Day 30 – 5th June 2009 – Calcutta : Planes, trains, and automobiles - 5th June 2009

Hi everyone, after the last entry that was supposed to be short and sweet, and ended up being two and a half pages, I assure you that this one really will be (I’ve just finished and sorry, it’s about 3 pages!!) Again very little has happened since the last entry. We’ve travelled half way across the country but it has been rather uneventful. I’m sitting in the living room area of the Fairlawn hotel in Calcutta (Kolkuta if you want to use the new non-colonial name!?!?). The hotel was recommended by my aunt (thanks auntie dearest!), and is one of the quirkiest little places I’ve ever been in. It is a British family run hotel that has been in the family for over 60 years. The lady who runs it we haven’t seen but her mother, who is in her 80’s gets up every morning for breakfast covered in far too much makeup and is followed by an entourage of servants. Every evening she sits on her own private balcony and entertains hotel guests with the same servants waiting at her beck and call. The entire families accumulated possessions, photographs, paintings, and artefacts cover every wall and fill cabinets to bursting point. The whole place is like a time warp, taking you back to colonial times when India was that little bit more British.

Anyway, the hotels pretty nice, although I haven’t bumped into Michael Palin as auntie did!!

So, where were we. We caught the bus back to Chennai which took about four hours (not bad really considering that it cost £1.50 each), and arrived at about 9 in the evening. We took a rickshaw into town, as the bus station was about 7km outside, and checked into a reasonable hotel, the Hotel Comfort (!!) in the main tourist area, and had a few beers on the roof top bar before heading to bed. Ev went to sleep and I watched the film Gandhi with Ben Kingsley on telly. When in Rome!!

Chennai (or Madras as it was know) is massive. The city has over 63 million people and there really isn’t much to see in terms of tourist sights. The only thing I really wanted to have a look at was Fort St. George. The fort was originally built by the British East India Company in the 17th century, and there is a museum inside which was quite good.

We made the mistake of deciding to walk to the fort. It was stupidly hot (surprise surprise), and for those that haven’t been to Chennai, it is possibly the smelliest city I’ve ever been in!! The fort was built on a headland which was created as a river wound its way to the sea. The central part of the city now stands between this river and another although the city does cover an area of 130,000 km2. However these are not rivers in the sense that you or I think of rivers. They are more like, floating cess pools of rotting garbage and faeces festering in the 35 degree heat, giving the whole place a kind of aroma that makes you gag if you breathe too deeply.

Having walked to the fort, we queue up for about half an hour in the wrong line, before being ushered straight through. Since the fort now housed the administrative headquarters of the state of Tamil Nadu, we had to have our bags searched and go through airport style scanners before getting inside. Many areas of the fort were restricted, and as we’d seen a huge police convoy escorting a VIP into the fort as we arrived, security was pretty tight. So we just went into the museum and wandered around there.

We then returned to the Hotel and took a taxi to the airport to catch our Kingfisher Airlines flight to Calcutta. Yeah – That’s right, an airline that is run by a brewery. I was hoping that there would be plenty of free beer being dished out, but all we got was a little bottle of water!!

A few days before this we had been talking about flying, and Ev had said that she was a jinx, as there always seemed to be a plane crash when she is on holiday. So you can imagine that we were both a little freaked out to be standing in the terminal waiting for the plane, to see the news about the Air France flight disappearance pop up on the TV screen. Very sad news anyway, but certainly now what you want to be watching in the departure lounge!!

Fortunately we arrived in Calcutta in one piece and collected our luggage and arranged a taxi. We stepped out of the airport and a boy rushed over to help push my trolley a good 30 yards to the taxi, and then put the bags in the boot. I generously handed him 10 rupees, and the cheeky sod had the nerve to tell me he wanted 20!! I told him where to go and got into the taxi driven by a guy who looked about 14. I though this seemed a little odd, but as we were driving into town, he pulled up next to a mate who looked about 12 so perhaps he was a veteran after all! We arrived in the tourist area and checked into a rather cheap hotel as we weren’t planning to stick around for too long.

Our plan for the next few days was to go to the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve to the south of Calcutta, before heading north to Darjeeling. So we went straight to the office of West Bengal Tourism to arrange a tour. Unfortunately my worst fears were true. There was a cyclone that struck Bengal and Bangladesh last week with the Sunderbans being the worst hit. The reserve is made up of about 60 small islands, and many of them are still flooded. Large numbers of the population had moved into refugee camps and the chances of arranging a tour to spot tigers was impossible.

So we have to give that a miss. There is another tiger reserve north of Delhi which we hope to go to instead.

So then we headed up to the train reservation centre to get some tickets up towards Darjeeling, right in the north in the mountains next to the Nepalese border. Unfortunately the first available tickets were on the night train on 5th May (tonight), which meant we had three and a half days to kill in Calcutta. Ev had had trouble sleeping the night before in the cheap hotel as it was more like a corridor of rooms than a hotel and the night staff spent most of the night shouting at the other end of the corridor. Well that’s what Ev said they were doing. I of course slept like a baby.

So we decided to check out the hotel I’m sitting in right now. Well, if it’s good enough for Michael Palin, it’s good enough for me!!

Over the last few days we’ve taken in the sights rather slowly. We checked out the Indian Museum and yesterday we went to the Victoria Memorial.

The majority of the people here are very nice. They have been a lot friendlier than in other areas of the country, but the staring has started to get to Ev (and me) again. It really is astonishing. I get stared at a bit, but Ev is getting it incessantly. It is getting to the point where she has given up wearing descreet clothing as it’s too hot, and it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference, as they stare at her no matter what she’s wearing.

Most people will admit to staring once in a while. If you see someone different walking along the street you may look at them a little longer than a quick glance. If you look a little too long they may catch your eye and you will look away slightly embarrassed. But here people don’t seem to have a problem with it. I understand that we’re different and people would give us more than a passing glance (which is fine). But people will stare at you openly as you approach, pan their heads as you walk past, and will continue to stare even when Ev gives them a filthy look back. We were in the Victoria Memorial yesterday, and Ev was looking at an exhibit, whilst I was on the other side of the room. She turned around to find a man had come up behind her, with his wife on one arm and son on the other and he was just staring at her. She turned around a few times and looked him straight in the eyes, but he continued to stare. She moved on slightly, and he followed, with wife and child in tow. Eventually she just had to come over to find me as he wouldn’t leave her alone. She has been very good, but understandably has got angry sometimes and shouted things such as “Yes – Can I help you?” at which the men look confused and run away.

What I find most strange is that the staring is worst when we go to the tourist attractions which are predominantly filled with the richer, higher caste members of Indian society.

Oh dear – that was a bit of a rant. And I’ve done it again. A two and a half page short and sweet blog!?!?

Anyway – catching the train tonight up to a town called New Jalpaiguri. From there we’re going to a town called Kalimpong, before heading back down to Darjeeling. We then head over the border into Nepal and go over to Kathmandu. We want to do a trek of some kind, but it’s coming into the rainy season, and I don’t know how safe it’s going to be. I also want to find out how tough they are. The guide book says the Everest base camp trek, and the Annapurna base camp trek both take over two weeks, and I don’t want to get half way round to find the path blocked by a torrential river!

Then maybe a two or three day white water rafting trip to help relax after the trek!!

Until the next blog,

Simon and Ev xxx