Howrah station in Kolkata reminds me of a dirty London Paddington, you could feel the Englishness as soon as stepping off the train. So this is it: the last stop in India. I'll spend a few days here, still travelling with Bryan, then he'll catch a flight back to the states while I head out to Vietnam. Out of the station we notice there's no tuk-tuk's, just classic Hindustan "Ambassador" taxi's. Agreeing a price and jumping in one seemed to annoy a policeman who repeatedly banged the roof with a stick and shouted as we zipped off. A couple of minutes later the cost of the journey came up in conversation (I forget why) with the driver deciding on a completely new inflated price for us to pay. We complain and in mid-traffic open the doors to exit - the driver hastily pulls over and we leave the taxi in the middle of a main road. Very VERY annoying. Turns out we'd jumped out of the taxi near to the entrance to the ferry, which could take us deliciously close to where we need to be, for the fraction of a cost of the taxi - bonus!
Although saving money in the taxi incident we splurged on a nice hotel called the Sapphire Suites, with an amazing shower to wash away the Indian colouring and fast wi-fi catch up with photo uploads. The shower was so good, with big drops of hot water and fragrant fresh soap! The dirt that came off is indescribable, leaving the water running brown to the drain. Drying myself on the pure white hotel towel seemed to take another dirt / tan layer from the skin. There's a link with dirt depth and tanning speed, I'm utterly convinced. I'd not really caught the sun on my arms for weeks, they were as brown as they could get, but after that shower they almost instantly burned. Bryan noticed the same effect. *Top tanning tip - wash regularly*
On a food mission we decide to hit a top rated Bengali restaurant east from the hotel. Thinking they would be quicker (and of course for the experience) we hopped on one of the old British city trams, dating back from 1902 - and they look like it. Trams are a great idea: move people around the city in your own lane, skimming past road traffic and having traffic light priority. But this is not quite how it works in India. Everyone and their dog can go into the tramway, whenever they like, meaning you don't go any faster that anything else on the road. I love old, quirky, pointless stuff like this though, and they're great to ride - after all, I'm not in a rush to go anywhere. At the Bengali restaurant there's a queue of locals and a security guard making sure no one jumps the queue. Inside there's three (maybe four) tables - that's it. Thinking we're going to queue for a while we start to walk off when we're called in. The restaurant is called Bhojohori Manna and has branches all over Kolkata. It gets its name from a famous Bengali song. We share a kind of taster menu with six or seven dishes, and they are all fabulous. I recommend!
After food we start a mission to find Bryan a new charger (of which he'd dropped the old one) for his laptop. We ended up in a swish, empty Dell dealership which, strangely, didn't have anything useful. That's a mere side-story for the moment though as on the TV in the Dell shop an Indian news channel were showing extremely inaccurate computer renderings of an under-sea earthquake off the coast of Indonesia, which had apparently just happened while we were at lunch. The shop-keepers said there's rumours of possible six meter waves hitting Kolkata. The walk back to the hotel was mostly talk of tsunami's and how the hell high is six meters exactly??
We tried some paan from a roadside stall. All through India you see red spit up walls and on floors - at first it you imagine it to be blood. Paan is a crushed areca nut, chewing tobacco and some paste rolled in a betel leaf. It tastes unlike anything I've ever tasted, not bad, just odd. It's a stimulant. Your mouth fills with red saliva and forces you to spit. I was brought up with "spitting is wrong" so spitting in the street every five minutes I just couldn't do! I had to take it out and dispose of it. Besides the spitting, having red teeth / no teeth is never a good look!
That evening we continue the charger mission with a trip around the market. A commission based market guide latches onto us asking what we're looking for. We tell him we need electronics and off we zip - through the underwear section, sculptures, incense, tables, hats, trousers, then finally electronics, where there's nothing remotely resembling a charger. The man deserts us, and we're pointed to the second floor, and a curious electronic repair man bent over a dim-lit table. He intensely looks at the broken charger - maybe it can be fixed. Twenty minutes later, a cup of chai and five separate tools he breaks into the sealed unit, frowning while moving his circuit testing gadget over the board. After another ten minutes poking about it's decided that the charger cannot be fixed. Ah well, worth a try, and interesting to see him at work, surrounded by a million tools and circuit boards. I can't imagine this is something I'd ever see again in England. We then go and get drunk in a rooftop bar.
Next day we're hazy, and up late, just in time for the breakfast in the super-clean and very empty hotel restaurant. I'm convinced we're the only guests. An over-attentive waiter brings us local papers with Tsunami news plastered all over the front and images of people evacuating buildings around Kolkata. Gladly the earthquake turned out to be of the horizontal kind, causing minimal water displacement.
Kolkata's cute. It has huge sweeping boulevards, tree lined roads and massive green areas. It feels very different to most other Indian cities. On the way to the Victoria memorial we walked past some antique shops with old gramophones, music shops with classic CD's and vinyl and bookshops selling everything from Orwell to Mills & Boon. We walked through the parks, packed with hundreds of people playing all manner of sports, mainly cricket. The memorial's impressive, complete with an awful statue of Victoria, slumped on the throne. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Victoria statue that I liked.
Our last evening and we checked out of the hotel and said our goodbyes. Bryan will soon be back in Philadelphia living the dreams of home cooked food. I had to wait for a few hours before I could even consider going to the airport so I headed back up to the rooftop cafe and had a couple of beers and some food. At 9pm I spoke to a taxi driver and agreed 350 rupees to the airport. He kept looking at me in the mirror, then at some traffic lights turned around and said 500 rupees. I said that we'd agreed on 350 and that was all I was going to pay, but he kept saying 500 (and kept driving). I kept shaking my head and saying 350, all the way to the airport, and he kept saying 500. On arrival I gave him 350 and he loudly said something in Bengali. I left the cab and entered the airport. What is it with taxi drivers here??
Although saving money in the taxi incident we splurged on a nice hotel called the Sapphire Suites, with an amazing shower to wash away the Indian colouring and fast wi-fi catch up with photo uploads. The shower was so good, with big drops of hot water and fragrant fresh soap! The dirt that came off is indescribable, leaving the water running brown to the drain. Drying myself on the pure white hotel towel seemed to take another dirt / tan layer from the skin. There's a link with dirt depth and tanning speed, I'm utterly convinced. I'd not really caught the sun on my arms for weeks, they were as brown as they could get, but after that shower they almost instantly burned. Bryan noticed the same effect. *Top tanning tip - wash regularly*
On a food mission we decide to hit a top rated Bengali restaurant east from the hotel. Thinking they would be quicker (and of course for the experience) we hopped on one of the old British city trams, dating back from 1902 - and they look like it. Trams are a great idea: move people around the city in your own lane, skimming past road traffic and having traffic light priority. But this is not quite how it works in India. Everyone and their dog can go into the tramway, whenever they like, meaning you don't go any faster that anything else on the road. I love old, quirky, pointless stuff like this though, and they're great to ride - after all, I'm not in a rush to go anywhere. At the Bengali restaurant there's a queue of locals and a security guard making sure no one jumps the queue. Inside there's three (maybe four) tables - that's it. Thinking we're going to queue for a while we start to walk off when we're called in. The restaurant is called Bhojohori Manna and has branches all over Kolkata. It gets its name from a famous Bengali song. We share a kind of taster menu with six or seven dishes, and they are all fabulous. I recommend!
 |
| some prawns |
We tried some paan from a roadside stall. All through India you see red spit up walls and on floors - at first it you imagine it to be blood. Paan is a crushed areca nut, chewing tobacco and some paste rolled in a betel leaf. It tastes unlike anything I've ever tasted, not bad, just odd. It's a stimulant. Your mouth fills with red saliva and forces you to spit. I was brought up with "spitting is wrong" so spitting in the street every five minutes I just couldn't do! I had to take it out and dispose of it. Besides the spitting, having red teeth / no teeth is never a good look!
That evening we continue the charger mission with a trip around the market. A commission based market guide latches onto us asking what we're looking for. We tell him we need electronics and off we zip - through the underwear section, sculptures, incense, tables, hats, trousers, then finally electronics, where there's nothing remotely resembling a charger. The man deserts us, and we're pointed to the second floor, and a curious electronic repair man bent over a dim-lit table. He intensely looks at the broken charger - maybe it can be fixed. Twenty minutes later, a cup of chai and five separate tools he breaks into the sealed unit, frowning while moving his circuit testing gadget over the board. After another ten minutes poking about it's decided that the charger cannot be fixed. Ah well, worth a try, and interesting to see him at work, surrounded by a million tools and circuit boards. I can't imagine this is something I'd ever see again in England. We then go and get drunk in a rooftop bar.
Next day we're hazy, and up late, just in time for the breakfast in the super-clean and very empty hotel restaurant. I'm convinced we're the only guests. An over-attentive waiter brings us local papers with Tsunami news plastered all over the front and images of people evacuating buildings around Kolkata. Gladly the earthquake turned out to be of the horizontal kind, causing minimal water displacement.
Kolkata's cute. It has huge sweeping boulevards, tree lined roads and massive green areas. It feels very different to most other Indian cities. On the way to the Victoria memorial we walked past some antique shops with old gramophones, music shops with classic CD's and vinyl and bookshops selling everything from Orwell to Mills & Boon. We walked through the parks, packed with hundreds of people playing all manner of sports, mainly cricket. The memorial's impressive, complete with an awful statue of Victoria, slumped on the throne. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Victoria statue that I liked.
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