Durgapur

Last night we stayed in Durgapur, a city on the Damodar river, a quite large river. Our hotel was called The Damodar Retreat. I would guess that it might have been built in the 30s - some details really reminded me of the Bastyr University building back home. We had room service dinner for the first time on this trip. We thought we were the only ones staying here, but we saw a cup of coffee being taken to another room this morning so we guessed there was one other person. We were thinking of “The Shining” last night for sure!

We skipped the pool because it didn’t appear to have any sort of circulation system working, though the water was clear…

Durgapur has the dirtiest air that we’ve experienced so far. Dusty and smoky. Despite the floor looking clean, when we walked barefoot in our room our feet got filthy. Durgapur is called “The steel capital of East India”, and heading out of town we saw black smoke coming out of stacks. And for the first time we saw cooling towers for nuclear plants! Three of them.Read more