Delhi and Kolkata

Onwards, to the final leg of our India journey. Our next stop as I mentioned in a previous post was supposed to be Nepal, however, especially owing to a second earthquake in the area, we opted to instead head straight to Thailand. We looked at flights a few days after Diana would finish her course and settled on a flight at 10.45am on the 20^th of May, from Kolkata, as it worked out that we’d get both our flights for the price of one leaving from here. This meant getting to Kolkata however.

Anyone who has ever booked an Indian train, it’s not simple. I’m not sure if we’ve mentioned this previously, but you basically have a few options:

• Book your ticket months in advance, before everyone else has managed to book out every seat
• Book an unreserved seat. This usually means standing amongst what feels like 10,000+ people in a mass crush and battle of wills
• Book your ticket on one of the non ‘general’ quotas. This includes a foreign quota for anyone on a tourist visa (Which seemed to be a tiny quota and only accessible in a few stations, so we never had any luck with this), a VIP quota, which we were not, or…
• The emergency Tatkal quota which becomes accessible 10am the day before. Our usual hope of onward travel

Option 1 is never an option. The whole idea of our journey was to plan as little in advance as possible, had we booked all our tickets like this we wouldn’t have had as much time to do what we wanted as we’d have liked and Diana’s yoga course would never have happened. Option 2 was a somewhat reluctant backup plan, we would have to stand/sit on what may as well be bare metal for 30+ hours. Option 3 never happens. Option 4 was our best chance.

So to interject a little missing portion from Diana’s post on Rishikesh, two days before we planned to leave, we headed to a few travel agents in the hopes of finding one who will book our Tatkal ticket to Kolkata, as our British payment methods won’t work on the Indian online system. We hadn’t actually failed to do this so far through a travel agent, but then, we also hadn’t had a 30 hour train journey before, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect. We found a travel agent who said they could book this for us, to leave our details with him and by 3pm the next day we would have our ticket. 100%. Diana and I exchanged glances – we knew how the train system works. The ticket window opens for purchase at 10am, it sells out by 10:01AM for short journeys, let alone long ones. We told him we’d be there before 10am the next day.

We head there and arrive by around 9:20am, plenty of time to get ready. The guy was incredibly relaxed about it, we started to doubt this was going to happen. About 9:30am, he looks at us and tells us just to leave our details and we’d have our tickets by 3pm, no problems. We told him, we’re here now, we might as well just wait until 10am. He looks confused about it all and starts making some phone calls. Eventually, someone must have told him how the train booking works as he started telling us he urgently needed our passport details to book the train, as it was almost 10am. Yep, we know that, we’ve been telling him this much. He takes our details, and asks for the money up front. We told him, again, we’d be here to check the tickets are confirmed – there is no physical ticket we’d need and we knew that, just PNR ID number. Again he told us to come back later, we’d definitely have the tickets, 99%. Hang on, we’ve dropped a %.

Time ticks on, 10am comes and our fate is in the, hopefully capable hands of this travel agents friend who knows exactly what he’s doing. 10 agonizing minutes pass, the guy tells us to come back later again. We tell him he’s either got the tickets now, or not at all, there’s no way 3pm will be any different. At this point, a call comes in. Some Hindi takes place, and the guy looks at us, apparently the train has been cancelled. Hmmmmm….

We start considering our options. We go to another travel agent who looked a little more competent and ask them if there’s any chance of getting a train to Kolkata, or close. No luck, they’re all booked up (not cancelled though, odd). We weigh up our options. Either we take an unreserved ticket the whole way and hope for the best, or we go back to the drawing board. I decided I didn’t think I could cope, the 4 hour journey before was enough of a killer, so I had a look into flights. Delhi to Kolkata worked out to about double the price we were looking to pay for the train, but it would be over in two hours. Far more preferable.

We now had two flights booked, meaning we had another day in Rishikesh, an extremely early flight in Delhi (3am wake up!) and then 3 nights in Kolkata before our flight to Bangkok. Being as Diana’s previous experiences in Delhi hadn’t been great and we’d heard quite a few stories of scams going on, we were quite wary about being there too long, not that we had to worry too much as we’d only have an evening and an early flight anyway.

We arranged to get a bus the following morning to Delhi. Cue the scene with Bear waving us off in the rickshaw as we headed down the mountain to the bus station. We had a look about and found out where our bus would depart from, had a quick chai and went over to the coach.

As is customary, a man was stood at the back of the coach where luggage is loaded, intercepting people trying to load their luggage to place it himself. Of course, this wasn’t a free service, at 10rs per bag a few cups of chai could be earned with minimal effort from the unsuspecting traveller. Watching the guy before us getting stung for 30rs to have his bags loaded into the back cack-handedly, I proceeded to load my own bag whilst the guy was busy and got Diana to quickly chuck hers over as quick as possible also. The man still had the nerve to ask me for 20 rupees, which prompted a quick chuckle and we got on the bus, whilst the guy who’d just had his bags loaded on was shouting about how his luggage contained fragile musical instruments and didn’t want it broken for 30rs. I don’t understand why people believe we can carry our stuff for thousands of kilometres but this last hurdle is hugely outside of our capability and we’d decide we need a hand about now.

The journey was fairly uneventful. It started off with an almost empty coach, Diana and I got to look like we’d had an argument and sat at opposite sides of the coach to spread out, something that was rare on an Indian bus. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before it was back to normality once we reached some of the more popular stops. People jumping on trying to sell us all sorts of things, including a small boy who held bags of popcorn in our faces for a good 10-20 minutes whilst the bus was stopped, not taking no for an answer. Eventually he got the message, but it wasn’t easy.

Around 7 hours later, we arrived in Delhi. Having been in Rishikesh so long, we’d forgotten what gridlocked Indian traffic was like, and the last hour was spent barely moving due to… Well, who knows. Cars, cows, bikes, cows and people. And cows. Shortly before we pulled up at the station, the guy with the musical instruments asked if we were going to the airport, which prompted us to decide we’d navigate it together, and being as he was South African we gathered a little bit of background from his country from him also, which was interesting to hear.

We got off the bus and another foreigner was also getting off and going to the airport. I had worked out a route, we had a hotel booked near the airport and it was only one stop before theirs on the metro (yes, there’s a metro, we had no idea as this was our first experience of one in India) so we set off. Only one small problem though, the South African guy had three bags as I’d mentioned before, however, we didn’t notice the actual size of them before. How he’d managed to carry them all to the bus stand alone, we didn’t know. So, foolishly, we offered to help him carry them. The one we took from him, a holdall, contained no less than seven Nepalese singing bowls. Not sure if anyone’s ever tried to carry this before, but combined these weigh no less than 300 tonnes.

Taking one strap each, Diana and I shared the burden and the guy was still struggling with his sheer amount of luggage. After talking to him a little more, I established he’d actually come with none of these bags, only a single change of clothing, and bought everything whilst he was there. I guess the inevitable part of the departure hadn’t occurred.

After navigating the airport style security checks, we managed to get onto our first metro train. This was very similar to other underground trains, except packed to Indian limits instead of London Underground type limits, which is around 10,000+ people more per carriage. Fortunately once we reached our first stop to get the airport line connection, many people got off and we could navigate our way out with our ridiculous amounts of baggage between us.

During this time, Diana had been talking to the other girl. It transpired that she was also just returning home from Rishikesh, except she’d outstayed us a little having been there for 7 months. That’s some commitment, and apparently she’d been there for a few months some time ago before also, so close to a year in Rishikesh as a tourist overall. How she managed to not go insane, I’ll never know.

We headed towards the second and final metro line, where we entered a state of shock we thought India would not be able to trump, until later that is. What we expected was similar to what we’d just been on, an extremely crowded underground train. What greeted us, was a clean, modern, sparsely populated shuttle we’d never experienced in ANY country before, let alone India. Completely caught unaware, we put our bags in the huge amount of baggage space, and took a seat each, watching the LED indicators above the train doors indicating our progress along the line to the next station, and lights showing which doors would open once we arrived.

Figuring it would be downhill from here, we said our goodbyes and relinquished our job as baggage mules as our stop was before theirs, and headed out to the open air. Dismissing the shouts from taxi drivers as our hotel was only 20 minutes up the road apparently, we headed on our way. As we approached the first corner though, we figured there had either been a mistake or we were going to have a problem. I was fairly confident it was the latter.

On this road were some of the fanciest hotels we’d ever seen. I had simply been looking for hotels near the airport to minimize the panic in the morning, and most of the ones I’d seen had been £15 - £80+. The one I’d booked was £6.50. Suspect, huh?

We walked along, our hotel was booked with some sort of chain of hotels known as ‘Oyo rooms’. It seemed there were quite a few of them, so I went into the first one which was incredibly fancy, and asked them which way it was to our hell hole of a room for under 7 quid. They pointed us up the road, telling us it was one right at the end. Suspicions confirmed, the one right at the end can’t be great surely.

We got to the end one, greeted by a porter and valet, huge gates and glass doors, knowing we’d be looking for alternate accommodation for the night. I thought I’d humor it anyway and asked at the desk about our reservation, showing them the email we had.

“No sorry sir, hasn’t come through to us I’m afraid”. I knew it. Game face was on, I calmly asked them how this could be as I had the confirmation in front of me. Another Dalhousie moment on the cards, I thought, they’ve seen the colour of my skin and they don’t want the hassle.

“We will look into it sir, please take a seat”. I’m fine standing thank you – this was I can see your computer screen and make sure you’re actually doing something. They brought up a phone number and make a call in Hindi. I wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer, and Diana was shattered at this point as her bag weighed approximately 9 Nepalese singing bowls.

“Ah, your reservation has been moved to another one, go down the road to the Hotel International Inn, they can help”. Mmkay. I left Diana behind with the bags, as I didn’t want them to think they’d completely shifted the burden yet.

Figuring we’d been downgraded at the very least, I wandered down the road, ignoring more taxi drivers desperate to take me somewhere cheaper. Not quite given up yet, I see in the distance the huge neon sign of the Hotel International Inn. No way we can afford a place with a sign, let alone a neon one. I walk in anyway to the largest, air conditioned marble lobby I’ve ever been in.

“Good evening Sir, how can I assist you?”

“Hi, I had a reservation at a hotel down the road but they have sent me here instead?”

“Let me see your reservation please Sir, and try to work out what’s happened”

“No problem” – I hand over my phone.

“Hmm, this reservation is for the hotel down the road on the right Sir”

“Yes, I know this, but they have sent me here saying you should have our reservation?”

“Let me look Sir”

Here we go. Another one of our famed Indian goose chases. I waited, he again asked me to sit, I think they’d all been to the same school for politeness, although this person did seem genuinely more helpful.

“Ah yes I can see, the reservation has been moved, we’re all part of the same chain you see”

“Okay, so there’s no problems? We can bring our stuff in and we don’t have to pay any more?”

“No problems sir, no more to pay, of course not!”

I head back to Diana, thinking it was too good to be true, but at least it was progress. We grabbed our bags and headed back and took a seat whilst three men talked amongst each other. One of the men approached me, saying there was still a problem as the reservation hadn’t come through here either. Tremendous. Apparently he was the manager for the Oyo rooms in the area though, so I had hopes he’d resolve something, maybe.

“Aha!! It’s in the next place! Come Sir, Madam!”

“Definitely, this time? This is getting a bit ridiculous now”

“Absolutely, come, come!”

We gather our bags again, back to the place we’d originally gone into to ask them where our room would be. Not even putting our bags down, I head to the front desk, my face probably a bit more ticked off than when we’d first gone in there to ask. The manager took a tablet from behind their desk, held it up to me and sure enough my name was on there. He beamed at me, happy he’d successfully achieved something I guess, and we were checking in to what, on the face of it, was an incredibly up market building.

We were lead up to our room. After 3 floors, the man said ‘That’s enough!’, as if he was also in on the game of ‘make the foreigners walk a long way’ and threw open the door. Diana and I exchanged a similar glance to the metro situation. What the hell was going on today. What IS Delhi?! It was clean. It was HUGE. It had a flat screen TV, fast Wi-Fi, it had room service, it had the COMFIEST bed, hell, it had a BED. Air conditioning. A bathroom with all the tiles still on the wall. PAINT! Paint on the walls!

The man showed us how to use the air conditioning and left. About an hour passed before either of us could find words. We’d had a room in Mumbai with boards over the windows and loose wiring hanging out, for £15 a night. This was incredible!

And short lived. We had until 3am to enjoy it, where we made the most of having a 24 hour reception and asked for a wakeup call and food delivered to our room. We then proceeded to have the comfiest few hours sleep of our recent lives, before solemnly realizing the dream was now, unfortunately, over. We headed outside, and upon discovering the domestic airport was a much further walk than we’d anticipated, got the nearest taxi to the terminal.

It felt strange heading for a flight again, after so many months of dysfunctional methods of transportation that just about get you to your destination, this felt like a clean, efficient and streamlined system, something I thought I’d never find myself saying about the ridiculous faff involved with airport security. Everything in fact, went incredibly smoothly, up until the point we thought we’d have a coffee whilst waiting and Diana started her 3 hour long rant.

Why, you may ask? Well, up until now we’d been used to the normal Indian rate of pricing things, rather than the no-mans-land of an airport Costa. When the bill popped up at 550rs, or £5.50 for two coffees, rather than approximately 10 you’d get for that price usually, the rational part of the brain that says “That was expensive, woops, won’t do that again” was overridden by the need to let me know just how expensive it was. Mood-swings, shouting, getting irritated by strangers just trying to make a normal line of conversation, you name it. This did not go down well at all. Add to that, part of the reason the coffee was expensive was because the guy behind the counter asked if we wanted ‘strong’, which Diana said yes to. We believe this costed extra, and although I thought it was probably the best coffee I’d had in months, Diana didn’t like it because it tasted of too much rupee.

Anyway, we made a new friend on the flight, who Diana immediately tried to bite the head off of because he helpfully pointed out to her she could pop her bag in the overhead lockers (still on a comedown after the huge expense, I believe). I think just wanted to practice his English, but is now added to our list of stalkers, this time by email. They’re everywhere!

We touch down in Kolkata, unsure exactly what to expect, what to do or how to get there. We had heard about a road that is very popular with backpackers, known as Sudder Street, although we really had no idea why but figured it meant cheap accommodation, so we headed straight for it. After a little bit of digging around on maps and working out where we were going, we checked the taxi price at the fixed rate booth and decided against it, we’d try the bus and metro lines of the city.

Seems reasonable.

One of the first things that struck us was how everything did seem different. Not much sign of rickshaws, although they did exist, instead, big yellow metered ‘No Refusal’ cabs, huge wide roads and semi ordered traffic (for Indian standards!) which seemed more reminiscent of a downtown Chicago than still within India. But the main thing we noticed was the heat. Although it was probably around 10 degrees cooler here than in Rishikesh, the humidity was off the scale, and you could barely walk a minute without a river forming on your face. We were used to heat by now, but this was something else.

Huge, pothole-less roads!?

The bus we took, having no idea what route we wanted or even, really, where we wanted, had a code name on the side which I could look up online to see the route it took. Finding the closest stop to where we wanted, we hopped off and went to the nearest metro line, as we were still somewhat of a walk away. Arriving at the gate of the subway, it appeared to be closed, with people stood outside telling us it would open in 10 minutes. This was at 10am on a Sunday, we can only assume it was a little more frequent on weekdays or it would almost be entirely pointless!  We paid our 10 rupees for both of our tickets, little chip coin tokens, and got on the first train that came past. A slightly more normal train experience, although not as crowded as we were used to.

Finally, we’re a couple of streets away from where we wanted to be. We begin the final push, walking through the busy street markets selling literally anything from T-shirts, to deodorant, to replica grenades and handguns that were really lighters (I think…). Avoiding being drawn into anyones shop was a difficulty, but we pushed on and eventually made it to the start of Sudder Street.

Goat complete with baking tray.

Unfortunately we had absolutely no idea what we were actually going to find. Although blogs and information online had heavily recommended it, it wasn’t until about half way down we could work out why, as it seemed fairly bare. Some women began asking us where we were from, where we were going, etc, which immediately made us suspicious. They did seem to generally point us towards where we could find a hotel or guest house though, and only at the end did they point out they did Henna and were always around this street if we wanted them. Handy…?

We approached the first guest house we could see and were greeted by an old shrivelled up man who spoke almost no English. We just about made the point we wanted a room and he showed us along a corridor to what was definitely one of the least maintained rooms we’d been in on our trip. Mould on the ceiling, the pillows were a grey brown mess and the windows barely closed. A tremendous start to our hunt. We figured at least it must rank pretty cheap. Nope, 600rs a night. Literally pennies less than we were paying in Delhi, for this???

We carried on our search, Diana staying with the bags whilst I went around every hotel and guest house I could find, melting all the while. First place I went to wanted far more than we budgeted. Next place was full. Next, full. Next, full. Found another with rooms for 400 and 500 which were in even worse condition than the first one, but with a shared bathroom instead, god only knows the condition of that, I didn’t want to find out.

By this point I’m a disgusting dripping mess of a human and enough was enough. I headed back to Diana to let her know we’re either paying well over the odds, or we live in the slime kingdom. Short of options, we headed back and handed over way more money than it was worth, and tried to forget the beautiful accommodation of the night prior. All in all, it wasn’t too bad if you enjoy living in a sauna environment supporting its own ecosystem, with no ability to stop flighted insects infiltrating the room to harvest your sweet, sweet bloody nectar. Yippee!! Still, this would only prove to be torture in the evenings. We did manage to swap our room to another, with no window in order to prevent the dirty needles with wings from reaching us, however this didn’t help with the sauna situation. Anyhow, onwards!

One of the main ‘attractions’ to Kolkata, other than the cheap flight to Bangkok, is the living and final resting place of Mother Theresa. This was our first point of interest we went to visit. The building itself was very unassuming, in fact, if it weren’t for the sign outside stating we were in the right place, I’d have believed my map had lied to me once again. We stepped inside to a place where strict silence was enforced. It was quite small, at least, the public areas were. Sisters were going about their business, whilst we and other tourists had three rooms of interest we could visit. A small museum, showing the work Mother Theresa had done, some of her belongings and awards, newspaper clippings and so on, the room in which she slept, did her work and stored all her files, and her tomb and final resting place. Of course, this didn’t take long to experience, but it was very much worth doing so and an incredible eye opener into the work she did and her views of the world. Unfortunately it would seem the location did introduce a number of people begging nearby, hoping the prey on the new found generosity of people visiting the house. We were encouraged to not give to these people, which was a difficult situation for all parties I’m sure as it wasn’t the message we’d really been given from the experience, but a necessary one to prevent the area becoming a real problem.

From here we visited a nearby cemetery, which, it quickly became apparent, consisted of passed British people from the 19^th century, back in the time of British rule. Whilst interesting, especially seeing so many British names in one area (many Williams), there’s only so many gravestones you can see and when you consider how incredibly fancy some of them were and realise they can only have been the product of some form of exploitation, we left quite soon. From here we’d planned to visit a few other nearby tourist attractions, one of which was the Victoria Memorial (the website of which looking like it was made back when Queen Victoria was still alive - http://www.victoriamemorial-cal.org/), however it was quite expensive for something we didn’t have a huge interest in and we arrived on the only day of the week where only the gardens are accessible. We carried on to another place we’d spotted on the map called Eden Gardens, which sounded nice, but apparently this is just a cricket stadium so another disappointment. A bit fed up at this point, we headed back and rested up and thought about our next move. Or actually, movie.

Snuck a picture of the Victoria Memorial though

One thing I hadn’t experienced in another country was the cinema. Now, as odd as it sounds going to another country and watching a film in another language, we figured we had a slight fighting chance in India as they typically talk ‘Hinglish’, randomly sentences of English just pop up amongst all the main conversation in Hindi. So we gave it a go.

We arrived at the cinema and the foyer was packed full with people who, in traditional Indian fashion, were trying their best to cram as many people as close to the door as possible. We managed to work out what the film was, it was called Piku (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piku), a comedy, so we had a chance to see what Indian humour was like also. We went to buy our ticket, which consisted of going to one of two booths, one for the rear seats and one for the upper balcony. The rear seats were the cheaper option so we were fine with that, and we got ready for the mass push into the cinema.

Sure enough, a man unlocked the door and everyone flooded in. We managed to pass our tickets on to someone who looked vaguely official and into the main cinema room where we were greeted by a room full of what looked like your typical hard plastic assembly chairs. A man with a torch shoved us in a general direction and we picked a seat right under a fan, which was great due to the ~40c temps and tightly packed room. The film began after some trailers and advertisements and everyone looked very serious. Sort of. The general cinema etiquette I was used to hadn’t quite reached this far. Someone’s phone rang – okay, no problem, just switch it of… Okay, just take the call, fair enough.

The film was basically about a girl whose granddad had constipation. Spoiler alert – at the end he goes on a long cycle ride, has a dump and dies. But the build up to this point was far weirder. Especially the random Hindi sentences where nothing seemed to happen on screen but sent the entire room into huge fits of laughter. Not just laughter, but applause. Rounds of clapping over and over. Most confusing but everyone was having a great time and we were having fun guessing what the hell was going on. Certainly an experience, would recommend trying it at least!

The only other ‘entertainment’ we could really find in the area were the markets. In the area we were in, the streets and centre were flooded with market stalls and this was Diana’s forte. Other than that, we definitely found it a different region of India, the vehicles, roads and general infrastructure felt a lot smoother running than other places we’d been. The accommodation was subpar, probably exaggerated by the previous night in Delhi being a whole different ball game for value for money. We’d found a new food in the area as well we’d not seen before, basically a paratha and egg, rolled up and filled with veg and optional meat, ketchup and onion. Only 20 odd rupees and nice and filling!

One part of the bustling markey

Eastern India 'Rolls'. Nothing healthy about this.

One 'Chicken Internet' please.

So that’s it. The grand finale of India. We got a taxi to Kolkata airport, used up all of our remaining rupees on some coffee, sandwiches and magazines and got ready for a short flight, only around 2 hours, where we’d hit our next culture. As much as we’d enjoyed India, it was time, we both needed a change and we’d spent longer than we’d originally planned already. This was it. Goodbye India!

So long and thanks for all the chai!