After my month in Calcutta, I had six days free in Bengal and was determined to spend some of that time staying in a Rajbari, an old mansion. There are countless options, ranging from ones that have been converted to generic hotels, which I didn’t want, and ones that remain family run and are more like homestays. I went with Amadpur Heritage Homestay, which I chose because it seemed very quaint and because it was perfectly located for combining with a trip to Shantiniketan by train (I don’t recall any better options for that, location wise).
It was also one of the least expensive options (I think I paid 4k a night not including food, though food was pretty inexpensive), though not cheap for what is a fairly basic accommodation, not done up a ton. I'm not complaining, though, it has character and I liked that I really felt I was traveling back in time. You don’t come here for the luxury, you come here for the atmosphere. It’s a great place to go and read some stories from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay or Satyajit Ray.
There is no wi-fi here but I got decent cell reception to get some work done.
There’s not a ton to do, but it was great to just experience the charms of the very sleepy village life. The house is next to a large lake which was nice for a late afternoon walk. There are cows and lots of cute goats. The village has some beautiful Bengali style terracotta temples. We hired a rickshaw (which was electric!) to take us on a village tour and saw some temples and a holy tree. I wouldn’t say any of it was especially memorable, but I had fun and would recommend it. I found it funny how the places the driver took us were the village’s most spiritually important sites, but we drove by a handful of things with great architecture, like a few terracotta temples and another mansion, and we had to ask the driver to stop so we could see them. He didn’t see them as important enough to show us, highlighting the spiritual over the material. That’s very Indian.
Similarly, the staff at the rajbari doesn’t advertise its features that well. One of the coolest parts of the rajbari was the courtyard where they hold Durga Puja celebrations. It remains locked and I didn’t know about it until the last day when I was reading an article and saw a picture of it, and then we asked them to open it for us.
The food was decent, if a bit hit and miss and not up to what I hoped for from a rajbari homestay (granted, the family that runs it stays in Kolkata and leaves the cooking to the staff, so it's not the sort of homestay where you're getting really refined home cooking). Some of it was very good, some was just okay and was too oily. I believe there were a handful of people among the staff who shared cooking responsibilities, so it may just have depended on who was cooking, but even the best stuff didn't compare to the better restaurants in the city or the homestays I ate at in Shantiniketan. The sweets here, though, were better than what you get in the city! They get them specially made from a nearby sweet shop. Ask the staff to give the rosogolla while it is still warm.
That’s about it. I thought about visiting the next town over, famous for its dessert shops, but I didn’t have the enthusiasm to go out of my way for it.
Overall I had a great time here and would recommend it, and I'd love to go back, though whether or not it's the right Rajbari stay for you just depends on what you're looking for.
Lastly, it's tough to recommend the wood apple chaat at the train station because it gave me food poisoning, but it was also among my favorite things I ate in 2022. Tough call. I say go for it.
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