About: At the time of Partition, Bengal was split into East and West Bengal. East Bengal became the eastern wing of Pakistan and later, with the disintegration of that country, Bangladesh. West Bengal became a state of India with Kolkata as its capital. The state is ling and narrow, running from the delta of the Ganges River system at the Bay of Bengal in the south to the heights of the Himalaya at Darjeeling in the north.
There is not a great deal of interest in the state apart from these two extremes Kolkata, with its bewildering maelstrom of noise, culture, confusion and squalor at one end and Darjeeling, serene and peaceful, at the other.
Outside these two centers the intrepid traveler will find a number of places to consider visiting, either south of Kolkata on the Bay of Bengal or north along the route to Darjeeling. Few foreign tourists visit the ruined mosques of Malda, the palaces of Murshidabad, the temples of Vishnupur of the Sunderbans Wildlife Sanctuary. If you do, the friendly Bengalis will make you feel all the more welcome for being an exception to the rule.