Kolkata

This This morning our mission is to get train tickets to Darjeeling which of course proves to be another arduous venture. We’re sitting in the Foreign Tourist Bureau waiting for one guy to finish chatting to a Krishna dude traveler type. We’ve come here after a sweaty annoying experience at one of the travel bureaus on Sudder St., where they were basically doubling the prices on bus and train tickets, which we wanted to get to Darjeeling. We want to leave “lovely Kolkata” tomorrow since Dave hasn’t stopped sneezing since yesterday. Kolkata is incredibly polluted and the inhabitants suffer also from the smog and dirt. It’s unbearably hot still but we’ve managed to trudge around the city for three days, following the routes in the LPG. The city street system is very hard to follow and even though we have several maps we get lost at every turn. The people are incredibly friendly and helpful however and try to point us in the right direction, though a lot of the places cited in LPG have been covered by shops or stalls so even the Kolkatans don’t know that a church or temple may lie beneath.

The “best” thing we seen here is a small goat beheading. This occurred at the Kali Temple where the sweet little animal was pinned down while a nonchalant killer wheeled a huge machete down upon its tiny neck. It was a very shocking sight. Its head separated from its body in an instant. Its shaking torso was lifted away quickly and laid down in another area as long jets of blood shot out of its neck. Its head quivered violently at out feet and both parts of the animal shook like this for at least five minutes and though we knew it must be dead it was pretty weird and sickening to walk away from this scene knowing it was still writhing about in two pieces. This must be what happens to humans when they are beheaded – a really long and drawn out death.

Mumbai seems like a breeze now compared to this place. It seems like a large hip “modern” city compared to Kolkata which is stuck back in the dark ages. We are staying near what they refer to as the chi chi main drag of Park St., which is a bit nicer down the surroundings but to westerners it is pretty ghetto like, covered in maimed and street people, drug addicts and sick dogs. Dave got sick on some Indian food we ate the other day, so we’re on the hunt for doodie pills.

After stumbling over acres of broken concrete we have discovered the open “haven” of City Center Mall. We had heard about it from a local guy as the hang out place for the middle class Indian in Kolkata. It’s a massive relief from the immense heat of the day after having trudged around some Jain Temples on Badridas Temple St. – Sheetalnathja Jain Mandir and Dadaji Jain Mandir Temple. They were in an incredible little village which took an age to find. The people lived in beautiful old badly maintained colonial houses. Laundry hung upon lovely wrought iron balconies and tiny narrow passageways darted between the houses.

After cooling off in the open “beautiful” mall we cabbed back to Park St. (would have been quicker to have got the efficient metro but the City Center was not near a station. It was good anyway to see Kolkata on a Saturday night to loud Indian radio music during the numerous traffic jams we got stuck in on the way back.

As we near Park St. the smog and dust pervade our lungs as we enter once again the denseness of where our guest house is situated. We seem to be staying in the dustiest street ever.

So the main excitement of the next day is catching our sleeper train. The station is absolutely immense and chaotic as all Indian stations seem to be. We find our platform some how and settle down onto the filthy floor to await our train. There are hundreds of people on our platform all types from street people, families, lone children, teenagers, office workers, holiday makers, porters, people transporting huge packages of food and their heads and of course the mail carriers as it is The Darjeeling Mail #2343 that we are catching. We are extremely early which means that 2 other trains arrive before ours is due. The crushing chaos which ensues as each train arrives makes us more & more nervous. People generally seem to know whereabouts to stand on the platform , but as the train comes in they rush towards it endeavoring to form “orderly” lines to their allotted cars. If you’re caught in one of these frenzies it’s very hard to extricate oneself (as we found out later). Even the military guys who had their own car rushed to get to the top of their lines in this fashion. We saw people literally fighting to get a good place in line.

Once our train finally came in (on time) we experienced this same chaos & got a bit caught up in the masses. We managed eventually to get out into a place where we could actually see the train properly & read the names which were typed out on paper which were stuck onto each car. Great organization! Even though, when we found our names, they were the wrong seat numbers at least we were in the right car. We’d had to book a non AC sleeper as there were no other cars left. We didn’t know it but we were in for the ride of all rides. We’d been put in with a few other tourists, notably Mark & Mindy (YES!) who we’d continue to hang out with in Darjeeling & a bunch of Indians from kids to old folk. It was dark & windy in the car & chaotic as people tried to get situated. It was quite a crush, we had this seats which dropped down into beds on down the side of the car. Which we were in the station & setting off various beggars & “performers” came on board to get money. The most shocking of all were the Lady Boys who came around to all the guys touching them intimately to embarrass them into handing over cash. They were really persistent & would even slap the guys if they didn’t cough up. It was unbelievably crazy but happened a few more times during the journey as different ones boarded at different stations along the way. People chained up their bags to the seats & we followed their example as we realized straight away that we were in a bizarre situation. When we finally all decided to lie down we realized we had a rat (or rats) running around on the floor plus a few roaches. Dave kindly let me “sleep” a bunk up as he braved the bunk beneath. Finally the 10 hr journey was over as we screeched into Darjeeling at 8am the next day.