Kolkata to Dhaka, as the crow — or the plane — flies, is barely 250 km, a distance covered in a little over 30 minutes. But a road journey usually took about 10 hours, sometimes a lot more, depending on the weather and the speed of immigration clearance.
Writer-poet Sayed Hasmat Jalal recalls his first road trip — one winter several years ago — when he boarded the bus at Kolkata at 7.30 in the morning and could reach Dhaka only by 2.30 the following morning. “We found dense fog as we neared the Padma River, as a result of which there was a long queue of buses waiting to board ferries for a ride across. Passengers didn’t have to alight, entire buses drove onto boats, each boat capable to holding about six buses at a time. And when there is fog, even the ride across the river takes much longer,” said the Kolkata-based Mr. Jalal.
With a 6.24-km road-cum-rail bridge now in place over the Padma — for which the construction began in 2014 and was inaugurated late last month — and with the ferry ride dispensed with, the distance between Dhaka and the Indian border has shrunk by nearly 100 km and the actual travel time shortened by at least four hours.
