26th-27th December: Exploring Kolkata

There are no Crawl projects running on Mondays and Tuesdays and we therefore decided to spend the Monday night in a hotel in Kolkata. By the time we had started looking for hotels, most of the decent budget and mid-range hotels were full. We ended up finding a great deal for a very comfortable hotel. The temptation was hard to resist and so we yielded to it, justifying the splurge as being a Christmas present to ourselves. We were thus very excited on our way to Kolkata at the prospect of discovering the hotel. We walked from Sealdah train station to the Chowringhee area. Chowringee Road was, as we would always see it, very busy and full of stalls selling a surprising variety of items (such as clothes, souvenirs, glasses, and phone covers). By that point we were wondering whether, given its central location, the hotel might be very noisy.

Our initial concerns quickly vanished once, having made our way through the sumptuous hall, we were offered tea and biscuits by the pool while they finished preparing our room. The well-designed courtyard was miraculously quiet. Service was impeccable, and I really enjoyed the saris that the female members of the staff were wearing. Our room exceeded our expectations: it was spacious and bright, and more importantly had a hot shower with great pressure in the bathroom! Unlike most luxury hotels, it had a lot of style, with well-aged furniture and carpets.

The restaurants inside the hotel were slightly over our budget so we ventured into the busy streets of Kolkata towards Waterloo street. Amber turned out to be a great choice: the food was tasty and the staff very friendly. As had become customary, we ordered some dal (lentils), veg. curry, pulao rice, and a paratha (Indian-style crepe).

We then started our visit of the area with St John's Church, where we found the Mausoleum of Job Charnock, who founded the British settlement that eventually grew into Kolkata.

St. John's Church

Mausoleum of Job Charnock

We later walked past the beautiful and very colourful building of the High Court and the Raj Bhavan. Modeled on an Edwardian estate, the Raj Bhavan is now the modest residence of the governor of West Bengal. Several games of cricket were going on nearby, and we carefully made our way across without getting hit by a ball (they sometimes use proper ones).

Raj Bhavan

Back at the hotel, we had a quick swim in the very fresh pool (it was winter, after all) before heading to the Victoria Memorial for sunset. When we arrived sunset had already began, but we nevertheless enjoyed the pink and purple sky reflecting over the pool in front of the Memorial. A few people were strolling along the alleys of the gardens, but it was mostly quiet, for once.

Walking on the Maidan

One of the numerous cricket games on the Maidan

Main facade of  the Victoria Memorial

For dinner, we went back to the same place but went to their second floor restaurant this time, where the menu is similar but the decor is more appropriate for the evening. We then watched a DVD in our room before collapsing on the very comfortable bed.  

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Breakfast was included and we definitely made the most of it: we tried almost all of the Indian dishes they offered, as well as the western food that we had not had for a long time. I was particularly glad to have dosas and idli (made from fermented rice) of which my gourmand belly had kept good memories since my trip to the south of India six years ago. Determined to get the most out of our deal, we shamelessly spent quite some time in the restaurant and outlasted all other customers.

We had asked to push check-out back to 3pm and thus enjoyed the comfort of the hotel for another couple of hours. We dragged ourselves from the restaurant where we'd had breakfast to the sun-loungers by the pool, where we spent about 3 hours. I immersed myself in a short version of the Dalai Lama's book on Self-Transformation, while John read the Dalai Lama's memoirs. It was pretty hot under the winter sun and we enjoyed a refreshing swim in the pool. Time flew by and we had a last hot shower before leaving the hotel (in our flat, we had to warm up buckets of water to wash). Before leaving the hotel, we went to their business lounge to use the Internet to upload pictures for the blog (and managed to talk our way into free internet access too).

On our way to Saint Paul's Cathedral (near the Victoria Memorial), we had delicious pastries that we had saved from breakfast. The beautiful building was lit by garlands to celebrate Christmas. As with the Victoria Memorial, St John's Church, or the High Court, the English architecture was quite eye-catching and surprising in the surroundings. The entrance to the altar was blocked by curious visitors. Nevertheless, we could see that a service was ongoing so we left quietly.

Saint Paul's Cathedral decorated for Christmas 

We walked towards Sealdah and stopped on the way in a small restaurant. Since our options were quite limited in Khardah, we were eager to have dinner "in town".  Food was nothing special but probably better than we would have cooked ourselves. As the remainder of the walk to Sealdah was not particularly pleasant, we decided to take a taxi. It took us a bit of time to find one as most of them turned us down, although we were not quite sure why. Once at the train station, we did not take the first train to Khardah, which was already quite full.  Instead we took the next one, which was not scheduled to leave for another 10 minutes, where we were pleased to find a seat.

I thought that there might not be many people on the train as it was past 7pm.  As it turned out, we had hit rush hour and this was probably our worst experience on a local train. People would get on the train at each station and somehow manage to squeeze themselves on even when it seemed that there was not a square inch spare. Every bit of space was put to use. It went beyond everything I could have imagined when thinking about a crowded train. The person sitting next to us told us that this was the same every day during rush hour. I could only imagine what a nightmare this would be for claustrophobic people.  There was not much we could do anyway (and compared to those poor people standing, we were at least seating). Contrary to my (very optimistic) expectations, not many people got off the train at Khardah and many were getting on the train as we were trying to leave. John managed to make his way through but I was struggling to go past. I heard him shout and suddenly people parted. I was able to jump out before the train started moving again. The only casualty was my shirt, as part of it had been torn in the battle. We swore never to travel during rush hour again.  We were taken by surprise and did not think about taking pictures or a video, but you will see good examples of slightly less crazily crowded trains in upcoming posts.

We had a quick session on the internet before re-acclimating ourselves to our wooden beds.