Begusarai
— — refinery smoke, river haze, and the largest oxbow lake in Asia.
Not only on a wall.
“A district town in Bihar on the north bank of the Ganges, about 126 kilometres east of Patna. The Barauni oil refinery has shaped Begusarai's modern identity since 1964, but the older country to the north holds Kanwar Lake, the largest freshwater oxbow lake in Asia and a Ramsar site since 2020. The poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar was born here in 1908. The plain runs flat in every direction; the river haze rarely lifts before mid-morning.
Begusarai, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Begusarai sits on the north bank of the Ganges in central Bihar, about 126 kilometres east of Patna, with a population of roughly 250,000 in the city itself and a much larger district around it. The town's modern shape is set by the Barauni Refinery, commissioned by Indian Oil in 1964, and by the railway and road junctions that grew around it. It is the birthplace of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, the Hindi poet (1908-1974) whose statue stands in the centre of town and who is held as one of the major voices of post-independence India.
Two bodies of water define the landscape around Begusarai. The Ganges runs along the southern edge of the district, low and slow through the dry months, swelling in the monsoon. Twenty kilometres north of the town lies Kanwar Lake, locally Kabar Tal, the largest freshwater oxbow lake in Asia at roughly 6,300 hectares at high water. The lake was formed when a meander of the Burhi Gandak river was cut off, and was designated a Ramsar wetland of international importance in 2020 for its waterbird populations.
Kanwar Lake's importance turns on its winter. Between November and February the wetland hosts tens of thousands of migratory waterbirds along the Central Asian Flyway, including bar-headed geese, northern pintails, and lesser whistling ducks; resident populations of egrets and storks fish the shallows through the rest of the year. The water level drops through the dry season, the lake contracts, and the surrounding wet paddy fields fill with stubble. By May the haze and the heat make the lake difficult to read at midday, and the birds have largely gone.