Prinsep's Ghat Monument in Kolkata- Day 2

We saw the Hooghly Bridge from the Prinsep Ghat. The monument constructed in 1840 in the honour of the East India Company employee James Prinsep was just amazing. James Prinsep was widely respected for deciphering the Brahmi rock edicts of ruler Ashoka. Seeing this memorial with signature white columns that make up most of the monument and the bridge in the background was a visual treat in itself. In its initial years, all the royal British entourages used the Princep Ghat jetty for embarkation and disembarkation. Before the guard came and warned us not to click any pictures, we had clicked a few :) Had he allowed us to click, we would have loved to the monument and get our pics also clicked inside it. 

Prinsep's Monument

Hooghly Bridge and Prinsep's Monument

Umer is lucky, he has a pic in front of the monument!

Apart from bathing and conducting ceremonies, the Princep Ghat has a charm of its own and deities and idols of Hindu gods and goddesses are also immersed there.

It was a marvelous place and we spent more than an hour seeing the monument, bridge, watching people taking bath and men swimming in the river and observing how the life passed on by gently.

Prinsep's Ghat

On the distant horizon, the magnificent Howrah Bridge and the awesome Hooghly Bridge made for a kaleidoscopic vignette.

 

We stood there and had a glimpse of a large stretch of the beautiful Hooghly river. I was mesmerized by the activities of boatmen who were plying there. Umer wanted to hop into a country-made boat available at the Ghat and go on a voyage along the meandering river, but we didn’t had that much time :( Yes, a boat ride along the Hooghly river would have been one of the most pleasant ways of exploring the subtle charms of Kolkata, but we missed it. And I have to accept that the river definitely cast a certain spell that seduced us, as it might have seduced many others who had come there!

Then we headed towards Howrah Bridge.