Calcutta

Kim enjoying India rail with free cockroaches!
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Just a week or so left in India.  We've got tired now of the constant stink and hassle.  All the little things that were quite endearing like turning round to find a family posed around you having their photo taken with "whitey", or being asked, what is your country? Where are you going at every turn.

Our last train trip! Again we won't be too sorry about that.  We're in a four bed birth with an Indian couple who we try to make conversation with but without much success, as the fall fast asleep!!  We sneak about the berth so as not to disturb them and get into the top bunks, it's pretty early so we're reading when Kim gets my attention, "look down" she whispers.  Our berth mates are tucking into a huge meal of curries rice and bread.  The feigned kip obvuously a ruse to get rid of us so they wouldn't feel guilty tucking into a huge menu while we munch a couple of pringles, (which we'd offered to share I hasten to add!)

John at the Victoria Monument
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Finnaly at Calcutta station Kim haggles very hard with a taxi driver to get the price down 20-30p but like I say we're getting a little pissed off with them all now so sod him.

Arrive at the Fair Lawns hotel and talk about character! We have never seen so much stuff crammed into a hotel, photos of Felicity Kendall are everywhere including our room and John thinks it's nice to think her perfect bot was at sometime snuggled beneath this very duvet!  I'm not so sure.

What with knife wielding mobs, earthquakes, bomb threats and the perpetual stink and hassle - we've decided to leave India early - John is a little pissed off as this means he will just miss a test match in India but considers the sacrifice worth while - or maybe divorce is and option as Kim is determined to escape India.

The Brits and the Kiwis
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We meet up again with Diane and Pete (who were evacuated from Darjleeing) and we have a nice couple of days with them including the scariest cab trip we've ever experienced... Seeing the motorway blocked our cab driver does a 3 point turn on a busy slip road and drives back up it the wrong way!!!  Pete sitting in the front goes whiter and whiter while our cabby sounds his horn continuosly and waves his arms about as a clear sign to other road users that he wishes to commit suicide and take us with him!

We also visit Mother Teresa's house where her very large tomb sits for such a small lady.  It's funny how Calcutta has got a reputation for poverty where as it seems one of the richer city's in India that we visited. We take a cab and see the first (amazingly)traffic accident we've seen in India.  A kid turns his bike at right angles across the road and is hit by a motor cycle..... as the kid lays protrate in the road our cabby does all he can to help, he pulls up as close to his prone form as possible and sounds his horn continuously until he is dragged from the road apparently unconscious. Call me Mr Cynical but to be honest I think the kid was OK but he caught sight of the pretty flash, expensive looking motor bike and maybe figured feigning coma might prove lucrative.

We visited the India museum and the Victoria Monument and spend some time in the Maidans under a lovely tree watching sports and cricket next to the Eden Gardens Cricket Stadium.  We would have spent more time wondering around Calcutta but the touts make life a complete misery and give you no peace at all.

The next morning after breakfast we bundle into our cab for the trip to the air port. The hotel security guard is dressed like a French Gendarme, he beckons the cab backwards out into the busy street holding the traffic, rickshaws, cycles, cars, trucks, cattle etc with a raised right hand as we wave goodbye he singsongs 'hello' and off we go.

Calcutta airport is just the pits.  A single latrine and malfunctioning coffee machine is the only entertainment.  A worthy fairwell to India and the first leg of our trip of a lunch time.  India, it's incredible allright, infuriating, smelly, loud, garish, all these things, most of all it is just unforgettable.