Pandaw to make India debut with Lower Ganges cruise

Pandaw will late this year deploy the Orient Pandaw on an expedition along the Lower Ganges, its first cruise in India.

From December 23 to the end of April 2019, the Orient Pandaw will sail weekly from Kolkata to Farraka and back on a seven-night itinerary. It will re-commence the itinerary in July 2019 through to April 2020.

Starting in Kolkata, the upstream itinerary will set sail at noon, passing the old Danish colony of Serampore to Barrackpore, with sights including the Semaphore Tower, Government House, the Temple of Fame and Flagstaff House.

Guests will on day two sail up to Chandernagore, a French possession until 1950, and visit the 18^th century church and Dupleix’s House of the former Governor-General of French India.

On the third day, the ship visits Kalna, where guests will be taken by rickshaws to see some of Bengal’s terracotta temples, as well as the Shiva temple with concentric rings made up of 108 lesser shrines, before continuing on to the new ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) temple in Mayapur.

After mooring near the brass-working village of Matiari, guests will start day four with a visit a charming riverside village, where they can interact with the locals and witness the process of beating out brass water pots and other vessels. Later, they will cruise on and visit the historic battlefield of Plassey.

Day five brings guests on a morning walk to the Khushbagh, a Mughal-style garden that encloses the tombs of Siraj-ud-Daulah – the last independent Nawab of Bengal – and his family.

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