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Published: August 14th 2007
Arriving back in India we realised how much we were going to miss Nepal only minutes after crossing the border. At the Nepal side of the border the immigration officer simply shook his head sympathetically when we told him we were leaving his country and returning to India. Whilst on the Indian side we were met with an empty immigration office and told to wait there for 2 hours until the officer returned from lunch. We assume he ate at the lovely place we saw by the side of the road where a man was cooking a whole chicken with a small blow torch. After arguing that we wouldn't leave town, we were allowed to find a hotel and book a train for the next day. Booking the train was a bit of an event, with us at the centre of it all. More people crowded round to see what we were doing than crowded around the trains when they arrived. Some of these people tried to help us, but really this turned out to be more of a hindrance. Finally, we managed to officially return to India and get a train booked for the next morning. After a ridiculously hot
night, when we both lost a few pounds in sweat, we left at 10am.
19 hours later, we arrived in Calcutta. After sleeping for most of the morning we spent the afternoon just wandering the streets nearby, which in itself was a bit of an achievement after our previous attempts at just walking around in India. Calcutta seemed a much nicer and more modern city than both Delhi and Agra, and the people are happier to just let us go about our own business (but still not as nice as Nepalese people). In the evening we looked for a restaurant recommended in the Rough Guide, but it turned out that we couldn't eat there as it was closed due to an explosion next door, which killed the owner of the restaurant.
On the second day we experienced the full force of the monsoon for the first time since being away. Whilst sitting in a cafe for a couple of hours at breakfast, the streets around us went form having a few puddles to being knee deep. 80mm of rain had fallen in 3 hours in the morning, which seems like a lot, but shouldn't have made the water
as deep as it was. At first we tried to get around it and hired a human-pulled rickshaw to (literally) ferry us around. Afterwards we decided to embrace it all, as most people were doing and waded through the streets. We spent the rest of this day sorting out our travel arrangements to get us to Sri Lanka and beyond.
Third day (today) we got up late, and thankfully the floods had subsided so we did a little sight seeing. The main place we visited was the Victoria Memorial, at the end of a huge park. Basically it was a museum dedicated to British Imperialism and British Rule, a perfect place to go the day before Indian Independence Day. Tried to visit St. Pauls Cathedral but it was shut, and by then we'd had enough of sightseeing so went to a cafe and read the papers. Both of the stories that effected us (explosion and floods) had made front page news on both days.
Tomorrow morning we are flying to Chennai (Madras) for a couple of nights before our flight to Sri Lanka on Friday.
More Soon
Neil and Rosie
xx
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Robin
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Clive
Clive of India, (1725 - 1774) established the military and political supremacy of the East India Company in Southern India and Bengal. By conquering the locals. Also Derek and Clive - Peter Cook and Dudley More. Probably not as famous in Calcutta, but funnier than the earlier one.