I wrote this couple of years back and shared on my Photography blog, resharing here today. This trip remains one of my most exciting trip, even more exciting than my Ladakh trip.

The Journey

It was the time when we went to my sister’s wedding reception in Samastipur, Roshra Road, Bihar. We traveled from our ancestral home in Jalpaiguri to Samastipur by an SUV and the journey was an experience, one of its kind. We started in the evening around 8 pm from Jalpaiguri. It’s a distance of about 400 kms and there are usually two routes to follow, the first and more common one is via Belacoba, Ambari, Bahadurganj, Forbesganj. If you look up Google Maps, this would be the suggested route. But we took the other route, the new highway which was being built via Islampur and Purnia.

The new highway crossing river Kosi and Kosi flood area was a splendid smooth road except for the diversions which were still under construction. The real tale in this journey is behind these diversions as we were about to find out in the most memorable way.

While going to Samastipur, we all simply fell asleep in the car and didn’t care much how we reached Samastipur early in the morning. But on our way back, we were cautioned by the locals not to travel in the night. They advised us to stay back and start in the morning, but we didn’t want to spend the night in Roshra. So we decided to take the night trip to Purnia risking a face off with dacoits, car jacking, naxalites and other kinds of nightly creatures people believe in.

We took the risk not because were were all super brave but because we didn’t quite believe in the scary stories. ‘People always love to tell these stories which have one part truth and three parts filmy imaginations’, we thought.

Little did we know.

Read more on my photography blog click here