Travel to Bandel Church

Bandel Church

Recently few days back of this year I visited Bandel Church. This is situated at Hoogly district of West Bengal of India.  This is a Portuguese church. In the year of 1599 it was constructed.

Bandel is a most busy urban city of Hoogly district.  It is connected by roadways & Railways. It is under the Eastern Railways of India. This is situated at main line of Eastern Railways. It is 40 km distance from station. Nearly 1 hour and another 10 to 15 minutes take time to reach at Bandel.

I traveled by train, called “Bandel Local”. Very often train facility is there at Howrah station. I traveled on Sunday, usually this day is weekly holiday and there is no rush of passengers like week days.

Train started from Howrah station 9 am and reached at Bandel about 10.10 am. I took a rickshaw from the outside of Bandel station. The name of the rickshawla was Basanta. He is from other district of Bengal. He is little literate, but he couldn't find out any job at his home town and lastly he settled here with his family and his main source of income is rickshaw pulling. He charged me his fare rupees 40/- up to Bandel Church, I started bargain with him but he was not ready to reduce the price. There was another alternative and that is auto rickshaw, but the auto rickshaws’ drivers were taking maximum passengers out of their sitting capacity. Then Basanta told me that you couldn't travel with those auto rickshaws. Half an hour distance from Bandel station to Church by rickshaw.

Bandel is very important place in Hoogly district. Dunlop factory is at Shaganj which is near Bandel. Bandel Thermal power station is also situated here.  It was started it’s works in 1965, and then its power generating capacity was 82.5 MW. Now its power generating capacity is 530 MW. . This power generating unit is under the control of the West Bengal Power Development Corporation (WBPDCL). Bandel is based on many bakery industries. The most important thing is Bandel Bazar; this is the biggest & important market in the district. Vegetable, fruits, mainly mango, watermelon and are export to various countries from this market. There are so many branches of banks at door step distance. This is good news for tourists.

According to history, Sahensa Akbar was given permission to Portuguese to be settled at Hoogly district. Then this district was a famous port-city.  Mainly Portuguese were came to India for business through water way. So that this kind of area was suitable for them. They decided to make Bandel their business center and settled surrounding Bandel.

In the year 1599, the main church was built. This is one of the oldest churches in West Bengal. But it was burnt; after that the church & the Monastery were built in further in 1660 by the Portuguese and it was dedicated to Nossa Senhora do Rosario. He is also known as Nossa Senhora da Boa Viagem.