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Kolkata was our last stop in India before we moved on to Nepal. We’d heard and read that this was going to be an intense end to our time in India. However, Kolkata is remarkably unobtrusive: I think that I was hassled by one taxi driver over our two nights there (no tuk-tuk drivers, yay!). In fact, if I had to live in India – and this is a really, really big “if”, like a million-dollar-a-year salary "if" – I’d live in Kolkata.
Granted, as in Mumbai, we didn’t visit the slums, but Kolkata has a fair amount of street signs, nice architecture in parts, and a public transit system that is not overly difficult to follow. We visited several of the popular sights, but unfortunately inadvertently chose Monday for our day of visit when all he major sights were closed for the week. We still had a nice day.
Our first stop on the “Island of Attractions” was St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral, built in 1847. We next headed over to Victoria Memorial Hall, which was a monumental hall built in dedication to Queen Victoria after her death in 1901. According to our guidebook, no
actual British funds were used in its construction, but rather funds from various Indian states seeking favors from the British. I’m no historian, so I can’t say if those favors were ever realized, but the monument is a beautiful piece of architecture. In my opinion, were it not for the Taj Mahal, which not many architectural structures in the world can compare, it would be India’s finest building.
We spent the rest of the day leisurely strolling the Kolkata streets and rested up a bit in our hotel after spending an afternoon in 111-degree heat. We then visited the Sisters of Charity’s Motherhouse, which was Mother Teresa’s home and base of operations in Kolkata. It was a somberly moving experience watching devotees pay their respects at Mother Teresa’s tomb, which is located in the home. Visitors can visit her room, which remains intact behind a glass wall. On the wall is a picture of Mother Teresa’s meeting at the Vatican with Pope John Paul II. We visited a small museum there which provides the history of her life and work. I admit, I had to keep telling Klaudia I had something in my eye during the visit.
We headed to dinner afterwards for some traditional Bengali food - we had Shukto and Yellow Dahl. It was tasty, but, at this point, we were pretty much over Indian food and left the restaurant a tad disenchanted. Honestly, we were even debating KFC before we walked into the restaurant, but thought that would be a travesty on our last night in India.
The next day, we awoke commenting how peacefully uneventful our last night in India was and what a great place Kolkata was, so unlike the rest of it. Of course, we’d spoken too soon: we would receive a suitable send off.
It started the moment we walked out our hotel room and were attached by a swarm of taxi drivers pushing through each other to get to us. We were still a bit sleepy, so the surrealistic nature of this attack was like something out of a dream, but we managed to randomly negotiate a fee for our taxi, from 700 rupees to 300, and stuck our backpacks into the trunk of a taxi whose driver we’d not seen till we entered the taxi. Some man standing in
front of the hotel charged forward to my side of the taxi and abruptly asked me for a tip.
“For what?” I asked. I’d seen him for the first time.
“Open door.”
“What open door?”
“To hotel,” he said. I closed the taxi window. That would be my farewell to India.
We arrived at the airport. Upon exiting the taxi, the driver demanded 100 rupees more. I told him we’d agreed on a price and he could call the cops. He frustratingly threw my bag out of the trunk; I grabbed Klaudia’s so he didn’t have to strain himself again and noticed that her pack was doused in gasoline. I looked into the trunk and a layer of gasoline sloshed from one end of the trunk to the other.
“You should give me 100 rupees, you idiot,” I said riled. He looked in the trunk, shrugged his shoulders, got into the taxi and drove off. Inside the airport, even the café cashiers kept giving us the incorrect prices on things. Had it happened once, I’d figure it was just coincidence, but it
happened every time we’d try to buy something. Could this happen at an airport? I had no idea anymore. We got on our plane to Kathmandu and sighed in relief.
In my Kochi blog, I’d stated that everyone we’d met either hated or loved India, without much ambivalence. What camp do we fall into? Well, in all honesty, I’m glad I’d seen India; and in terms of travel training, I don’t think there is a better place in Asia. However, I won’t be extending my visa anytime soon (head bobble, then wink).
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