Seasonal reporting
When Palash actually blooms in Western Bengal
পলাশ আসলে কখন ফোটে
The flowering window moves every year, and it moves differently in Bankura and on the Ajodhya plateau. We record dates instead of promising weekends.
Every year the same question arrives in late January: when should we come for the Palash? The honest answer is that the flowering window moves, that it moves differently in Bankura and in the Ajodhya belt, and that a week either side of your booking can be the difference between a red hillside and bare branches.
What we can do is record it. Each season our editors note the first observed flowering, the peak week and the end of colour at a small number of fixed points, and publish those dates with the year attached. Over a few seasons that becomes something better than a guess.
Until then, treat any site that promises you a precise Palash weekend months in advance with suspicion — including the automated itinerary generators. Book the trip for the landscape, the craft and the water. If the Palash is out, count it as the year being generous.
One request. Palash trees along roads are photographed hard every spring. Do not break branches for a foreground, and do not drive into fields for an angle. The colour belongs to the people who live under it.