This was a good place to get sick in....I am imagining what it would have been like to have to be sick in Kolkatta with the noise, the grime and the decrepidneess(sic) ............................................................... Have spent the last two days in my hotel room coughing and blowing and generally feeling too tired to be a tourist! Thank goodness Wendy has been able to amuse herself .......it became so uncomfortable that I had to visit a local doctor at 7:30 PM on a Sunday night!!. And he prescibed antibiotics, eyedrops (because my eye swelled up and was oozing), something for my unending headache and more benadryl ............ After two sets of pills I am already feeling better.....food is still a problem.....I think I have had one too many indian delicacies................... am looking forward to a gourmet meal in ... read more

The much anticipated experience of the very promoted market happened today. The Flea Market at Anjuna happens only on Wednesday..... every tourist of every description in every unspeakable form of dress and behavior was at the market. And every hawker times 10 was pushing the wares: bags, scarves, hannocks, bed covers, sarongs, jewellery, carved "marble?', mirrored skirts, side vented wrap around pants, fancy embroidered sort of quilted looking covers, pillow cases, shoes, sandles, incense, chess sets, round cloth lanterns for the patio, endless bangles, plastic posing as coral, alloy posing as silver, t-shirts, cotton shirts, skirts of every hue abd length ... and that is just the stuff I remember or walked past. I did not pass every stall! I did not loook at all the goods! The biggest challenge was getting from one end of ... read more

Including the week-end in the Sunderbans ...apparently spelled with an s according to newspaper and listing here in the computer .... the stay in Kolkata has lasted ten days. Ask me not what I have done Three days in the Delta, two days spent at cooking class, two days spent with new friends and that basically leaves only three days to see the sights. City tour by bus, Victoria Memorial, 31st Annual Book Fair, India Museum, railway refund and air ticket hassle, two visits to the GPO to mail things, making and visiting with new friends, finding places to eat like the reward lunch and the perfect cup of coffee... shopping for this and that ... email and blog updates....but no zoo or botanical garden. As I sit at the computer the sounds of yet another ... read more

Diane .... the name of the hotel is the PemaThang Guesthouse in McCleoGanj and costs Rs.900 ... sorry no email. Today began slowly at around 08:30 with a knock on the door wanting to know did we want the room cleaned....after breakfast please..... breakfast was slow in coming....no one else had come down so no one in the kitchen...it can be delivered to the room....wendy asked that it be delivered to the dinng room.....I cannot eat in a bedroom ... she can but but me ... so we read the paper and ate out omelettes in the 'bar'. The tea is so strong the spoon does stand up in it. At that point I promised myself a capuccino at the same Peerless Hotel from a few days back. The manswept the floor with a large cloth ... read more

We are in the heat now... and it is winter in India! Spent a day on a tourist bus roaming around the city. Had absolutely no idea wher we were except we were driving around the city past mentionable buildings which were pointed out on the right but were really on the left and mentioned after the crazed driver, who did not realize he had tourists on the bus who wanted to take shots of the places, had already lurched past aforementioned attraction. Every time the traffic stopped the bus it was beside a not so fragrant pile of rubbish that was either in the process of being picked through for someone's idea of a treasure or was being dumped into a three sided rectangular cement "storage" place or shovelled onto an already overflowing garbage truck.... ... read more