2006 World Trip - Calcutta (again)

Knowing that Calcutta is a living nightmare, we booked ourselves into a luxury hotel which cost us less than twenty pounds per night - and ensured before booking that we would be able to watch England’s first match on ESPN.

We were still ill and continued to feel sorry for ourselves, but began to eat one meal per day.

Feeling ever so slightly better, until we had to dash to the toilet (anyone else notice a recurring theme here?), we called a taxi to take us to Calcutta airport, whilst we watched England play their first match.  Relief was evident as we looked forward to leaving India behind, although the experiences we’d had there really were life-changing.

Just when we were saying goodbye to India, our taxi broke down in the middle of a busy main road in the dark.  Our driver kept turning the ignition key in hope of it restarting, and eventually got it going, only for it to break down a couple more times.  Eventually Mark and the driver pushed the car to the side of the road as we exchanged our ‘not-surprised-that-something-went-wrong-in-India’ look. 

Our driver shouted at another taxi to take us the rest of the way to the airport for half the fee, so we unloaded and reloaded our bags between taxis and set off once again for our gateway from India.  Although the driver tried his best to kill us with his racing driver manoeuvres, we eventually pulled up at the tiny Calcutta International only to find that their were a few armed guards on the door who weren’t letting anyone in whose name wasn’t on their list (kind of like an elite night club - except our names should have been on the list); so Mark had to leave Anna with the armed guards whilst he went and spoke nicely to the happy-to-help girls at the Singapore Airlines desk, who quickly walkie-talkied authorisation through so Mark was able to return to the guards with a piece of paper which seemed to satisfy the bouncer urge in them.  So we checked in and eventually boarded our lovely jet bound for clean Singapore

2006 World Trip - Calcutta

Upon waking in our hotel room on the first morning in India, we were slightly put out to find that Anna had been bitten by bed-bugs again.  They seem to be really attracted to Anna which caused little jealousy from Mark. 

We stepped out of our hot hotel room and immediately were engulfed by the local heat which was well into the 40’s.  The humidity only made it worse which on that day was recorded as being 65% 

Due to not having any drinking water in our hotel, we struggled along a half made pavement for about 15 minutes until we found one of a handful of cafes, which when we entered had the best air conditioning we’d ever experienced.  We immediately ordered a litre bottle of water each and promptly devoured this in a matter of minutes.  We also ordered food, but we were to hot to eat much of it. 

We spent the rest of the first day hopping between air conditioned shops, indoor markets and cafes.  Before somehow finding our way back to our hotel.

We had expecte beggars to be a constant bother, but in the first few days only the same handful approached us.

As our first few days slipped by we found it difficult to do anything constructive, and managed to complete a few mueseums before heading for the nearest cafe.

We were not in culture shock as we had expected, as we had prepared ourselves for calcutta.  But we did have to adjust ourselves from an african mentality to living in asia.

The noise along the streets is at first deafening, as cars honk constantly, people shout, rickshaw owners clang cowbells at anyone who looks vaguely interested in hiring one (their way of attracting business), and shop owners try and attract white people inside.

After a while the noise mearly blends into the background and you manage to cancel it out.  Although when crossing roads you have to be constantly vigalent as the many yellow taxis, speeding cars or crazy rickshaws take no prisoners.

After a few days we asked our hotel manager if he had any air conditioned rooms free, sadly he didn’t, but on our last night we got lucky and were ushered into a lovely cool room.  Which made a difference from our rickety old fan which only kept us midly cool, but didn’t prevent the heat from reaching us.

Tonight we’re heading off to Darjeeling (where they grow the famous tea), and away from this chaotic city.

We’re catching an overnight train from Calcutta, and then hiring a jeep (apparently) for the last 2 hours. 

At the moment we’re only thinking of staying for 1 month, as we found out this morning that there’s a heatwave over India at the moment, and it’s only going to get hotter.

It may appear we’re obsessed with the weather, but when it’s this hot there’s little else you can think about.

We plan to spend a week in Darjeeling, before heading to Agra (home of Disney’s Aladdin and the Taj Mahal), before going north to the hill station of Missourie, before heading back to Calcutta to fly out to Singapore and then Australia.

Darjeeling and Missourie are both near to the himalayas, and as such are much cooler than anywhere else in India.  We plan to do some hiking in the foothills, as well as some white-water rafting and anything else which catches our fancy.