Blogs from West Bengal, India, Asia - page 11

We explored Kolkata via an air-conditioned car and a driver named Gautam. Gautuam guided us through many of the touristy spots of Kolkata including Mother Teresa's House, the Marble Palace, St. Johns church, St. Pauls cathedral and the mansion of Rabindranath Tagore . Tagore was a poet, writer, painter and Nobel Prize winner in 1913. At the time of visiting his masion we didn't really know who he was but he certainly featured in many of the places we visited on our India tour including the Taj Mahal. It was obviious that Kolkata was steeped in history and that there was plenty to see. The reality for us was that it was very humid and we were still very much adjusting to the chaos of Kolkata including the Driving! Diary Entry; " Driving through the streets ... read more

The Hallam family, Robyn,Lou, Nikki and Marco departed Tullamarine Airport at10.25am on Sunday 17th of June on a Singapore Airlines flight. We experienced two good flights to get to our destination with a 4 hour stop over in Singapore. We used this time effectively with a whirlwind tour of Singapore with Buddy Kath, who showed us her Inner city Apartment and shouted us a Gin & Tonic. After a long day of travelling we eventually arrived in Kolkata , India at '10.45pm. Being conscious of travelling with a 12 yr old and a 15yr old, one preplanned stipulation of this trip was that we stayed in reasonable accomodation. Upon landing in Kolkata we had an organised Pick-up that transported us to "The Park " hotel. This plan was a good one as it was a No ... read more

It has been awhile and I apologize for that- everyone is doing great and cannot believe how fast this trip is going. We have completed our stay in Kolkata and are currently in Goa with one of the other Creighton groups- it is a much needed weekend of relaxation. Kolkata was a crazy, beautiful, intense, dirty, poor, and historical city. While in Kolkata we worked with the Mission of Charities- Mother Teresa House; it was not only a life changing experience, but a very individualized one at that. For that reason I am not going to be the voice for the group, but over the next few days have each member blog their own personal experience while in Kolkata so you can get a different perspective from each one of us. On another note, our last ... read more

Once again I want to apologize for not writing in this more, where we stayed in Pune was great but not having an actual computer and not being acclimated yet really put a halt on blogging. So to begin where I left off, we woke up the next morning- still in the same clothes as three days earlier- and began the search for our luggage. Thankfully our driver showed up in the morning with a cell phone for our group so I was able to call the baggage lady in Delhi to see where our bags were- that is if they knew. Well I called and they still had no idea where our bags were- so Sarah and I went to the Desai Eye Hospital like we were supposed to be that day and let them ... read more

We've been in India two weeks and already had our fair share of ups and downs. It started on a big high when we arrived in Kolkata late in the afternoon and headed directly to the famous Eden Gardens to attempt to buy tickets for the soldout IPL game that evening. It appears scalping tickets is definately illegal, so it took us about an hour to do our first dodgy transaction in India. Tickets secured we got into Eden Gardens to see the game between Kolkata and Pune. Pune's captain was local Kolkata hero Sourav Ganguly, so the crowd was deeply divided. How anyone can like the extremely arrogant Ganguly is beyond me (Tom clearly talking here), so we were certainly cheering for the home team, who got home in a tight finish. Our second day ... read more