Attack on the Senses

Street life
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After an extremely long flight we arrived in Calcutta (now officially called Kolkata). We boarded an ambassador taxi and headed straight to Sudder Street, Calcutta's own mini version of Bangkok's Ko San Road. As we were stopped waiting in traffic, beggars either side of the taxi were sticking their hands through the windows asking for money. This was a sign of what was to come.

The standard of accommodation was absolutely shocking and after viewing some really terrible places (complete with what appeared to be open sewage pipes in the bathroom) we chose the best of a bad bunch - Ashreen Guest House, and this was classified as mid-range in our guide book! All of the rooms we were shown in the budget and mid-range categories looked as if they could have been used in some American ghetto film. Adding to this not a single one had hot water and most only bucket showers - a fact I was not very happy about.

Our first impression of Calcutta was that its a mix between a garbage dump, a sewer and a bomb site!!

Shannyn shopping for Indian bangles
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Our first impression of Calcutta was that its a mix between a garbage dump, a sewer and a bomb site!! Nothing we had seen in our 6 months of travel in Latin American countries or in previous trips to South East Asia had prepared us for this place. We even saw a grown man pooing on the street right in front of us...

One of the most unusual things we noticed in Calcutta was that men every where seemed to be holding hands and were very affectionate towards each other. We were confused and left wondering ''are all men in this city gay?'' We soon realised that they weren't and that this was how male friends and family members acted towards each other. Strangely though we didn't see any affection being shown between men and women.

Street kitchen
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On our second day in India we awoke to the news that Mumbai was ''under attack''. Although we were aware of the terrorist risk that India presented we were still very shocked. It was quite a surreal experience watching the live news coverage of this and seeing the Indian journalists ducking the bullets and strangely providing an update of the situation whilst laying on the ground as gun shots and smoke came from the Taj Palace hotel. We later read in a local paper that there had been a terrorist warning issued for Calcutta from the 10th to the 30th of November (we were here during this period). It was nice that both the Australian and British government websites had failed to inform their citizens of such vital information.

Hand pulled rickshaw with sleepy driver
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During our time here we visited the Victoria Memorial which was architecturally interesting and surrounded by a park filled with young men playing cricket. This was when we first realised how obsessed Indian males are with cricket. They loved the fact that I was Australian and started yelling out every Australian cricketers name they could recall. I felt like telling them that I didn't share their enthusiasm for the game and found it terribly boring. I did manage to learn from them that Ricky Ponting is the captain of Australia though. This was also our first experience of over 20 people wanting to shake our hands and have their photographs taken with us.

Mother Teresa's Tomb
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We also visited the Mother Teresa memorial and the atmospheric Kali temple which was full of people shouting their prayers into one of the temples walls. On our journey to the temple Gary took a photo of a sign on the underground / subway instructing people that they are not allowed to carry dead people on the trains - the police were on to him straight away and made him delete the photo.

We spent the rest of our time here simply walking around the streets and markets and observing every day life. There were homeless people sleeping on beds on the pavement along with families living in tents by the roadside. There were even families who had built their shanty homes amongst the rubble in the garbage dumps. Despite these less than ideal living conditions everyone appeared to have good personal hygiene. The government has provided easy access to water via a strange type of tap/pump that are strategically placed all over the city. We constantly saw people using these to bath under, brush their teeth and wash their clothes.

Walking on The Maidan
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People either say they love or hate India but after our time in Calcutta we found ourselves somewhere in between and unsure of what to expect from the rest of India.   Shannyn