Motihari India
178
Cruises availables
At departure or passage at this port
Scenic Cruises (74 Cruises)
Scenic Aura
74 Cruises
Uniworld Boutique River Cruise (104 Cruises)
Ganges Voyager II
104 Cruises
| 19 September | 12 days | One-way from New Delhi to Kolkata | |
| 28 September | 12 days | One-way from New Delhi to Kolkata |
| 7 February | 13 days | One-way from New Delhi to Kolkata | |
| 17 February | 13 days | One-way from New Delhi to Kolkata | |
| 24 February | 13 days | One-way from New Delhi to Kolkata |
| 3 March | 13 days | One-way from New Delhi to Kolkata | |
| 10 March | 13 days | One-way from New Delhi to Kolkata | |
| 20 March | 13 days | One-way from New Delhi to Kolkata |
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Motihari has no coast: this town in Bihar, in the heart of the Gangetic plain, is reached by road. Travellers who stop here come for two memories that intersect unexpectedly, not for a waterfront.
For two names. George Orwell was born here, and Gandhi launched his first great campaign here. Few towns this size can say as much, and the two sites are ten minutes apart.
Yes. Eric Blair was born here in 1903, the son of a British official in the opium department; the world would know him by his pen name. The modest colonial quarters of his birth, long left derelict, have been restored and turned into a museum.
The whitewashed bungalow, the warehouse beside it, and panels tracing the improbable link between this Bihari town and the author of 1984. Western visitors are met with warm curiosity: many residents are proud of the famous son that outsiders come this far to find.
The 1917 movement in which the district's peasants, forced to grow indigo for British planters, found a voice in Gandhi. It was here that the Mahatma first tested the non-violent resistance that would change the century.
Photographs, documents and objects from the Champaran Satyagraha, ten minutes' drive from the Orwell museum. A commemorative pillar designed by the painter Nandalal Bose marks the site, and the nearby Satyagraha park continues the memorial.
The stretch of water that gives the town its name — jheel means lake — spreading through the centre. Residents come to walk here in the cool of the evening, water birds stop over, and remnants of Indo-Mughal architecture survive near the shore.
On the lakeshore, which offers the best vantage point: tea sellers, uniformed schoolchildren, overloaded rickshaws. Nothing is staged for visitors, and that is precisely its charm.
A brick stupa 52 kilometres from town, often described as the tallest in the world, with very ancient origins. Still little visited, it stands on the route linking Bihar to the great Buddhist sites. You walk around the monument on a dirt path, often alone with the goats and the wind.
Allow a good half day there and back from Motihari. It is an outing for itineraries with time to spare; otherwise concentrate on the Orwell and Gandhi museums and the lake.
