Goodness gracious me!
Trip Start
Sep 19, 2002
1
113
129
Trip End
Sep 22, 2003
Calcutta (Kolkata),
India
Saturday, July 26, 2003
All we can say is Mother Teresa definitely had her work cut out here! But lets start at the beginning.....
25th July - We were 2 of only 3 westerners on the flight from Bangkok with the rest of the passengers mostly Indian males. One group got very stroppy even before the flight left and went on to get drunk and obnoxious on the flight. Guess where the ring leader sat? Next to us of course. Coming in over India we were shocked at the sheer amount of land covered in water and hoped we would be able to get around okay. We got a pre-paid taxi ticket and left the relative safety of the airport building for our first glimpse of India. It was like going back in time with all the Morris Minor style cars around. Calcutta (or Kolkata as it now called to distance India from the British rule)was our biggest culture shock yet! There were so many cars, people, cattle, dogs, busses etc in the road that it made Oxford St at Christmas look like a ghost town. All the taxis are Austin Embassadors that must date back to British times as they have one long seat in the front like a sofa. A small boy got in with our driver and we couldn't work out why but it later became clear that he was actually the left indicator and would wave people out of the way almost pointing to us in the back. Maybe they had right of way because of the tourists??
We opted to stay in Sudder Street which is Calcutta's equivalent of the Khao Sarn Road in Bangkok. Therefore we expected it to be obvious when we arrived - it was not. Our first attempt at getting digs was mentioned in the Lonely Planet as being cleaner than most - it was filthy and 500 rupees (here we go again - 74 rupees to the pound-ish). We tried a couple more, all around the 300r price tag - one was particularly noteworthy as it had leopard print bedding and smelt of urine which was all over the floor and bedding. We eventually settled on a clean-ish room with fan for 350r but you couldn't put the soap on any bathroom surface and we had to put our sleep sheets over our pillows.
This part of India, west Bengal, is 1.5 hours behind Thailand so we had a snack at dinner time to try and re-set our clocks. We found where the other backpackers were in a little cafe once we'd cleared the way of beggars and other hangers on. It was one of those have-a-go-at-anything places but we opted for Indian as we thought that safest and it wasn't too bad for our first go. Curiously there were some Indians in there eating pizza! After your meal they give you fennel seeds to chew to help with the garlic smell but this doesn't get rid of it from your sweat pores though! We seemed to have taken on a shocked-slapped in the face look with the whole culture shock and we wondered what would have happened if this had been our first stop in the whole trip!?
Back in the room we tried the shower. Pip got a steady trickle but this had dried up to a very slow dribble for mine and ran out completely half way through. We settled down with our books wondering what on earth we had let ourselves in for and started hearing squeaking and rustling. Eventually we found the little culprit, a small mouse behind the bed. Welcome to India!
26th July - Ah, breakfast and another adventure. Pip's toast was okay - he ordered it with butter and jam and got one slice with butter and one slice with jam. My yoghurt was sour as you like and wasn't helped by the sugar on top. They seem to really like sweet things here! For example the tea, or chai, is VERY strong with lots of milk and sugar so that it bears no relation to the tea drunk in Britain. We survived that and checked into the semi-clean place with the owner with one eye and set off to find the tourist office. Our aim was to book a city tour so that we could take in the major sites with ease. To cut a long story short, this took all morning, we went to three different offices, and didn't book anything. We started out on a rickshaw as Calcutta is one of the only places in the world where person-pulled rickshaws operate as a transport option rather than a tourist oddity. I had a minor crash in mine as we tried to overtake a bus and we all got soaked as it pee-ed with rain for hours. The rickshaws are pulled by skinny old men wearing nappy type garments but no shoes and we worried for our lives as we went over each bump because they feel very flimsy.
We got stuck in a lift and had to prise the doors open as no-one came to our assistance and we had to wade through ankle deep disgusting water just to get across the road. India is definitely going to take some getting used to! We got a bit lost but we did pass the post office which is built on the site of the old fort. This is where the Black Hole of Calcutta was - it was a small cell under the fort where a number of British people were held while a fight for independence raged outside. It was so hot and cramped in there that hardly anyone survived, hence the name. There you go you've always wondered about that haven't you?!
We've survived the first 24 hours of this rubbish tip of a place and are gradually getting used to things, or is it losing the will to live? Still, only 2 months to go!
