Ghatal town

The hub for the cluster, and a place with more layers than its tired river-town surface lets on. Ghatal sits on the Shilabati river, which becomes the Rupnarayan further downstream after picking up the Dwarakeswar.
In the 17th and 18th centuries this was a serious commercial centre: the Dutch maintained a factory in the town for cotton, tussar silk and bell-metal goods, and three British Commercial Residents oversaw trade in the early Company period. The old Dutch factory building is still standing, unsignposted and easy to miss, now serving as the subdivisional court, a quiet rebuke to the East India Company's eventual destruction of the textile economy that built it. Ask a local to point it out; the structure repays attention.
Beyond that, Ghatal is mostly useful as a base, with decent hotels, ATMs, pharmacies, and a bus stand connecting to Khirpai, Chandrakona, Narajole and Birsingha. The Kali Temple at Natunbazar in pancharatna style on the Cossyae riverbank is worth twenty minutes if you have them.