Bliss Hotel Kolkata (Calcutta)

... Bali Island to Help Tourism’s Sundarban Jungle Camp. After spending three nights in our launch, we wanted a night on a real bed. We relaxed at the Camp. Night was again mystical and silent. Silence was broken by night birds and we heard a tiger growling somewhere. Sipping beer, sitting by the silently flowing river, hearing tiger growling, made me think that I was in a far corner of globe yet in truth, Kolkata was just 130km away.

Today was our last day and we ...

... transfers.

Hotels / Housboat in , Leh & Srinagar (twin sharing rooms with breakfast).

Group transportation by private vehicle non AC.

On trek; Delicious meals, horse portering, local staff, Spacious two men

Indian “A” shape tents, toilet tents, kitchen tent, dinning tents, stools &

table.

Our Service Excludes:

Travel or travel health insurance, India visa, flights, equipment rental,

Calcutta, West Bengal, India partha.desarkar

... compassion and cruelty, unimaginable beauty and pitiful ugliness, generosity and corruption, religion and fanaticism. Here in India these extremes are more exaggerated, more transparent than in other countries we have visited, molding India into the extraordinarily complex and unique country that it is. India requires change while at the same time part of me wishes that change never happens. Somehow ...

... for hours and hours... I am not sure there is enough chai in India to get me though that! We left around midnight after hearing only the first performer, and still almost had to sleep on the street when we got to the locked gates of our guesthouse - thank god for people who sleep in random places! Like the courtyard of the guesthouse! They let us in and all was well (this is normal, at many of the places we have stayed the staff sleep in the lobby on mats on the floor).

... a park) to see the biggest banyan tree in the world. It really is amazing to see, it doesn't grow upwards, or at least not only up, branches grow out horizontally from the trunk and then drop roots down to the ground, these solidify into new trunks which then support the horizontal branches and allow it to grow out further. Also, visited the Victoria monument, a large marble building bigger than the Taj Mahal but built for the British instead of a Mughal queen ...

From memory Kolkata was pretty damn hot last time we were here just over two years ago. We landed early morning and, yep, it was pretty damn hot. We shared a cab with a pommie guy and grabbed a hotel room near Sudder St, which was pretty damn hot. Fan on full, we had a few hours power nap before heading out into the heat. It was still bloody *******n hot. Our fave food spot was still there so we faved out with some fave channa masala ...

... point in Shimla. It's a very poplar thing to do, the two temples are junk, the "in thing" is to do the walk up the hill and battle the monkeys as the monkeys lie in wait; you rent a stick. So many monkeys at the top we saw one monkey frisk one of the men; monkey had his hand in the mans pocket. It's kind of stupid because they sell food to give to the monkeys, so they are actually training these monkeys to act this way. Terri was coming back to the room with ...

... and ended up joining her and her boyfriend downstairs to listen to what turned out to be a fantastic blues cover band. Had a tasty glass of sweet white wine, garlic naan and a savory corn flake chili dusted snack mix (only in India!) and danced and drank the night away. So anyway, after breakfast I wandered back to the hotel and then with one of the guys from the hotel, went off to see the zoo and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. At the zoo, finally ...

... him where we were and that we were going to get cabs back to the hotel. We managed to hail a couple of cabs and we all piled in... laughing our heads off -- what else could you do! hehe The others were dropped off at the right gate but we all eventually met up at the hotel where we all changed and ended up going straight out for dinner. Up to Park street we went to a restaurant called B-B-Q and it was ...

... wrote. I think there's another one up this way." We both thought it was time to go after spending a couple hours sending emails. We were getting hungry. She asked, "Do you want to have room service at my hotel? I've got air conditioning." "Ah, yeah. You have a/c?" "Yeah. This is my first day in India and I just wanted to have a nice place to stay. Tomorrow I'm going on a train to Mumbai. I was teaching English in Japan and I'm passing through India on my way back to Canada ...