on the way to the temple. The walk in itself was very pleasant and made our appetite strong. We gorged on the very homely and well cooked food with country chicken (as opposed to the broiler chicken we are used to) and daal and some tarkari. All this was served with a lot of homely care.
There was a general helper whom Kaushik was calling Khuro (uncle). There was a male cook and a female maid to wash the plates and utensils. They were all very polite in the typical tribal tradition that makes them so loveable.
Incidentally, we were the only guests at the property which made our stay all the more pleasant.
Next morning after a hearty and simple breakfast we went straight to the temple area. In fact that's the only place for birding in Kankrajhore. We saw a couple of Malabar Pied Hornbills, grey hornbills and a jungle owlet. Many Alexandrine parakeets were flying around. They are all very vocal, as usual. This is the time of the year when they pair up. Of course there were rose ringed parakeets also and other usual suspects like red vented and whiskered bulbuls.
There is a narrow and winding jungle path that leads upto a river. I think it is the same river that we were crossing from another side while coming to the temple.
