There is little mention of Muzaffarpur in Twain's book but he did, apparently, make notes on it. Ian Strathcarron does go into quite a bit of detail on this location.
TO SAY THAT Muzaffarpur is the back of beyond is to give beyond slightly more recognition than it deserves. It’s not at all certain why Mark Twain chose to lecture here at all, apart from the fact that Smythe must have rounded up a good fee from the local planters. A lonely old life it must have been for them stuck out here too.
Twain’s twenty-seven hours journey here was circuitous and inconvenient and it meant splitting the family up and meeting en route westwards two days later. Not much has changed; the 15609 Avadh Assam Express is not one of the more glamorous routes that Indian Railways ply, and the rickety old train clangs along in its own time, fours hours later than the fifteen hours promised.
Muzaffarpur, in the state of Bihar, was as much of a backwater then as now but at least then there were far fewer people with whom to share the experience—and an empty backwater is far less trying than a full one. Now it is as crowded as anywhere else, possibly more so as the farmland around was famously fickle, suffering from the scandalously hot mid-plain summer and then not knowing how much damage the floods would bring. The plainsfolk flocked to the towns, making at least some sort of self-generated economy—and thus improvement over their poor benighted life chances in the Bihar badlands.
Twain arrived at Muzaffarpur Junction at midday and stayed at a bungalow belonging to a an indigo planter called Mr. Hall, a member of the Muzaffarpur Club founded eleven years earlier. Twain slept all afternoon, changed into his tuxedo and was entertained to a private dinner for twelve in the Muzaffarpur Club. He then gave an At Home there from 9.30 to 11 p.m. Later, no doubt after a couple of convivial pegs at the bar, he and Smythe would have been pulled by a rickshaw-wallah to the station for the 1 a.m. connection to meet Livy and Clara at Dinapore on the Ganges and then all together onto Benares.
Today it is as if the Muzaffarpur Club froze the clocks at 11.30 p.m. on 20 February 1896 and have yet to thaw them out. If India in general is prone to avoiding change for change’s sake, Muzaffarpur turns the whole avoidance exercise into its raison d’être.
“In Mark Twain’s notebook he drew a sketch of Mr. Hall’s farm. He said it was on the Ganges but that must have been a mistake.”
“Yes, he would have meant the Bodhi Ganduk. That’s a tributary of the Ganges. Runs past Muzaffarpur about two kilometers from here.”
“And Hall had a steamer to cross it to reach here, apparently.”
“That’s quite likely,” says Sanjay. “The lake down there probably was a bulge in the river.
You can see it’s all silted up over that side.” “And from what I’ve read the planters were a pretty eccentric, hard living lot. Not badly rewarded either: Hall told Smythe that taking good years and bad they made a return of fifteen percent. Quite likely to have his own steamboat. And a still. What happened to them after Independence?”
“The planters? It was an English thing really, indigo. The Indians have lots of small farms. Family farms, not big spreads like the English had. Even if they stayed the politicians would have given their land away.
I can’t wait to get out of the depressing morass of dust-dirt and shed-shacks that calls itself Muzaffarpur. Neither can my companions. - Strathcarron