Maithon Dam Excursion

The maithon dam is specially designed for flood control and generates 60,000 kW of electric power. There is an underground power station in jharkhand state of india, the first of its kind in the whole of South East Asia. Flood in early 1940s in the Damodar river cutoff Calcutta off from the rest of the country. This even lead to formation of this dam in 1950s.

During my visit to my wife's home in asansol i thought of exploring this dam. Maithon dam is 20 km from asansol city and linked by main-road. We started our journey in afternoon and passed through national highway. Last few kilometer of journey was through forest and mountain.

 I was filming the whole journey when approached by security guard at the entrance of road which is built over the dam. He threatened me to confiscate my camera as photography is not allowed on the dam. I promise them not to film the dam and after some request they let me cross the dam. Once we cross the dam i could see many small shops mostly eateries. My wife told me that this is picnic spot for the city people.  We hired a wooden boat for a trip to dam reservoir after an easy bargain.

 It looks like beautiful calm lake. There are many small island covered with dense glass and tree inside the dam reservoir. After sometime we landed on a small island. I Was sad to see the people using this place as dustbin no one was bother to clean or take the garbage back after their picnic. Bottles, cup and plate was everywhere. We walked toward other side of island, which was much cleaner.  Island was covered with dense forest. Sunset form the island was very beautiful. There were also few migratory bird near the island.

While coming back to shore I was wondering why this beautiful place is not on tourist map. It could be best place to spend weekend from nearby city like Kolkata, ranchi and Jamshedpur. 

After reaching the shore we moved toward other side of the dam. It was January months and I guess the power generation was stopped as floodgate was closed.

There is also a beautiful garden nearby. We had evening snack and headed back to asansol via maithon village. We could still see the splendor sunse over the dam.