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Published: September 18th 2006
I'm typing this up with a few hours to kill ahead of my train journey to Siliguri and then a jeep trip to Darjeeling in the West Bengal Hills.
I've been in Kolkata for 3 days and I must say I have enjoyed my time here. I thought the city had a lot of charm, with an abundance of old colonial buildings, tree lined streets, and friendly people. The city itself sits upon the Hooghly River, with the huge Howrah Bridge (450m long)spanning across. The Howrah bridge itself has a Sydney Harbour Bridge feel to it - apparently 100,000 vehicles use it each day, making it the busiest bridge in the world. It was certainly chaos when we went across it by taxi when we first arrived - absolute gridlock with much blarring and honking of horns! Unfortunately you can't take any photos of it - I presume in case anyone is planning to blow it up!
Another strange thing about Kolkata - the lack of auto-rickshaws. I'm so used to coming out of a station and being swarmed by a hungry pack of rickshaw-wallahs all wanting to take you to "the best hotel", I didn't know what to
Me at Eden Gardens Cricket Ground
Nice to have the whole stadium to myself!do when we walked out of Howrah Station and being greeted by a fleet of New York style bright yellow taxis! A pleasant change!
Our hotel (Hotel Naleem) was no great shakes (putting it mildly), with dusty, musty rooms, and cockroaches and cob-webs aplenty, but it was ludicrously cheap (just over 2 quid a night) so beggars can't be choosers. Lizabeth and I thought we'd go for a budget option for a change after our splurges on more mid-range hotels in Varanasi and Kajuharo, but I can safely say the experiment has now been concluded and I'm looking forward to going "up-market" when I hit Darjeeling!
Kolkata (or Calcutta) has had a lot of bad press, and my impression of the place before I arrived was one of squalor and poverty. The Kolkata I saw when I arrived was thoroughly modern, with old colonial architecture mixing with plush high-rise buildings and air-conditioned shopping centres. Admittedly, there is still a lot of human depravation around (for example a pretty rank open-air rubbish tip was 10 minutes from our hotels with people scrapping around for food), and stopping in taxi at traffic lights normally meant at least 2 beggars reaching
in through the window for money.
Our first full day involved a trip to the Indian Museum, with the most bizarre and macabre array of stuffed animals I think I've ever seen. Lizabeth hated it and I have to say it was a pretty moth-eaten and tawdry collection, with a mis-shapen cheetah, lots of frogs and toads in fromaldahyde (sorry for spelling) and other creatures who looked like they had met the taxadermist at least 100 years ago.
To cheer ourselves up in the afternoon we went to the Botanical Gardens on the other side of the Hooghly river to where we were staying. It was a very tranquil spot, with trees and plants from all over the world. The main attraction is a 200 year old banyan tree. Banyan trees are weird in that the roots grow from the boughs of the tree down into the ground to help support the thing as it continues to grow outwards. The branches cover an area some 70 metres across and it's still growing. I've got to say it's the strangest tree I've ever seen!
Because we were in such a piss-poor hotel we thought we'd treat ourselves to
some nice food and went one of the best restaurants in town - Peter Cat. It was a dimly lit place, lots of atmosphere and absolutely chocka. It had a sort of timeless elegance - the maitre d'hotel there to greet you, the low hanging lamp shades, it probably hasn't changed much in 20 or 30 years but that just added to the character of the place. I pushed the boat out and had a mixed grill of different kebabs (chicken/meat etc) - really good after so many vegetable thalis! Would recommend that place to anyone.
The following day I was on my own - poor Lizabeth had had a bad nights sleep in our crummy hotel (more cockroachs) and didn't fancy braving the Kolkata streets. We arranged to meet at sunset for a river cruise along the Hooghly. I thought I needed the exercise so walked everywhere - it seemed like a good idea at the time but by the time I'd finished seeing the sights my tee-shirt was saturated in sweat - not nice!
First off I went to Eden Gardens cricket stadium, home of the Cricket Association of Bengal. As you all know I love
cricket, and it was brilliant to visit one of the real meccas of the game - it was just a shame there was no match on. I threw a security guard 30 rupees to let me in a take me on a brief tour and let me take some pictures. It's a massive ground with four huge floodlight stantions looming over the stands, with cage-like fencing protecting the players from the spectators. You could imagine an electric atmosphere at the ground for a day/night match under the floodlights.
Kolkata has a massive park bang in centre of town called The Maidan -similar but I would say slightly bigger than Hyde Park. There are many cricket clubs on or around The Maidan, and I had a net with one bunch of blokes having a pre-season practice (from The Telegraph Cricket Club). Unfortunately I got spanked everywhere by the batsmen - nice to know that doesn't just happen when I played for Grosvenor!
After Eden Gardens, I went to St Johns Church with an interesting overgrown cemetry including The British Memorial commemorating the people that died in The Black Hole of Calcutta. The incident related to an uprising led by
TheBlack Hole of Calcutta Memorial - Kolkata
You could walk past this and not even realise it's there. the local nawab in 1756, not happy with the growth of British power in the area. They overran the city, and imprisoned dozens of the British aristocracy in a tiny cramped cell beneath Fort William. By the morning 40 or so people had died of suffocation - but the British greatly exaggerated the number of dead in order to drum up moral outrage back in Blighty, and the legend of The Black Hole of Calcutta was born. It was interesting anyway seeing this memorial tucked away in an secluded church courtyard.
In the afternoon I visited the Victoria Memorial at the bottom end of The Maidan. It is a huge building made of marble built to commemorate the death of Queen Victoria in 1902 (a cross between the Taj Mahal and St Pauls Cathedral). It took over twenty years to complete and it really dominates the surrounding landscape. There is much of interest inside, with a fascinating exhibition documenting the history of Kolkata through the first British settlers and the East India Company right up to independence in 1947 (on 15th August funnily enough - my birthday!). There are also some lovely water colour paintings by someone called Margaret
Eden which take up a large room in the memorial. Definitely worth seeing and a great place to visit and dwell on the days of the Raj and when "the empire was great".
When I met up with Lizabeth I was looking forward to a nice boat trip at sunset. Unfortunately there were no boats to take us anywhere - just a shrug of ther shoulders from the man at the ferry counter saying "maybe next week" - typical Indian reliability! We cheered ourselves up with another posh meal - this time at Sourav Ganguly's (the Indian cricketer) restaurant off Park Street. I actually ate king prawns and spicy pork curry!!! I was reminiscing with the waiters asking why poor Sourav wasn't in the Indian team at the moment - "Greg Chappell - not nice man" was the verdict. Still when the bill came it was my most expensive meal to date - over a tenner a head - so maybe "poor Sourav" will be able to survive off the takings of his posh restaurant. Great fun there though - especially the "
"cricket ball effect" leather menus!!
So a fun few days in Kolkata for me - Lizabeth didn't like it though. I think the difference between the haves and have-nots is more pronounced here than anywhere else I've seen in India so far, with the cool trendy bars, shops and restaurants on Park Street only a stones throw from real squalor and people rummaging through rubbish for food. That's what she found most difficult to come to terms with anyway. I guess you have to hope that investing in a certain area, tidying the streets and improving things by building new anemities will have long term benefits for surrounding areas also, even if they are gradual. Maybe I'm being too optimistic...but I hope not.
Next stop Darjeeling - boy am I looking forward to a decent cuppa!!
Photos tomorrow hopefully.
Sean
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Clarkey
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Hi Doogy. Made the mistake of signing on for a quick read of your blog before an early night and it's now about 4am! Even reading "War and Peace" didn't take this long!! Been fascinating so far though and made me want to see India. Take care of yourself.xxx