Pelotome –
around Bangladesh on a bicycle.
“As there were no roads ahead, we boarded the steamer, and steamed down the placid Ganges, which our imagination had painted as abounding with crocodiles and dead bodies ; but, like most of the yarns one reads, and the stories told of India, we were doomed to disappointment.”
~ Round About the World on Bicycles – G.W. Burston & H.R. Stokes (1890).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
January 1889 – Published 1890.
Round About The World on Bicycles.
“The pleasure tour of G.W. Burston and H.R. Stokes, Melbourne Bicycle Club, Australia,” follows George Burston and Harry Stokes on their 56-inch high-wheel bicycle journey around the world, setting off from Melbourne, on 1st November 1888, arriving back in Australia on the 14th December 1889.
The brief Bangladesh section of their journey was chronicled in The Australasian. on 8th June, 1889.
Landing in Calcutta, they made their way north to what is now the border with Bangladesh at Bhagwangola, and Akhriganj, where they were ferried across the Padma River, presumably to Nirmal Char island.
Taking a steamer down the Ganges to Damukdia (now the capital of Bangladesh’s Khulnain region), they left their bikes at the station and caught the train north from Sara Ghat through modern day Bangladesh to Siliguri (on the Indian border), where they switched to the famous Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, impressively built eight years earlier, to Kurseong, Ghoom and Darjeeling,
From here they returned to Calcutta by train, picking up their bicycles along the way, and then “set out on the big ride across India.”
- by G.W. Burston and H.R. Stokes.
- Published by George Robertson and Company, Melbourne, Australia “for private circulation only”
ROUND ABOUT THE WORLD ON BICYCLES.
“At Damakdia we left our machines and proceeded by train to Siliguri, but the narrow gauge of 3 ft. 3 in. made the train rock too much to get any sleep.”
~ G.W. Burston & H.R. Stokes – Round About The World on Bicycles, 1890..