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Howrah is a city in West Bengal, India, on the west bank of the Hooghly River opposite Kolkata, famous for the Howrah Bridge, India's oldest and busiest railway station, Belur Math and the Great Banyan in the Indian Botanic Garden. It is Kolkata's twin city and its gateway by rail and road.
Howrah grew in British times as an industrial town of jute mills and as the terminus of the East Indian Railway, whose first public train left in 1854. Four great bridges now cross the river here, from the 1931 Vivekananda Setu and the 1943 Howrah Bridge to the cable-stayed Vidyasagar Setu and the newer Nivedita Setu.
Upriver at Belur, Swami Vivekananda founded the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission in 1898, while the botanic garden at Shibpur dates from 1786. Winter brings migratory birds to Santragachi Lake, and further south the Rupnarayan River meets the Hooghly at Gadiara.
Rabindra Setu, better known as Howrah Bridge, is the steel cantilever bridge over the Hooghly linking Howrah with Kolkata, opened in 1943 and renamed after Tagore in 1965. Carrying about 100,000 vehicles and 150,000 people on foot a day, it is the busiest cantilever bridge in the world.
Vidyasagar Setu, the Second Hooghly Bridge, is an 823-metre cable-stayed bridge linking Howrah and Kolkata, opened in 1992 as the first and longest cable-stayed bridge in India at the time. It is named after the reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and stands beside Nabanna, the state secretariat.
Vivekananda Setu, also called Bally Bridge, is an 880-metre steel truss bridge completed in 1931 that links Bally in Howrah with Dakshineswar in Kolkata. It carries both road and rail across the Hooghly, and the famous Dakshineswar Kali Temple stands on the riverbank close to the bridge.
Nivedita Setu is a six-lane bridge over the Hooghly between Bally in Howrah and Dakshineswar, built 50 metres downstream of the old Vivekananda Setu and opened in 2007. Named after Sister Nivedita, its low pylons were designed so as not to dwarf the nearby Dakshineswar Kali Temple.
Belur Math is the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1898 on the west bank of the Hooghly at Belur in Howrah. Its main temple is famed for architecture that blends Hindu, Buddhist and Christian motifs as a symbol of the unity of all religions.
Howrah railway station, where the first public train ran on 15 August 1854, is the oldest surviving railway complex in India and its largest and busiest. Its 23 platforms handle about 600 passenger trains and more than a million passengers a day, right at the Howrah end of Howrah Bridge.
The Howrah Rail Museum, officially the Kolkata Rail Museum, opened in 2006 to tell the story of railways in eastern India. Its collection includes the first broad gauge electric locomotive built in India, a steam engine captured in 1971 and the oldest surviving railway shunter.
Andul Rajbari is a heritage palace at Andul in Howrah district, built by Raja Rajnarayan Bahadur between 1830 and 1834. The palace was a shooting location for the classic 1962 Hindi film Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, and today the Mitra family and a local girls' school share the old building.
The Indian Botanic Garden in Shibpur, Howrah, now named after Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, was founded in 1786 by Robert Kyd and covers 109 hectares. Managed by the Botanical Survey of India, it holds more than 12,000 plant specimens, and its most famous resident is the Great Banyan.
The Great Banyan in the Indian Botanic Garden, Howrah, is a banyan tree at least 250 years old that looks more like a forest than a single tree. Its decayed main trunk was removed in 1925, yet it keeps spreading on its aerial roots, and in 1989 Guinness named it the largest tree specimen.
Santragachi Lake, or Santragachi Jheel, is a large lake beside Santragachi railway station in Howrah that fills with migratory birds in winter, especially in December and January. Flocks of lesser whistling ducks arrive each year, and bird numbers have grown as birds avoid other city lakes.
Gadiara is a riverside village in Howrah district, about 100 km from Kolkata, where the Rupnarayan River meets the Hooghly. A popular picnic and day-trip spot, it has a lighthouse and the remains of Fort Mornington, built under Lord Clive and badly damaged by floods in 1942.
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