West Bengal

Area: 87,853 square km
Capital: Calcutta
Main language: Bengali
Population: 80,221,171 (2004)

At the time of partition Bengal was split into East Bengal and West Bengal. East Bengal became the eastern wing of Pakistan and later, with the disintegration of that country, Bangladesh. West Bengal became a state of India with its largest city, Calcutta, as its capital. The state is long and narrow, running from the delta of the Ganges-river system at the Bay of Bengal in the south to the heights of the Himalayas at Darjeeling in the north. There is not a great deal of interest in the state apart from these two extremes — Calcutta, all noise, confusion and squalor, at one end and Darjeeling, serene and peaceful at the other. Nevertheless the intrepid traveller will find a number of places to consider visiting, either south of Calcutta on the Bay of Negal or north along the route to Darjeeling.