16th Febuary 2005 – Varanasi to Kolkata 12 hours

Kolkata is a polluted, overcrowded city, which we really warmed to. It is one of India’s largest and probably most cultured. Our first form of transport on arrival was a bright yellow Ambassador taxi that put a smile on my face just looking at it. In general the people were smiley happy people with a good sense of humor. The city is full of beautiful colonial buildings such as St Paul’s and the Victoria Memorial with the cities main post office and bank reminding me of London. Sadly some of the buildings on the outskirts of the city have been neglected. The alternative form of transport around the local areas of the city is a hand drawn rickshaw pulled by the human horses of Kolkata. I read about them in ‘The City of Joy’ but actually seeing them in real life was hard to get my head around. Most of the pullers are men with such a slight build you wonder where they get their strength. These men have to work hard for a living and the strain from pulling the carriages combined with pollution takes its toll on the men’s health. The government has been trying to phase out hand drawn rickshaws for a number of years and if they succeed it will obviously take away a lot of people’s livelihoods. The poverty is still a problem in Kolkata from what we seen. There are so many families living on the streets. They cook their meals on the pavement and wash from the water pumps in the streets every morning. The amount of disfigured beggars was terrible. As soon as the street kids can walk they start begging, it’s all very sad. Many of these people still come across as cheery souls. This certainly puts the small things in life into perspective.
We definitely needed longer in Kolkata as I think it has a lot to offer a visitor but it was time to move on and leave the chaos of India behind us. We both have a great love for India there’s no other country like it I’m sure. I shouldn’t think it will be long before we return.
The train from Kolkata to Rexaul (border town next to Nepal) departed on time and we sat with a friendly family who were traveling back from a one month’s pilgrimage in Mecca. They were weighed down with a crazy amount of luggage including three large plastic containers full of holy water which they would distribute in their village on their return. I suddenly became ill during the night and the stench of the train toilets was making it worse. This was a sign of bad things ahead. We finally arrived in Rexual after 17 hours on the train.
Rexual was a crazy, dirty Indian market town that we wanted to get out of as soon as possible so we found a man to do just that and get us to the border. His taxi was a ropey underfed horse pulling a clapped out cart which we thought was a great way to wave goodbye to India. Getting through customs and getting our visa was all very straight forward especially as we decided not to argue about the mysterious additional rupees we were asked to hand over to the Nepalese immigration officer.