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 - Delhi

Still feeling horrible we made it by train back to Delhi and our air-conditioned room in the +40’s heat.  Where we kept our fridge stocked with lovely cold mineral water, which was all we could manage.  Every three days since we were first sick we ate a couple of pieces of toast, which we wolfed down, and then raced to the toilets.  Mark lost 2 stone and began to look very ill - not that he ever looks like a picture of health. 

The problem being that anything that smelt of food made us dash to the toilet - and did so for weeks afterwards.  Being in India the air was filled with spices and exotic smells, so we struggled to get better and became very well aquainted with the bathroom walls.

Two days after arriving in Delhi we tried going to Subway (the first western food we’d seen since we landed in India), and each had a tiny portion.  Before dashing back to the hotel to…well I’m sure you get the idea by now.  This pattern continued all through this time in Delhi; we then got the overnight train back to Calcutta (we’d planned our train and plane trips so that we could see all the Australia and England football matches in the World Cup).

2006 World Trip - Dehra Dun & Mussorie

Dehra Dun and Mussourie 

The next day we headed north to Dehra Dun.  We had two options for reaching it, firstly to get back on the train and go South to Delhi, stay a night in Delhi then get back on a train and go North to Dehra Dun; or get on a bus for 5 hours.

The bus was the obvious choice, but even so we were quite apprehensive about travelling on one of these contraptions.  reason one, we couldn’t speak hindi, and no one on the buses could speak english - so we could have ended up back in calcutta.

reason two: they looked like they could fall apart if anyone broke wind, burped or sneezed.

So cutting our losses we sign-languaged our way onto the appropriate bus, and sat on the backseat with our backpacks.

Mark struck up a broken english conversation with an cricket fan next to him, where according to Mark they chatted about the merits of spin bowling against speed bowling, but he could be wrong.  That’s what Mark was talking about anyway.

To make sure we got off at Dehra Dun, Mark began a conversation with another chap with a briefcase and no shoes, who communicated that he too was going to Dehra Dun - pronounced Dehla doon - so we kept an eye on him, and we he got up to debark he nodded at us and we hurriedly hopped off before the doors shut.

It was then that our love affair with Lonely Planet took a turn for the worse, when one of their maps was so unbelievably wrong that they nearly had us lost in Dehra Dun with night approaching.  The India Lonely Planet continued to let us down time and time again as our time in India went by.  The local police were unsure where are hotel was, and so what should have been (according to the Lonely Planet) a short walk to our hotel, turned into a highly stressful and slightly worrying journey.

So it was with great delight that we arrived (in a taxi) at our hotel, which turned out to be a brand-new, marble-pillared, room-serviced, multiple-star hotel.  We promptly presented ourselves at reception sweaty and stressed, with our backpacks on and a strange smell coming from our shoes, where the hotel staff were “delighted” to receive us.

We slumped on our bed and promptly ordered room service and a litre of beer called ‘The Guv’nor’, which Mark swears was the nicest beer he’s ever had.

Because of the difference in currency (Pound vs Rupee), we arrived in India incredibly rich, and were staying in nice hotels for between 4 and 10 pounds per night.  So as long as we didn’t opt for top end hotels we could afford quite reasonable accommodation every night; and being India there weren’t Youth Hostels on every street corner, so hotels and guest houses were our only options.

Food Poisoning 

The next day we headed North to Mussourie, by way of an old bus crawling its way up winding Mountain roads.  The trip was so bumpy that children were being held out of the windows so that they could vomit at the cars behind us.  Anna hurriedly shut her window so we wouldn’t get any flecks of puke speeding back at us from the people further up the bus.

We then headed off towards our hotel, and not getting lost once (Lonely Planet slightly redeemed themselves, but not massively) we got shown to our penthouse suite (mark’s words for where they put backpackers so the rest of the guests can’t smell them).

It was slightly cooler in Mussourie as we were at a higher altitude, so we were able to explore more and we enjoyed the holiday atmosphere that Mussourie has at that time of year.  To celebrate being slightly less sweaty we decided to go for a meal and treat ourselves, so it was with much salivation that Mark ordered a chinese dish - roast lamb with rice, it was so tasty that Anna had to have some as well.  Despite it not looking much like Lamb we had a really nice meal and wandered leisurely back to our hotel.

The next morning Mark felt slightly unwell, but put it down to never really being in great health.  As we packed up our backpacks to head back to Dehra Dun Mark made frequent visits to the toilet, getting through quite a large roll of toilet paper in the process.

We worked out that it was 1 pound more expensive to get an air-conditioned taxi back to Dehra Dun, than it was to get a coach.  And with Mark not feeling super we decided that we’d do that.  On the winding road back down Mark’s body decided that it wanted to be sick, so our driver stopped by the side of the road in the rain.  Mark wasn’t sick, but it provided enormous amusement for passers by.

Arriving back at our previous hotel Mark made it to the toilet just in time.  Soon afterwards Anna began to feel slightly ill, and for the next 4 days we couldn’t leave our room but took it in turns to use the toilet and ask room service to bring up more toilet paper.  On the first day we each went to the loo thirty times, surely there’s a world record in there somewhere?

It was during this time that we realised that we hadn’t seen any sheep in India, but we had seen an abundance of stray dogs - something that a lot of backpackers had pointed out, and wondered aloud if locals ever cooked them; and thinking of it the lamb hadn’t tasted like lamb at all…

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.