Last of India

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Our last 2 days in Kolkata my dad and I did a bunch of last minute shopping, visited a couple places, and saw some pandals. Pandals are for the Durga Puja festival, the biggest one in Bengal, which starts the evening of the 4th. So literally right after we leave! Lame! Really disappointing! But at least we got to see the pandals. They are structures made out of bamboo and then decorated with cloth or clay or basically anything. They're special shrines for the Goddess Durga. So probably during the festival it's mostly just prayer, but it still would've been cool to see!
Kolkata: We visited the Marble Palace, Nakhoda Masjid Mosque, Victoria Memorial, and St. Paul's Cathedral. The Victoria Memorial looked really cool from outside and inside had galleries with a bunch of pictures/drawings of different places in India and a whole section with the history of Kolkata. We didn't have much time though so we didn't go through it in as much depth as we would've liked. St. Paul's Cathedral was a really cool looking church from the outside. There wasn't much to see though. The Marble Palace isn't open to visitors unless you get special permission so we couldn't go in. They don't even let you take pictures! Around that area we saw more of the Kolkata that we were expecting to see. Lots of people just living on the streets, all their belongings right with them. We were in a lot poorer part of town (around the Palace and Mosque).
Then on Saturday October 4 my dad and I both left, me for Africa, him for Singapore for meetings on his way home. It was a great week with him in India and it was really good to get to see him after so long! Thanks Dad for visiting me and thanks Mom for arranging the week! Wish you could've been there too!

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