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Oct. 27th, 2010 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soloprojectLast weekend, my friend Ricardo and I decided to go to Kolkata, a city in the state of West Bengal, India. About three weeks ago, we were just kind of hanging out at home drinking and talking about India and Ricardo suddenly went, "Oh Bunny, come to Kolkata with me." Impulsively, I said yes! I mean, what did I hope to find in this place?
- Mother Theresa's tomb
- Palace of Queen-Empress Victoria
- Home of Rabindranath Tagore
- Temple to Kali
- Howrah Bridge and epic Howrah Train Station
- Old school Britisher-era cars still functioning perfectly
- Colonial-style high tea
And although we were three days only in this area, we managed to get in a good chunk of all of this and more.
However, the main objective of this trip was to go to DARJEELING. In the course of my research for heading there, I was feeling a little dismayed. To get to Darjeeling, it's a 9-10 hour train to jumping point New Jalpaiguri, after which it is about 3 hours by shared jeep up the mountain to Darjeeling.
Frankly, I'm a little obsessed with the idea of Darjeeling, not only for tea and the fact that you can see the Himalayan range in Tibet from there, but also because of the TOY TRAIN, also a Unesco heritage icon, the tiny steam locomotive that chugs up the hill for seven hours to Darjeeling (as opposed to the 3 hour jeep ride). I wanted to ride this toy train very badly but for this trek to Darjeeling and back in three days to work, it will have to wait for next time. The next time I explore Darjeeling, I will go in the summer and head straight into Sikkim, do some icy water rafting and trekking and then into Nepal.
We arrived in Kolkata early and separately. A direct flight is about 2.5 hours and I was about .5 hours behind Ricardo but we made good time as he had already procured the pre-paid taxi into the city by the time I arrived. We went to Park St., kind of a chi-chi main street to meet up with a couple of friends of Ricardo's named Payal and Rinji, sweet ladies who fed us and brought us around to Victoria Memorial.
Kolkata is very different from Mumbai. In some areas, it's very modern and in others, it's just the worst kind of squalor you can imagine. There are poor people everywhere, amidst a lot of people still all caught up in upper-class gentry type lifestyle. Kolkata was the site of the British East India Company and also where the Bengali Renaissance began to uplift the middle-class. At first sight though, it's bit cleaner than Mumbai and a little more spread out and the buildings are a bit better maintained.
Second class coach
Anyway, after visiting the memorial, Ricardo and I had to dash away to grab a quick bite and charge to Howrah Station to catch a train at 4 PM to New Jalgaipuri. I had tried to buy the tickets online but unfortunately they were waitlisted (that means that if space doesn't clear up by ETD, then it's cancelled and you can't get on.) So we bought second class tickets--"steerage"-- and got on the train at 4 in the afternoon. 10 hours of sitting on the floor or standing in a coach packed with people, some of them sleeping in the cargo shelves! For me, it was a good experience, a genuine travel story and a real slice of local life. It didn't bother me at all, although there were very few women on the car (even a couple of babies here and there), many Indian guys are kind of repressed and will often convey shock or awe and some very blatant staring or will even try to cop a feel if they see a foreigner lady all up in their bizniz. There was definitely a moment there where what I thought was perhaps some chivalry, was definitely them trying to touch my thigh or my butt.
We arrived, creaky and exhausted, in NJP around 2 in the morning. It was a full moon and it was BEAUTIFUL. You could feel the air was cool and crisp. Unfortunately, Ricardo and I could not find a ride to Darjeeling right away. The locals blithely informed us that jeeps would only take off at 4 in the morning. We stopped to get some butter toast and chai at a "hotel" which is what people in small towns refer to what is actually just kind of a diner. Some big stations have "retiring rooms" or "dorms" but it depends on your ticket. 2nd class would definitely be much grosser than sitting in the upper class waiting room: there is less regard for the blatant strewing about of human wastes.
After a futile attempt to take an autorickshaw to town to the bus station where Lonely Planet lied and said there would be a bus to Darjeeling every half hour (what it really was, was half hour after 6 AM) that set us back 130 rupees, we headed back to the train station on a 100 rupee BICYCLE RICKSHAW, a trip that was took at twice the time it took going there on an autorickshaw. But we sucked up our pride and came to wait until 4 AM for a shared jeep to be filled--thankfully, it wasn't long and Ricardo and I passed out for almost the whole ride. We did stop at a reststop and then it was about ten hysterical minutes of watching the sunrise, the sky clear and the HIMALAYAS CAME INTO VIEW.
This picture is not photoshopped!!!
Bhutia Busty Goompa, through the trees, Himalayas in the back...beautiful.
We arrived in Darjeeling around 7AM and immediately took off in search of Gompas, or Buddhist monastaries. This one in particular, the Bhutia Busty Goompa, houses the ORIGINAL Tibetan Book of the Dead. You can't see it without official permission but the temple and surroundings are fair game. The murals and the prayer wheels are beautiful and the area is a pleasant hike and the entire thing is crowned by the view of Khangchengdzonga, 3rd highest peak of the Himalayan range.
We walked all over the hill, passing through the main roads with markets and having a snack. Then we decided to go to the zoo and see what we can find along the way. Darjeeling has many fancy old Colonial houses because it used to be the entry point for the British East India Company to Sikkim and is a hill station and was a sanatorium at one point. We stopped off at one beautiful look out where the sky was perfectly clear and we met a French guy, 63 years old or so, who'd been living in India for 20 years and in Darjeeling for the last 3. He had a lot of crazy stories and it was so great; his personal philosophy on India and his fanatical adoration of it was really interesting. I will write them all down some other time as I tried to absorb all of that I could.
Ricardo and I went to the zoo and kind of wearily stared at the red panda and some cool looking monkeys and stopped to eat momos (Tibetan or Nepali local dish, basically gyoza) and rest. Then one quick peek at SHHHHHERE KHAAAAAN, an actualfax Bengal Tiger and we left, inspired and determined to go to Tiger Hill about 10 KM from Darjeeling where you can see Mt. Everest. We paid 800 rupees for a car to bring us there because normally you have to take a share jeep or carpool at 4 am to go to Tiger Hill and when we got there, you see why: TH in the afternoon is the time when all the clouds start grazing the hill. It's the highest lookout point and after 20 miserable and cold minutes and Ricardo's intense dismay, we decided we had to go. Our day in Darjeeling was over and we had to make back to NJP to catch another 9-10 hour train back to Kolkata at 9 PM.
Cloud-covered Tiger Hill
We tried to get a jeep from Ghoom but it was too hard so we went back to Darjeeling (and the driver was too nice to us, I guess he felt our disappointment). We found a jeep to NJP on the road and got on and it was a twisty, miserable ride down the mountain. We were hungry, exhausted and carsick but we got there at 7:30 to Siliguri and was at the station at 8 PM.
Neither the first nor last of creative names in Darjeeling, let alone India.
Unfortunately, we had waitlisted tickets again and the line was too horrible to navigate so at the last minute, we just decided to jump the train when it left at 9 PM, again in the second class coach. Ricardo was really worried but I was determined to make it back and was about 90% sure that no one ever checks tickets in second class. And I was right. The ride back was easier than the ride going simply because there were less people. I managed to get a seat and slept for most of this ride-- not comfortably but I apparently have this talent for just sleeping wherever. I was more or less rested when we came but it would kick me in the gut much later.
We arrived in Kolkata around 7 AM and booked it out of Sealdah station so fast. Ricardo was insistent on finding a lodge or something that would let us shower, as we had not for nearly three days. But since it wasn't going to happen, we used the waiting rooms and I just quickly washed my face, changed out of my stinky train clothes and went to get a snack and brush my teeth.
Ricardo and I then headed to the Motherhouse, the home of the Sisters of Charity, where the tomb of Mother Theresa is located. It's a pocket of silence in the middle of the city and you can see her personal effects and her room in all its simplicity. Also interesting are the politics surrounding Mother Theresa...locals insist she's well beloved but there is of course, some struggle with the fact that she is a beloved Catholic figure in a predominantly Hindu place, even one as diverse as Kolkata.
We then headed towards Park St. to find something to eat (at a KFC, LOL) and then to a cab to Mullik Ghat Flower Market, kind of an intense sensory experience-- imagine being trapped in an alley with every rotting organic corpse just barely masked by the most intense flower smells, tons of them. Then we walked across Howrah Bridge to take pictures of the station (a really cool looking station) and look at the ghat, a set of stairs leading into the river where people bathe, pray and basically do everything that requires water.
We wandered right into Barabazaar and the old Chinatown. There's a new one that's across town but the old one is kind of a humbling experience because it's packed with people selling tons of China-made stuff in bulk (really the reason why it's called Chinatown, the Chinese already all moved away) and people burrowing into the garbage piles to make little homes for themselves. We wanted to find some Bengali food but eventually kind of gave up and headed back to Park St. to have one last (still Indian) meal and then take a cab to the airport to catch our 6 PM flight back to Bombay. Tired, stinky and hungry, we slept for most of the four hour flight (because it landed in Nagpur before Bombay) and got home around 10 PM.
And the story continues: work the next day!
Don't worry, it doesn't end there because I am going to Pune on Saturday, just a day trip and then on November 3, I am going to DELHI-AGRA-RAJASTAN!!! Taj Mahal, here I come!
- Mother Theresa's tomb
- Palace of Queen-Empress Victoria
- Home of Rabindranath Tagore
- Temple to Kali
- Howrah Bridge and epic Howrah Train Station
- Old school Britisher-era cars still functioning perfectly
- Colonial-style high tea
And although we were three days only in this area, we managed to get in a good chunk of all of this and more.
However, the main objective of this trip was to go to DARJEELING. In the course of my research for heading there, I was feeling a little dismayed. To get to Darjeeling, it's a 9-10 hour train to jumping point New Jalpaiguri, after which it is about 3 hours by shared jeep up the mountain to Darjeeling.
Frankly, I'm a little obsessed with the idea of Darjeeling, not only for tea and the fact that you can see the Himalayan range in Tibet from there, but also because of the TOY TRAIN, also a Unesco heritage icon, the tiny steam locomotive that chugs up the hill for seven hours to Darjeeling (as opposed to the 3 hour jeep ride). I wanted to ride this toy train very badly but for this trek to Darjeeling and back in three days to work, it will have to wait for next time. The next time I explore Darjeeling, I will go in the summer and head straight into Sikkim, do some icy water rafting and trekking and then into Nepal.
We arrived in Kolkata early and separately. A direct flight is about 2.5 hours and I was about .5 hours behind Ricardo but we made good time as he had already procured the pre-paid taxi into the city by the time I arrived. We went to Park St., kind of a chi-chi main street to meet up with a couple of friends of Ricardo's named Payal and Rinji, sweet ladies who fed us and brought us around to Victoria Memorial.
Kolkata is very different from Mumbai. In some areas, it's very modern and in others, it's just the worst kind of squalor you can imagine. There are poor people everywhere, amidst a lot of people still all caught up in upper-class gentry type lifestyle. Kolkata was the site of the British East India Company and also where the Bengali Renaissance began to uplift the middle-class. At first sight though, it's bit cleaner than Mumbai and a little more spread out and the buildings are a bit better maintained.
Second class coach
Anyway, after visiting the memorial, Ricardo and I had to dash away to grab a quick bite and charge to Howrah Station to catch a train at 4 PM to New Jalgaipuri. I had tried to buy the tickets online but unfortunately they were waitlisted (that means that if space doesn't clear up by ETD, then it's cancelled and you can't get on.) So we bought second class tickets--"steerage"-- and got on the train at 4 in the afternoon. 10 hours of sitting on the floor or standing in a coach packed with people, some of them sleeping in the cargo shelves! For me, it was a good experience, a genuine travel story and a real slice of local life. It didn't bother me at all, although there were very few women on the car (even a couple of babies here and there), many Indian guys are kind of repressed and will often convey shock or awe and some very blatant staring or will even try to cop a feel if they see a foreigner lady all up in their bizniz. There was definitely a moment there where what I thought was perhaps some chivalry, was definitely them trying to touch my thigh or my butt.
We arrived, creaky and exhausted, in NJP around 2 in the morning. It was a full moon and it was BEAUTIFUL. You could feel the air was cool and crisp. Unfortunately, Ricardo and I could not find a ride to Darjeeling right away. The locals blithely informed us that jeeps would only take off at 4 in the morning. We stopped to get some butter toast and chai at a "hotel" which is what people in small towns refer to what is actually just kind of a diner. Some big stations have "retiring rooms" or "dorms" but it depends on your ticket. 2nd class would definitely be much grosser than sitting in the upper class waiting room: there is less regard for the blatant strewing about of human wastes.
After a futile attempt to take an autorickshaw to town to the bus station where Lonely Planet lied and said there would be a bus to Darjeeling every half hour (what it really was, was half hour after 6 AM) that set us back 130 rupees, we headed back to the train station on a 100 rupee BICYCLE RICKSHAW, a trip that was took at twice the time it took going there on an autorickshaw. But we sucked up our pride and came to wait until 4 AM for a shared jeep to be filled--thankfully, it wasn't long and Ricardo and I passed out for almost the whole ride. We did stop at a reststop and then it was about ten hysterical minutes of watching the sunrise, the sky clear and the HIMALAYAS CAME INTO VIEW.
This picture is not photoshopped!!!
Bhutia Busty Goompa, through the trees, Himalayas in the back...beautiful.
We arrived in Darjeeling around 7AM and immediately took off in search of Gompas, or Buddhist monastaries. This one in particular, the Bhutia Busty Goompa, houses the ORIGINAL Tibetan Book of the Dead. You can't see it without official permission but the temple and surroundings are fair game. The murals and the prayer wheels are beautiful and the area is a pleasant hike and the entire thing is crowned by the view of Khangchengdzonga, 3rd highest peak of the Himalayan range.
We walked all over the hill, passing through the main roads with markets and having a snack. Then we decided to go to the zoo and see what we can find along the way. Darjeeling has many fancy old Colonial houses because it used to be the entry point for the British East India Company to Sikkim and is a hill station and was a sanatorium at one point. We stopped off at one beautiful look out where the sky was perfectly clear and we met a French guy, 63 years old or so, who'd been living in India for 20 years and in Darjeeling for the last 3. He had a lot of crazy stories and it was so great; his personal philosophy on India and his fanatical adoration of it was really interesting. I will write them all down some other time as I tried to absorb all of that I could.
Ricardo and I went to the zoo and kind of wearily stared at the red panda and some cool looking monkeys and stopped to eat momos (Tibetan or Nepali local dish, basically gyoza) and rest. Then one quick peek at SHHHHHERE KHAAAAAN, an actualfax Bengal Tiger and we left, inspired and determined to go to Tiger Hill about 10 KM from Darjeeling where you can see Mt. Everest. We paid 800 rupees for a car to bring us there because normally you have to take a share jeep or carpool at 4 am to go to Tiger Hill and when we got there, you see why: TH in the afternoon is the time when all the clouds start grazing the hill. It's the highest lookout point and after 20 miserable and cold minutes and Ricardo's intense dismay, we decided we had to go. Our day in Darjeeling was over and we had to make back to NJP to catch another 9-10 hour train back to Kolkata at 9 PM.
Cloud-covered Tiger Hill
We tried to get a jeep from Ghoom but it was too hard so we went back to Darjeeling (and the driver was too nice to us, I guess he felt our disappointment). We found a jeep to NJP on the road and got on and it was a twisty, miserable ride down the mountain. We were hungry, exhausted and carsick but we got there at 7:30 to Siliguri and was at the station at 8 PM.
Neither the first nor last of creative names in Darjeeling, let alone India.
Unfortunately, we had waitlisted tickets again and the line was too horrible to navigate so at the last minute, we just decided to jump the train when it left at 9 PM, again in the second class coach. Ricardo was really worried but I was determined to make it back and was about 90% sure that no one ever checks tickets in second class. And I was right. The ride back was easier than the ride going simply because there were less people. I managed to get a seat and slept for most of this ride-- not comfortably but I apparently have this talent for just sleeping wherever. I was more or less rested when we came but it would kick me in the gut much later.
We arrived in Kolkata around 7 AM and booked it out of Sealdah station so fast. Ricardo was insistent on finding a lodge or something that would let us shower, as we had not for nearly three days. But since it wasn't going to happen, we used the waiting rooms and I just quickly washed my face, changed out of my stinky train clothes and went to get a snack and brush my teeth.
Ricardo and I then headed to the Motherhouse, the home of the Sisters of Charity, where the tomb of Mother Theresa is located. It's a pocket of silence in the middle of the city and you can see her personal effects and her room in all its simplicity. Also interesting are the politics surrounding Mother Theresa...locals insist she's well beloved but there is of course, some struggle with the fact that she is a beloved Catholic figure in a predominantly Hindu place, even one as diverse as Kolkata.
We then headed towards Park St. to find something to eat (at a KFC, LOL) and then to a cab to Mullik Ghat Flower Market, kind of an intense sensory experience-- imagine being trapped in an alley with every rotting organic corpse just barely masked by the most intense flower smells, tons of them. Then we walked across Howrah Bridge to take pictures of the station (a really cool looking station) and look at the ghat, a set of stairs leading into the river where people bathe, pray and basically do everything that requires water.
We wandered right into Barabazaar and the old Chinatown. There's a new one that's across town but the old one is kind of a humbling experience because it's packed with people selling tons of China-made stuff in bulk (really the reason why it's called Chinatown, the Chinese already all moved away) and people burrowing into the garbage piles to make little homes for themselves. We wanted to find some Bengali food but eventually kind of gave up and headed back to Park St. to have one last (still Indian) meal and then take a cab to the airport to catch our 6 PM flight back to Bombay. Tired, stinky and hungry, we slept for most of the four hour flight (because it landed in Nagpur before Bombay) and got home around 10 PM.
And the story continues: work the next day!
Don't worry, it doesn't end there because I am going to Pune on Saturday, just a day trip and then on November 3, I am going to DELHI-AGRA-RAJASTAN!!! Taj Mahal, here I come!
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Date: 2010-10-27 04:19 pm (UTC)