Where to Stay in Bānkura, West Bengal

What is Bānkura known for?

Terracotta is the town's signature. The Bankura horse, moulded from the red laterite clay of the Rarh country and adopted as the emblem of Indian handicrafts, is sold here in sizes from a hand's span upward, alongside temple panels carrying Ramayana and Mahabharata scenes. Sweets follow the clay.

Beliator claims the finest mecha sandesh, Chatna the better pera, and both reach Bānkura's shop counters. The town counts the painter Jamini Roy among its own, and Edward VII Memorial Hall fronts its municipal core.

What are the main landmarks in Bānkura?

Edward VII Memorial Hall is the town's one listed building. Temples carry the rest, most of them a short ride out. Ekteswar Shiva Temple, raised by the Rajas of Bishnupur in laterite and later patched with sandstone and brick, holds Charak Puja in the month of Choitro.

Sonatapal Sun Temple is brick and tall, ringed by mounds that local telling ascribes to Salibahan. Bahulara answers for the best of them. Siddheshwar Temple stands there on the Dwarkeswar River, a rekha deul of the Pala period cut with Ganesha, Parasanath, and Mahisasurmardini.

What is the history of Bānkura?

The name argues before the town does. The old Austric word ráŕhá means the land of red soil, and Nilkantha, a commentator on the Mahabharata, treated suhma-bhūmi and Rarh as one and the same country. Santali offers rival roots.

In that language lar is thread, rarh is tune, and larh is snake, which is why the strength of Manasa Puja here has been read as a clue rather than a coincidence. For Bānkura itself the readings split again: Dharmathakur, one of the district's most influential gods, is addressed as Bankura Roy, while the linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterjee traced the name to banka, meaning zig-zag, and its corruption banku. Gastrel wrote the region down as Bancoonda in 1863.

A dynastic story runs alongside the etymology. Bir Hambir, forty-ninth king of the Malla dynasty, split his kingdom into twenty-two tarafs and gave one to each son; Taraf Jaybelia fell to Bir Bankura, who built a town there that took his name. Malla rule left more than a name.

The Rajas of Bishnupur raised the temples that still stand around the town, and the terracotta trade that supplies the Bankura horse grew out of the same clay and the same workshops. Administration came later and stuck. Bānkura became a municipality and the headquarters of Bankura district within the Bardhaman Division, and a woman police station opened for the whole of Bankura Sadar subdivision in 2014.

Where is Bānkura?

Bānkura stands on the northern bank of the Dwarkeswar River, in the Rarh belt of West Bengal that the Bardhaman Division administers. Laterite decides the ground. West of the town the Bankura Uplands roll in ridges and low hills stepping down from the Chota Nagpur Plateau, scrub jungle and sal wood over hard red beds, while the land northeast flattens into the Bankura-Bishnupur Rarh Plains.

The Damodar River runs along the district's northern edge, with Purulia to the west and Paschim Medinipur to the south.

What is the climate of Bānkura?

The monsoon does the dividing here. Rain arrives over the Rarh country between June and September and delivers nearly the whole year's fall in those four months, leaving the rest of the calendar dry. November to February counts as the cool season, and it is warm by most measures; March to October runs from hot to punishing.

Records bear that out. The hottest reading ever taken at Bānkura came on 8 May 1977, and the coldest on 9 January 2013. Köppen files the town under tropical savanna.

How do you get to Bānkura?

Bankura Junction sits in the town on the Adra-Kharagpur route of the South Eastern Railways, and it is where the Bankura Damodar Railway begins its run to Masagram and the Barddhaman-Howrah Chord. Expresses call all day. The Purulia-Howrah Express, the Aranyak Express, and the Ernakulam-Patna Express are among them.

State and private buses reach Kolkata, Siliguri, Ranchi, and Tatanagar from the SBSTC Bus Stand and Garage, while National Highway 14 and State Highway 9 carry the road traffic through. Kazi Nazrul Islam Airport at Durgapur is nearest by air.