(28th June, 2010)

This day, all of us managed to wake up pretty early and were pretty quick to reach the beach in the morning. We had this desire to have a tea & breakfast at the small jhupri tea-shop at the beach. The morning was amazing, a colourful sky with different patterns on the cloud, and a receded sea which seemed tired after the high tide.

We took lots of pictures of the beach and then also went for an excursion into the woodlands beside the beach where we again acted at our craziest best.

Something fishy, Junput:

After breakfast, we set out for Junput which was approximately around 35kms from Sankarpur and 8kms from Contai Town. The ride from Contai to Junput was through a crowded road that went through markets and jams. For a moment it seemed a wrong decision to come to Junput, but after a while we suddenly went off-road. Junput is a place where the research for Shutki (dried fish) is conducted on large scale. The environment was very smelly and the place was more of a village than a beach resort. After confirming from local people we continued towards the Junput Resort, and after every kilometre the roads seemed to get more and more severe, and finally we rode to the resort gates through a patch of road where it seemed cyclists were regular, but nothing else.

The Junput Resort is the only accommodation in Junput, and neither did we have bookings. We had to pay for this mistake as we found that the resort was kept closed due to no tourists in this season. We were forwarded to another resort at Gopalpur, 4kms from Junput, but once we reached there we found the place too unfit to stay. So we decided to hang around at the Gopalpur beach and then come back to Contai and take a room there.

Mandarmani & dream waves:

After refreshing at the hotel in Contai and having a very fulfilling lunch, we then geared up for the mostly awaited Mandarmani. An approximately 20km ride, it was another sudden burst of enthusiasm that overtook us, and we surely understood why there were 23 obstacles and speed-breakers on the way to Mandarmani from Chaulkhola. The sight of a limitless orange beach with a smooth blending sea and sand, this is where we recorded “bikerz gone mad- part 2”.

We rode around the 13km motorable beach, we took loads of beach riding pictures, rode onto the water and finally, it was in Mandarmani that we finally splashed onto those dashing waves and had our Sea Bath.

We also had some Parshe and Bagda with daab er jol. Slept on the open beach care free till the evening and then returned back to Contai. Leaving mandarmani triggered the mild sadness in our hearts, as this was the last time we were seeing a beach on our trip.

The night finally went pretty un-eventful as our JHEL-baaz Arghya was seriously out of form with a very bad food poisoning. We too had an anxious night hoping he would recover soon for the return back home. We had ridden 111kms, which wasn’t ignorable.