Bokaro is a pretty ordinary place, with the main exception being it’s large, nay huge(!), steel plant around which the city was built. Most of the city seems to be constructed in the 60s and 70s in parallel with the steel plant. It’s located in the province of Jharkhand, a province recently forcibly separated from northern Bihar. It proved to be a boon for Jharkhand which in the process also got rid of a corrupt chief minister and is now enjoying a much needed period of safety, order and improved business climate. In the region there is still a low-level Naxalite (maoist) insurgency, however I’m told that beyond the odd kidnapping and skirmishes in the eastern forests, things are generally safe. 

In the city people seem to be living in either 60s or 70s four-storey apartment blocks, in smaller villas/2 floor apartment houses, or in various degrees of more informal accommodations (ranging from shack by the road to mud-bricked buildings). There’s a cinema (which I’ve as of yet not had the chance to check out), a fun fair (open 13:30-20:30 in case you fancy a visit), several “exercise grounds” and a forlorn, but still quite beautiful city park – apparently (according to one of my local colleagues) the place for couples to meet as it lies just in between the boy’s and girl’s colleges – a fact I could quite easily verify given the amount of youngish couples in the lakeside restaurant (another forlorn place – with red curtains kept closed at all times). 

Unless you’re a big fan of 60s architecture or steel plants, it’s probably not the place to visit, but for the complete “travelogue” listing – there’s a daily train from Delhi (Rajdhani express) taking approximately 14 hours and a train from Kolkata (Shatabdi express) taking (5 hours). I believe there’s at least one local hotel and  more than a couple “hostels” (girls or boys). 

PS. A small side-note for the Swedes reading this, some of the pictures is quite reminiscent of that old Skatteverket advertisement “This is how it’ll be in Sweden if you don’t pay tax”… Well, most people don’t pay tax here so maybe Skatteverket is right…