Oh Calcutta!!

Early Monday morning, I got up and headed to the airport in Bangkok for my flight to Kolkata. When I arrived at the boarding gate, I was surprised to see a man I had met at the Indian embassy when I picked up my visa. He was a French Canadian and probably of retirement age. I had heard him talking to another guy waiting. Then he noticed me for some reason and started chatting with me. And he had so little to say that was encouraging. “What? You only got a 3 month visa? You know you can get a 6 month visa don't you?” Yes, and I have other places to go, so 6 months isn't necessary. “You're going to go to Nepal first? But you'll be giving up a bunch of time on your visa you know? Your visa's time starts as soon as you get it.” Yes, I'm aware of that. (And I had changed the plan to just go to India because of the difficulty of finding a cheap ticket to Nepal.) “Do you have any Rupees? They are going to try to take them from you when you arrive. Why? Just because they can. That's the way India works. They do things just because they can.” And on and on. There was no simply positive thing he said about going to India or India in general. Everything had at least a qualification, if not an actual negative slant to it. And then I met him again in the airport for the flight. Great. And he barely remembered speaking to me in the visa office. I was sorry now for going up and saying hi when I saw him again.

But once we got to Kolkata, none of his negativeness rang true. Yes, it seemed to be a dirty and old airport. But I had expected India to be dirty and old-feeling. Yes, I was told that a bus that is supposed to be running wasn't running, and later in a taxi I saw the bus running that was supposed to be not running. But I expected to be lied to like that because the Indians, too, are trying to scrape as much money as possible out of visitors. Nobody asked me if I was bringing Rupees into the country. The streets are raucous and noisy and dirty. As I expected. There are lots of beggars everywhere asking for money. As I knew there would be. There are lots of touts trying to get me into their shops, or to buy something from them on the street, or to take their cab or pedicab or tricycab. Which is no different than any other place I've been in the past few months. But it is vibrant and exciting and smelly and coooooool. India!

Arriving at the airport, I came out into a day that wasn't as oppressive and humid and hot as I had expected. I went off towards where the buses that would go to the city were supposed to stop. Another guy was there waiting for the same bus as I wanted. A short time later a guy came up who purported to be from the office that sells tickets for that particular bus. He told us the bus wasn't running that day. When we asked, he gave no particular reason. Hmmm. So the other guy and I decided to share a cab into town. It was somewhat more expensive than we had planned, but we thought there wasn't much choice. Riding to the center of Calcutta, we passed the bus we wanted going the other way. Sigh! I wonder if the guy who told us it wasn't running actually worked in that office or if he was just some random guy that a cabbie had paid off to tell us we were wasting our time. It doesn't matter, I suppose.

The trip into town from the airport provided all the episodes that might be expected when one thinks of India (or others like China or Vietnam for that matter). There were the laneless seeming roads, the crowds of cars all trying to get through bottlenecks created by buses and other vehicles that stopped wherever they pleased, the people wandering through the roads everywhere. There weren't many cows about though. But it was absolute pandemonium. And there were honking horns everywhere.

The cheap accommodation area is a spot called the Esplanade. We got off there and then Pete, the guy I shared the cab with, knew the way to the cheap hotel area. As soon as we walked into the Sudder Street we got an attachment. I don't know what his name was, but he started showing us to various places. We had told him what our budgets were, and the guy said he knew just the place. Only then he led us to a place that was twice as expensive. We ended up rejecting it, and then he told us about another place. We told him our respective budgets again and he said it would work out and then took us to another place that was twice as expensive. The next place after that was three or four times our price. He was leading us on a wild goose chase, and we eventually just told him we wouldn't need his “help” any longer and headed off to find another place. I expect there was some sort of commission in it for him if we stayed in a place he had taken us to.

We still ended up at a place that was more than we wanted, but still within my budget. It turned out that part of the reason for the high prices was the festival on here in Calcutta. There is a goddess of something or other. Her name is Durga and for four days beginning the day we had arrived there was a festival on in her honour. As a result there are lots of people in town, and as we were chatting with the manager of the hotel we had booked, a few more people arrived to stay there as well. So I think we had managed to do well.

After settling in, Pete and I were quite hungry so we went for a bite to eat. My first meal in India of Indian food. It was delicious. I'm going to enjoy it here.

After getting a bite to eat we headed out to check out the train station. He was headed up to Nepal and wanted to get a ticket to be sure to get on the train without having to wait too long. So we headed over to one of the train stations. We weren't exactly sure where it was so we ended up taking a taxi to get there. (I decided to go with him just to see the train station and figure out how to get my own train tickets when the time came.) I'm fairly sure the taxi driver wildly overcharged us, but we were still acclimating to the city and so I won't sweat that too much. Once we reached the station, which was huge, we spent almost an hour going from one building to the next and from counter to counter trying to find where he could get himself a ticket. Then we finally got to the second floor of the building we needed and the ticket office was closed, and had been for several hours, for the festival. Oh well, it was an interesting little side trip.

After visiting the train station, we headed back to the hotel area, this time taking a bus. It took a moment to figure out which bus we needed and where we needed to catch it. But not to worry, we had lots of people around who were listening to where we wanted to go. And so we had lots of help with people pointing us in the right direction. India is turning out to be a very friendly country as well.

After returning to the Esplanade we decided to strike out on a short walk. We headed down a street and started finding lots of little temporary shrines and temples, all to the goddess who was the subject of the festival. There were strings of lights everywhere. It was really quite a nice atmosphere with people going into the shrines and walking about on the streets.

After a while we started heading back to the hotel. We headed down one street and then we passed an open door to what turned out to be some kind of game parlour. We started to just peek in the door and watch for a minute and suddenly we were invited in. We watched for a few minutes before they set the game up again and put us in the game. It's a four person game that works a lot like pool, but instead of balls, it uses little checker-like pieces. Play proceeds in turns with the two people across the table from each other being partners. You can only take your turn from your side of the table. The “cue” checker is placed on a line on your side of the table and you flick it with your fingers to hit the other checkers in an attempt to sink them in the pockets at the corners of the table. When one person misses, the person to the right gets a turn. Play proceeds until all the checkers of one team are sunk in the pockets. Before I played it seemed like it might be quite easy to play, but after playing I realized that it actually incredible skill. Your fingers have to connect with the “cue” checker at just the right spot to get the proper angle of contact to send it to hit the target checker, in order to make that contact at the correct angle to send the checker into the pocket. With all those different factors to get right, it makes actually hitting the checkers properly to sink them very difficult. There is a lot of skill and a lot of knowledge and experience to be really good at it. And the boys that were playing had all of that. It was fascinating. And to be invited in to play like that was very heartening.

Then we headed off into the night once again. We found a stall where Pete tried some tea on the street. And I found an alley down which I took a photo. A guy in a stall down that alley saw the flash and beckoned me to come down. He wanted me to take a photo of him in his stall. And he didn't want any money from me for it.

Then we found a little stall that made flatbread chicken (and other fillings) rolls. We got one and had a snack. And they wanted a photo of them as well. These Indians seem to like having their photos taken. It was cool. I enjoyed that walk greatly. It was a great way to start out my visit to India. I am going to like it here, I think.