West Bengal

West Bengal is a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth most populous. It shares international borders with Bangladesh, Nepal,  Bhutan and with the Indian states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Sikkim, and Assam. The British adventurer Robert Clive had wrested the area from the hands of its Muslim ruler, Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula, at the 1757 Battle of Plassey. Till 1947, the state was part of the larger Bengal region that was split by the Partition into West Bengal and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh). West Bengal is land of Ganga’s avatar as the river Hooghly flows here into the world’s largest mangrove forests, the Sunderbans. Ancient Bengal was the site of several major Vedic kingdoms and large Indian empires.

West Bengal has three distinct types of landscape. In the west, the red soil gives its rich colour to the terracotta temples of Bishnupur. The Ganges Delta in lower Bengal has dense, tangled mangrove swamps where Royal Bengal tigers roam, while the charming, Raj-era hill stations of Darjeeling and Kalimpong are located in the foothills of the Himalayas in the northern part of the state. Main tourist attractions of West Bengal are Kolkata, Darjeeling, Sunderbans National Park, Shantiniketan, Murshidabad, Siliguri, Jaldhapara Wildlife Sanctuary, Kalimpong, Kursoeng and Lava & Lolegaon.