City of No Joy
Our first 24 hours in India have been mixed, ranging from awe as we flew over the Ganges Delta region of Bangladesh and India and over rural plains and waterways near Kolkata international airport to the chaotic traffic and never ceasing horns on the streets as we made our way to the ‘Back-packer’ accommodation area.
The Lonely Planet guide speaks of Kolkata as simultaneously noble & squalid, Cultured and desperate and ‘a festival of human existence played out before your very eyes on teeming streets where not an inch of space is wasted. While we’ve seen hints of the culture in buildings from the 1800’s now almost derelict (even though still fully occupied) and our visit to the Victoria Monument, a huge white marble building similar in shape to the US capitol building which was started as a monument to the then Queen Victoria and finished after her death as a memorial showed aspects of the nobility of Kolkata we have seen far more of the (every inch) packed, squalid and desperate in our short time here so far.
Kolkata is known as the City of Joy but for us there has not been any joy so far in this city. We have read numerous travellers accounts of Kolkata (and Delhi where we’ll head to next) as a place to not spend any time in due to the pollution, traffic chaos, touts and constant attempts to get more (even hostel owners, shop keepers and taxi drivers will subsequently ask for more than they have already advised is the cost just to see if they can get it!), and general difficulty in getting from A to B and I think we’ll be glad to move on. Our accommodation in Thailand and Vietnam was good but our first pick here was not great although there wasn’t a lot better within our price range but we’ll try and better this one in future days.
We have seen a few things that we were expecting (sort of)….
– I remember a couple of years ago seeing a commercial on TV (I don’t remember what it was for so it obviously wasn’t very effective!) which featured Adam Gilchrist from the Australian Cricket team in an old yellow taxi in India…..I had also heard that India had a number of old English cars as taxi’s but I was amazed on our arrival to see that there are hundreds of them…..in fact the only taxi’s in Kolkata are old yellow cars from about 1950 in various levels of disrepair and semi-repaired damage. We’ve also seen quite a few broken down on the sides of the road so their insides most likely match their rough outsides.
– We love Indian food and now we have it cheaply! It’s not so clean on the streets and some of the places road side stalls are operating are distinctly disgustingly dirty it’s great to see the vast array of foods we love all around us. We ate indoors last night but plan to eat from the stalls tonight, moving from stall to stall and sampling different Indian food ranging from about 3 to 18 rupees each (9 cents to 56 cents).
Tomorrow we head to Sunderban Tiger Camp in the Ganges Delta region where we’ll spend time on the canals and waterways of the national park. While we’re staying in a tent there (yes, in a Tiger reserve!!) it is part of a resort so we expect the standard to be pretty good. The likelihood that we’ll actually see Royal Bengal Tigers is not high (there are approx 280 of them in the reserve which is very large (the largest mangrove forest in the world) but we’re sure to see many other animals and if nothing else we’ll get out of the clog and smog of Kolkata for a couple of days. On Sunday night when we return from Sunderban we’ll be staying at a hostel right next to the Kolkata railway station where we’ll catch our overnight train to Delhi on Monday afternoon (17 hours). It’s a run down mansion built in 1890 but the proximity to the railway helps.
Tags: India, Kolkata (Calcutta), Travel, Tag Index
David, Stephanie, Jordan & Luke Mitchell