Run away with the circus in Kolkata

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  Kolkata (Calcutta), India
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

9th January 2008
Hugh:
Just a quick note to let you know that we have arrived in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).

Everything went smoothly with the flight over here. Jet Airways were fantastic and we'd recommend them to anyone. Although we feel sorry for the cabin crew who had to deal with lots of very drunk India men (we're not sure how they managed to get so drunk for a 9:20am flight).

We're in our hotel and everything is fine. We're just getting our bearings for now so will write more later on. All I will say is that a taxi journey here is quite an experience!

Bye-bye for now

Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

!

UPDATE - 12th January 2008

Ros:
Calcutta is a bit like going back in time say...thirty or fourty years. Many of the younger men/teenagers wear slightly flared trousers, tank tops and gaudy shirts. The shops seem more often than not to have faded, dusty signs that are often hand-painted and nothing on sale seems very modern. And the taxis are....well....yellow Ambassadors. Which look a bit like an old Morris Minor, come without any visible modern safety additions or such nods to technology as say...a radio, have old-style seats that are low-backed and many-times re-upholstered with whatever they could get their hands on, the taxi-metre is often a clockwork iron thing that perches on the bonnet and the cars are built like tanks.

The latter is a fairly essential requirement for a Calcutta taxi as the traffic is little short of madness. I know that it is a long-standing joke that an Indian driving test requires one to drive in a straight line and pay a bribe, but really, to drive in Calcutta requires a completely different set of skills and knowledge than could be obtained from a highway code

Evening rush hour, Kolkata

. In fact, I think most people hone their driving skills via a computer console. Far from the feeling we had in Cambodia that drivers and tuk-tuks were blaring horns and hoping for the best, here they are fighting for every milimetre of the road and once won, there is no way anyone - not rickshaw, car, bus or oil tanker is taking it from them. Unfortunately, everyone drives the same way - much the same way as you would if you were on one of those arcade computer-driving games. There are no lanes to speak of - everyone jostles and maneovres in whichever way secures them a bigger proportion of the road. Most cars don't have wing-mirrors - they've either been smashed off, removed or folded in to protect them. So they swing out in front of some vehicles, accelerate to within a centimetre of others and attempt to force anything smaller than them off the road. The roads are often big enough for three or four cars on each side. Then add in a sprinkling of sari-clad pedestrians weaving in and out, a few hand-drawn rickshaws, bicycles, tuk-tuks, motorbikes, the occasional goat (no cows yet) and a taxi driver who generally has no idea where he's going so will yell out the window to ask other drivers whilst careering along and you begin to get the picture. It is quite hard to convey how terrifying it is.

One nice little touch that I should add is that we've managed to choose a hotel that is just on the other side of the worst road junction in Calcutta - Park Circus, where about five main roads and a few minor roads meet

Ros with Banyan tree ....

. This junction often makes the papers. And we have to somehow get across it twice a day.

A typical conversation inside the head of Ros during one of these journeys goes a little like this...
Ros: 'Ok, I can do this, it's fine....car built like a truck...travelling is an adventure, just chill out and go with it...'
(Taxi accellerates, cuts up three other cars and emergency stops for a bus that has just pulled out in front. Manages to stop with about a centimetre to spare. Driver sucks his teeth nochalently)
Ros: 'WAAAAAAH! (add expletives liberally here) 'Ok, concentrate on something, anything...hand bag...hmm...looking a bit grubby...maybe I should wash it again...'
(Taxi swerves out to the right from behind the bus, blaring horn behind informs us someone has just had to slam on the breaks. Taxi swerves out the the right again, slams his foot on the breaks for a second to avoid the motorcycle that squeaks through the gap before roaring ahead. Horns are blaring all around, although we can't tell if anyone is aiming them at us. Fumes pour in through the open window. Looking across the road is to look through a smoggy haze.)
Ros: 'Might need to put a couple more stitches in the bag's strap....looks like it could break again soon...(glances up, jumps so high head hits the ceiling

Crossing the road, Kolkata

. Add more expletives)...it's ok, you're ok, everything is ok...br-e-a-th' (coughs like a veteran smoker).
(Traffic lights ahead; taxi pulls to a halt and cuts the engine - as do all the other vehicles around. It gets strangely quiet - although you can hear the horns and engines from the other roads nearby. Hawkers begin to weave through the traffic, selling red blankets [you wave them out the window in an emergency to get people to give way] and paan [nasty chewy concoction everyone is hooked on here] Taxi driver buys some paan and spends rest of journey spitting periodically out of the window. Usually whilst trying to overtake, or some other time he should really be looking at the road).
Ros: (while it is all quiet, allows herself to look around at all life taking place along the roadside. Has quite a pleasant few minutes. Even takes a couple of photos. Car engines re-start). 'Uh-oh, here we go again...'
Repeat for about 30 minutes per trip, minimum. If I had a god to pray to, I'd be becoming extremely devout.

Thank goodness we're here during the official road safety week in Calcutta.

Hugh:
How bizarre a post office can be:
Today we went to the post office to send some things back to the UK

Street typists .....

. Now, from what we've seen on our trip so far, post offices seem to be very different from country to country, so we were intrigued to see what an India post office would be like. We walked in and looked around, hoping to see a counter that would package up the parcel for us. A little man came up to us and told us the packaging service was outside. So we followed him out and handed him our things. He then cut a piece of muslin cloth and sewed it around them. While he was doing this we had to fill out a form with details of the parcel (contents, value, where it was going etc). Once he'd sewn up the parcel he lit a candle on the pavement and sealed the parcel with a wax seal (I'm not joking, he actually had dark wax stick that he melted, pushed onto the fabric and then embossed with a little metal stamp!) He then took the form from us, disappeared for a few minutes and returned with two copies of the form. Then he sewed all three copies of the form to the package (presumably some bureaucrat would remove the forms at various stages of the process). We couldn't help but think a simple jiffy bag would have been easier, but none seemed to be on sale. Or perhaps a counter inside the post office building for packing (like they have in Thailand, where they do wonders packing parcels for you, often involving bubble-wrap, a box and straps) would have been better than a man sitting on the street using nothing more than some muslin, some thread and a wax seal. But obviously this is the way it's always been done.

Packing service at Kolkata post office

What decade are we in again??

We are staying in Hotel Park Inn which is near the Park Circus road junction, a little bit away from the main central areas. The room is clean and the hotel staff are friendly and helpful, although sometimes a little too helpful! After our first night's sleep we were awoken by the telephone at 7:30am:

Reception: Good morning sir, are you ready for breakfast?
Hugh: No not yet, it's 7:30am, you've just woken us up.
Reception: You can have toast, omlette, tea .....
Hugh: I'm sorry, it's too early, we've just woken up. We'll call you when we're ready for breakfast.
Reception: OK sir, no problem.

2 minutes later we got a knock at the door. It was the hotel porter with some tea, wondering what we'd like for breakfast. Our breakfast then arrived half an hour later. We managed to persuade them that the next day we'd like it a bit later, but seem to only manage to push it back to 8.30am

Kolkata bus station

! No lie-in for us then!

What we've done in Kolkata:
To be honest, we were both a little bit scared about coming to India from safe, easy, comfortable Thailand. Especially coming straight into Kolkata, which is not exactly well known for it's laid-back atmosphere. But I have to say we think we've been doing rather well. We couldn't help but think that if we had come here first we would have freaked out completely, and quite possibly headed straight back home! The traffic, the noise, the taxis and the huge number of people are all pretty daunting. However, after two months of travelling I think we've learnt that yes, things may get a little stressful, things may go wrong from time to time and we may not understand what is going on around us half the time, but if we just try to take things as they come we'll get through. I think it's because of this that Kolkata has been fine.

On the first evening here we just went for a little wander around the city to get our bearings and have a look around. We were both a bit surprised that the poverty was not as bad as we were bracing ourselves for. That's not to say that there isn't any - far from it. And for those people living on the streets life must be very bleak indeed. Of course poverty like that is not much fun to see anywhere, and you feel for those people, but there just wasn't as much of it as we had expected.

On our first full day we headed to the Victoria Memorial. It looks a little bit like St Paul's Cathedral and is set in some lovely grounds. Inside there is artwork and displays describing the history of Kolkata. We also went to the bus station to find out about buses going to Baripada which is where we plan to head next. When I say 'bus station', that doesn't really describe what it is. It is more like a bus car park. There is no ticket office as such, the buses are run privately and therefore each company has their own little ticket booth. Of course you have to find the correct booth for your required destination - which is no mean feat! (that is rather an underestimation. Hugh isn't telling you that we had to go back the next day, as it got dark the first time and we weren't sure we would be able to dodge all the buses and taxis that come at you from everywhere! - Ros).

The next day we went to the botanical gardens which was a welcome relief from the mayhem of Kolkata city centre. The botanical gardens has one of the largest (if not the largest) banyan trees in the world. We'll upload the picture when we can because it looks pretty amazing. I won't try to describe it. We then wandered around the old business district part of town. Which was generally falling down a bit and didn't seem to have had any work done since the British left, in spite of still being an important part of the city.

Today we went to the market. We like going to the markets in each town we visit. Normally we can pick up supplies and bits and pieces that we need, and anything else that looks nice. This market was a bit annoying though. There were quite a few shopkeepers hassling us - nothing nasty, it's just annoying to have someone following you round. Even more annoying though, is that this market seems to employ guides to help people find what they want. We had three of these people attach themselves to us while we were in the market. Each of them told us that they were guides and we didn't have to pay them (and they did almost look official), but we just wanted to wander round and see what was there. The guides kept asking us what we wanted, and saying that they'll show us to the right bit of the market. So we didn't really buy much more than a bottle of shampoo and some washing liquid before beating a hasty retreat to a coffee shop (Kolkata is slightly annoying in that it doesn't really do cafes and coffee shops, most people seem to prefer buying things from street stalls and eating/drinking whilst standing on the pavement. Which doesn't really qualify in my book as a relaxing way to escape from all the people hassling you. There are a few places along Park Street that we run to whenever things get a bit much. Found a marvellous art-deco place there this morning! - Ros).

Ros:
And I think that's us pretty up-to-date! Next we go in search of a pangolin. I saw a TV programme about them when we were in Thailand, so when I realised that they live in the national park near in North Orissa (not too far from Calcutta) I thought we'd go and look for one. (The TV programme was dubbed into Thai, so I have no idea if they are really nice animals or not, but they look cute). The park also has tigers and a lot of other things. We're thinking that seeing a pangolin might be more likely than seeing a tiger though. Not sure if we'll have internet access in Baripada (where we're staying to visit the park) so it might be a few days before we can update again....don't worry...chances of us having been eaten by a tiger are really really small.... ;)(and the chances of us having been eaten by a pangolin are even smaller! - Hugh)

Oh, and we usually write a section about food in our blog - but as this update is getting stupidly long I shall just say that this is India....vegetarians do rather well here :) (I even found a really good toasted egg and mustard sandwich today! ;) )

We also haven't written about all the random people who keep talking to us...we shall have to save that for next time...

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