Trip Plan : Chennai - Kolkata - Agartala - Kolkata - Chennai
Tripura is an offbeat location all together. Definitely not an exotic place to visit, however, lot of experiences with respect to culture and belonging to India as a land of Unity in Diversity. We (friends) have the wishlist to visit the lengths and breadths of India and Tripura obviously appeared in our list.
Detailed plan :
Day-1 : Agartala - Kamalasagar - Agartala
Day-2: Agartala - Kumarghat - Unakoti - Kailashahar - Pecharthal - Kumarghat - Agartala
Day-3 : Agartala - Udaipur - Matabari - Joliabari - Mahamuni - Pilak - Belonia - Nidaya - Sonamura - Melaghar
Day-4 : Melaghar - Boxanagar - Bishalgarh - Sephaijala - Agartala
Day-1
Agartala is 3,200+ kms from Chennai! We started by flight from Chennai, via Kolkata. Started around 4:40 AM from Chennai, landed in Kolkata around 7:15 AM. We boarded Agartala flight by 8:45 and landed in Agartala by 9:45.
Few facts about Tripura, to set expectations about the state.
1. Tripura is not in Himalayan range. Predominantly, the landscape of the state are ups and downs more like the plain regions of Kerala.
2. The whole state is very green, with lots of paddy cultivation, ponds, lakes, rubber and tea plantations, almost like Kerala.
3. Tripura was a princely state in Bangla region. This means they speak Bengali and Hindi. Food and culture is Bengali.
We had booked cab by online, and got a pretty good cab at airport by 10 AM. The plan was to visit Kamalasagar and local sight seeing of Agartala.
Kamalasagar is around 25 kms from Agartala and hosts a Kali temple by the border of Bangladesh. The Kali temple with the big pond is quite nice to see and seek blessings. The temple shall be crowded on special days. The temple is by the fenced border of Bangladesh. The border also hosts a Sunday market by Bangladeshis, where Indians can buy by the fence but cannot cross. Quite an interesting trade.
We had lunch at Hotel Nirmala. The restaurant served plain rice, dhal and aloo sabji for lunch for vegetarians. For non veg lovers, the whole place is a feast of dried fish, varieties of fishes, chicken, mutton and egg - fully loaded. The dhal was very bland and sort of watery as well. This remains the same everywhere for food all across Tripura; unless there is rare multi-cuisine restaurant.
We then visited Chaturdash Mandir. It was around lunch time and the temple was closed when our driver took us. This temple is known to hosts 14 deities in one location and the sanctum hosts these deities in the form of heads.
Next, the Haveli museum is located just next to the temple. The Haveli Museum is the old palace of Agartala. This is converted to museum and useful to know the history of princely state of Tripura. We learnt how the once bigger state became one of the smallest states now, along with the history of India-Pakistan-Bangladesh war. They also have lots of information on rivers, culture, fauna and flora of Tripura. Definitely, useful time spent. The entry fee is Rs.10 per person. We spent around 20-25 minutes in this museum.
We next visited Jagannath temple, which was also closed and yet to open in the evening. The temple has beautiful arch from outside. Obviously, without further wasting time, we went to Ujjayanta palace.
Ujjayanta palace is an important landmark in Agartala. This palace is now a museum and displays lots of collectibles and teaches history of Tripura. This takes around 1 hour to see and no photographs allowed. They are open from 10 am to 1:30 pm and again 2 pm to 4:30 pm. There is an entry fee of Rs.20 per person. No photography allowed inside. Photos are allowed around the palace.
The day was very humid and was draining our body. We decided to goto Hotel Room, refresh and spend time in the evening within the city. We had booked rooms in Hotel Sonar Tori based on review comments in TripAdvisor. The Hotel offers comfortable and clean rooms, quite spacious. The room service of food from their restaurant was absolutely fantastic - fresh food, well prepared, tasty and well served at room. They have a travel desk too, who helped us get a cab with excellent driver for the following days. Definitely, a pretty good stay in Agartala.
As we checked in the hotel by 15:45, the reception members told about flag ceremony by the Indo-Bangla border - just 2 kms from the hotel, by 16:30. We refreshed immediately and started to the border and reached the border by auto - Rs.50 for 3 of us. Indian guards were checking everyone for what reason we are there and allow us to witness the ceremony, like Wagah; not so intense and crowded but a proud-to-see event!
There was an army canteen selling hot-hot samosas, jalebi and tea. We had samosas and tea and got ready for the event. We were allowed to the seating area by 17:00 and the marching event to raise down the flag happened. Each one of us felt really proud to watch the event and applaud at the end. We were allowed to take photographs with the army after the event and we wished them thanks for taking care of the country.
We reached back the hotel rooms by 6:00 PM and relaxed for a while. Around 7:30 PM, we walked around for a popular food joint - Khunti Kardai. Looks like there are popular for fish and also served veg food. The veg food was no better than what I had in the afternoon - rice, watery dhal and oily potato sabji. This should be good for fish lovers.
Day-2
The plan was to visit Unakoti and any other adjoining places around. Unakoti is around 125 kms from Agartala. The roads are not so good in this direction, got to know that it would take 3-4 hours to cover the distance one way, and we decided to go by train. We had booked train tickets by 6:15 AM passenger to Dharmanagar. There are 2 approaches to Unakoti by train - from Dharmanagar or Kumarghat. From Kumarghat, Unakoti is 27 kms; from Dharmanagar, it is 41 kms. We also read on internet that, Kumarghat railway station is closeby to Unakoti; but vehicles shall be less; Dharmanagar is a bigger town and shall have more vehicles. We had booked our train ticket to Dharmanagar and return from Kumarghat. We took the risk of getting down in Kumarghat and hired a car - Maruti 800 for Rs.1500 for Unakoti. We asked the driver to take us to other places around Kailashahar and Kumarghat and he obliged for Rs.500 more. We made deal with Rs.1800 and started.
By train, all you can get on the train is water and Jal Muri. The train had started from Agartala with 1:15 hours delay owing to some accident with previous train. There is an express train (Kanchenjunga Express) that starts at 5:45; however, it does not stop at Kumarghat. We reached Kumarghat by 10 AM and had breakfast - roti and sabji at a local hotel. It was very cheap and was ok for breakfast.
We reached Unakoti by 11:45 AM. The roads are little on the hillside and curvy. There is no entry ticket for Unakoti. This Shaiva pilgrimage locality dates back to 7th - 9th centuries and hosts magnanimous rock-sculpted faces of Lord Shiva, Ganesh and much more. There are ~350 steps - up and down and little difficult for elder people. It took us around 1:30 hours to go through the complete place. Unakoti means 1 less then a crore in Bengali. Carry water and food; there are no shops anywhere until you return back to Kumarghat. The legends of Kallu Kumhar and his falling short of carving one crore images, in one night or the Lord Shiva cursing his companions who did not get up at the prescribed time enroute Mount Kailash and became stones, add to the beauty of the place. One first gets to see Lord Shiva faces and then down the steps on the left side of the ASI site, one can see 3 distinct images of Lord Ganesha. These big features remained us of Kailash temple at Ellora.
One does not get to see so many sculptures - one less than a crore; there are hardly 10-15 sculptures now. Most of them destroyed by nature and locals. This is definitely a place one of its kind to visit.
There were several small villages by the roads and they were predominantly mud or thatched houses. We reached Kailashahar. We stopped by a Lakshmi Narayan mandir, which was closed by the time we visited. We then went to India-Bangla border in Kailashahar. We went by the border and had we had passport, on either days, we could have stepped in Bangladesh; obtain a stamp on the passport and get back in India in no time. We were not aware that we would have so many intercepts with Bangla border and visa-on-arrival could be swift.
We also visited the Kali Bari temple at Kailashahar and had dharshan; though the doors were closed, still we would see the deity and seek blessings. There is a Ramkrishna mission temple also in Kailashahar. The timings are 5 AM - 12 PM and 4 PM to 9 PM. Its cut short by 30 minutes either side in winter.
We stopped for lunch by 14:45. Lunch - nothing different from the one we had the earlier day. We had the served food at Sefali Hotel and moved on with the places to see around. We had our return train at 16:40 and we had one last place to see before we started back.
We went to Pecharthal - Udayan Buddha Bihar. Pecharthal is on the highway that connects Tripura all the way down to Kanyakumari via Shillong - Guwahati. This temple is one of the older Buddha temples in the state; built in 1931. The idol was brought from Rangoon and the deity is not so big, but still said to weigh 700 kgs.
We returned back to Kumarghat railway station - bought local hill bananas and boarded the train on time. We reached back Agartala by 8 PM and went to the hotel. We had very good dinner - some from local hotel and some order from Hotel Sonar Tori. We were so tired and hit the bed hard. We booked a car for our next 2 days - to see South Tripura and adjoining areas.
When we booked the car, they suggested us to have breakfast in the hotel and then start. We had hot idlies with sambhar and chutney at Hotel Sonar Tori and started by 8:45 AM.
The plan was to cover distant places like Pilak, Mahamuni and then, if time permits, visit Udaipur and stay overnight at Melaghar - Neer Mahal. The driver suggested to complete temples of Udaipur in the morning and then go ahead with the rest as we can take different route and cover more places as per his plan. We accepted his plan because locals are the best guides at any point of time.
Udaipur is an important town in Tripura, located 55 kms from Agartala. Udaipur hosts a number of temples dating back to different periods and architectures. Udaipur, is famous for the Tripura Sundari Temple, one of the 51 Shakti Peets in India. First, we stopped by Jagannath Mandir of Udaipur. The old temple which now a ruin had an amazing architecture of stacked stones. There is a new temple built in front of the ruins. We offered our prayers and come out in few minutes.
Next, the driver took us to the Gunavati Group of Temples. Gunavati Group of Temples is located by the busy narrow lanes of Udaipur. This is a group of brick built temples, adjacent to each other - 3 of them. The temples were built by the queen in remembrance of Lord Vishnu. There is no information mentioned about this set of temples anywhere in the premises.
Next, we went to the Bhuvaneswari temple located on a small hillock. The Bhuvaveswari temple is also same like Gunavati group of temples, located on the hillock and a small palace by the side of it. The Bhuvaneswari temple is located on an elevated platform. The palace is called Raj Bari Palace. This palace is very dilapidated and hosts a board - work in progress. There is a big seating area built infront of the palace. It looks like the palace and the Bhuvaneswari Temple would have been built by King Gobinda Manikya.
Tripura Sundari Temple - this is one of the 51 Sakthi Peet temples. The temple is popularly known as Mata Bari locally. One has to climb about 30 steps to reach the main temple from parking area, The temple is built in typical Bengali style temples. The temple resembles in Kurma shape. The temple pond is called Kalyan sagar, is a big place hosting lots of big fishes and tortoises. Goat sacrifice is very common in this temple.
From here, we had 2 more places to visit before we make a you turn to stay within Tripura. We took the highway from there towards Sabroom. The NH was absolutely fantastic, very broad and well laid perfect highway roads. Our next point was Mahamuni Pagoda - Buddha temple located at Manu Bankul, South Tripura. The pagoda is built in terms of architecture like Myanmar and was visited by Dalai Lama. We spent around 10 minutes here and started to Pilak.
Pilak is around 19 kms from Mahamuni temple. Pilak is known for its Buddhist and Hindu architectural heritage dating back to the 8th - 9th centuries. It is located in Joliabari. These are remains of predominantly brick work - with marking of structures of Ramayana and Mahabharatha. The way the designs are made holds traces of Chola architecture as well. The place has sculptures of Hindu as well as Buddhist traces. The terracotta plaques resemble Lord Shiva as Avalokitesvara and Narshimha. We spent around 20 minutes here going around the place.
We had now started feeling exhausted because of the highly humid weather. We were hungry too and got to know it would take atleast 1 hour to get some decent food. Driver said we can visit couple of more places before reaching Neer Mahal. We stopped for lunch at Belonia. The same menu with little bit more taste and pappad. We got pappad based on driver's special mention.
Our driver (Deb) took us to next stop - Butterfly park in Trishna wildlife sanctuary. The butterfly park welcomed us with few beautiful butterflies and amazingly crores of colourful flowers. By the time we went, around 4 PM, the guard told us that it is mornings that the butterflies would be plenty and in evenings it would be very less. We got to see some good colourful butterflies.
Next, we stopped by Eden of Bisons. There was an entrance ticket of Rs.6 per person, Rs. 20 for camera and Rs.10 per person for vehicle ride. The battery operated vehicle ride took us by the tall grasses for 1 km and dropped us by a lake. We could not sight any bisons, however, beautiful nature and sunset by the lake was amazing. We spend around 15-20 minutes here.
We then started towards Neer Mahal via Belonia-Sonamura-Melaghar. Melaghar is 53 kms from Agartala. We reached there by 5:30 and the lake palace was light up with lights. It was already quite dark and by the time we got down from the car, the lights went off! We checked in Sagar Mahal Tourist Lodge - Tripura Tourism resort near to the boating jetty of Rudra Sagar lake. We had booked 4-beded non-AC room online for Rs.750, however, it was too too too sultry and we could not bear with it. We asked for exchange for AC room; but they refused even if were ready to pay the difference. Then, we again booked an AC room for Rs.1500 and gave the non-AC room for the driver.
We then went to the town of Melaghar for roaming around and tasted many local food - samosas, dal pakoda, non-veg chats and malai sweet. We were tired and hungry and enjoyed every bit of local food. We ordered dinner at Sagar Mahal - Rs.120 per plate - dall, 4 rotis and sabji. The food was quite ok with no compaints; though the food was not with as expected spice.
Day-4
We were planning to goto Debtamura hills - which would take the whole day - and we need to start by 6 AM and need to skip the Neer Mahal boat visit. However, 3 days of tiredness made us decide having a less tiresome day. The day was re-planned to visit Neer Mahal by boat ride. Neer Mahal is situated in the Rudra Sagar lake. One has to go by boat to reach this lake. This summer palace was built as a royal palace by King of Tripura Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Bahadur in the lake of Radra Sagar. Neer Mahal is the lake palace of Tripura. The boat ride gives very nice views and opportunistic for photos. Boat rides start by 8:30 AM and we were there by 8 AM. There was a small shop selling puri-sabji on a paper plate and we had the same for breakfast.
The bigger boat - Rs.30 per person, but shall take off only of 20 people gather. We were 3 and a small family was ready. We hired a private boat for Rs.600 and split Rs.300 each between us and the small family. It was a 15 minute ride to the Neer mahal and each moment we got closer, we got some beautiful view and photos. We spent around 40 minutes inside the palace - viewing the grandeur and superb views from inside and outside ! Dancing halls, bedrooms, rest rooms, boat jetty and what not ! Definitely, a great time to spend and view the richness of Neer Mahal.
We were back to the room by 10 AM. It was real hot and humid, and beat us tired. We were back to the room and relaxed for some time. Our plan was to visit 2 more places before we hit the Bye button to Tripura. One was Boxanagar and the other was Sepahijala.
Boxanagar is around 35 kms from Neer Mahal and 38 kms from Agartala. The excavated site is more of brick building pointing to Buddhist monasteries and stupas. The burnt brick structures at Boxanagar reflects the architecture and religious aspects of ancient Tripura towards Hinduism and Buddhism. The archaeological excavation is of squarish dimensions. One of the brick monastery is having a long corridor between rows pointing to a meditation hall or a gathering place and then a sacred chamber - may be main sanctum. The whole place has well paved ways around the brick structures, which could have been used for circumambulations. We spent around 20-25 minutes here.
Next, we went to Sepahijala Wildlife sanctuary. This is a zoo in a reserved forest area, around 30 kms from Agartala. First, we need to pay and get tickets to enter the reserved forest area - Rs.10 per person, Rs.32 for car, Rs.20 for camera and more options. Then, after a 3-4 kms drive, we reach the actual zoo and again we need to buy tickets to enter the zoo - Rs.12 per person, Rs.20 for camera and Rs.20 for car parking. The area is mostly moist deciduous forest and hosts animals such as the pig-tailed macaque, the spectacled monkey, the slow loris, leopard, lions, different cat family species, Himalayan mountain bears and much more. The zoo is open from 9 AM to 5 PM, except Fridays. We spent around 2 hours in the zoo.
Enroute to Agartala, we stopped in the outskirts and had lunch at Hotel Mandira on the highway. The food menu was same but, the place was much bigger, clean and hygenic. Food was ok here with respect to quality and taste. We relaxed spent time to have lunch followed by a very well made - sweet bed with almost 20 constituents.
The driver then took us to an emporium in Agartala for us to buy some souvenirs. Tripura is famous for bamboo based items and we did buy few. We also bought locally popular sweets at Giridhari Mistanna Bandar- very popular outlet in Agartala. We made parcels to take home and got dropped at the Agartala airport. We also visited Ven Bihar Buddha temple on the way to the airport. This is quite close to the airport and very serene to visit.
We felt were content for visiting a very lesser known state in India as much as we could in 4 days. We had a very good feel of culture, history, people, food, hospitality, borders and much more! Awaiting to visit one or two more NE states sooner ... :) !