Day 89, Kolkata (Calcutta) [Friday 29th February 2008]
Previous day: Day 88, Hyderabad [Thursday 28th February 2008]
Next day: Day 90, Kolkata [Saturday 1st March 2008]
Rickshaw to the airport, where we arrive 2.5 hours early for our flight to Kolkata (Calcutta). The traffic around Hyderabad has been so congested that we decided it would be best to leave as early as possible. But it turns out to be relatively quiet around 8am.
We sit drinking coffee until our flight finally leaves at 12pm. We're on a spacious, clean and comfortable Spicejet plane. The booking and reservation process was easy — we did it all on the internet from a cafe — although checking in was the usual disorganised Indian bureaucratic chaos, with our bags left in the middle of the airport concourse and while we go to the desk. Anyway, we fly smoothly up the east coast of India and arrive in Kolkata at 2.10pm.
I have to say that, after 3 months travelling around on trains and buses, I'm somewhat amazed that the bureacrats, engineers, politicians and everyone else on the never ending gravy train of Indian politics have actually managed to get something as complicated and ambitious as an airport up and running and an aeroplane sent from Hyderabad to Kolkata!
We get a pre-paid taxi (Rs. 210) from the airport to the centre of Kolkata. We sit in the back watching the scruffy, narrow streets roll by. Everything's a rusty, dusty colour. The streets are crammed with cars bumber to bumper, bikes, rickshaws (hand drawn ones) and the ever present crowds. We had a hotel room reserved at Hotel Neelam in Dr M Ishaque Road (Kyd Street), but when we get there it's small and dirty, with a sticky carpet. Eventually we find one over the road, Hotel Classic, which has friendly staff, porn film furniture and, as we find out, a selection of cockroaches.
The view from the window confirms that we're in an area of some considerable distress and poverty. The people crowding around the water tap look careworn, buildings are crumbling and the streets look aged.
After checking in we check out Park Street, the main area for restaurants in the city centre. It's just around the corner from our hotel. I get the local speciality — 'hot kati roll' — from a guy selling them in, quite literally, a hole in the wall. It's a paratha, fried in ghee and stuffed with paneer and a dizzying array of sauces and condiments, all rolled up and dripping with oil. Kate takes a look into the hole, looks at the kati roll, then watches as I bite into it, immediately regretting my decision.
We make our way past the handbag stall and magazine sellers on the pavement and go to Fleury's, a posh, high ceilinged coffee shop which sells delicious hot chocolate brownies and proper, strong coffee.
We spend a while in a great bookshop, reading about Himalayan treks. Kate buys The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, in anticiption of our trip to the Sunderbans.
That night we go to Peter Cat, an obscurely nmed local institution since the 60s. We get there just in time, as once we get a seat there is a steady queue of locals waiting to get in, at least 20 deep. I have chola kebab, which I later suspect of giving me the explosive diarrhoea I am suffering from. The kebab tasted very nice, but admittedly the light is so dim in here it's hard to tell whether anything is properly cooked or not.
Afterwards we venture down a dark alley to find the appalingly named Someplace Else, an Irish pub(!) in the basement of the modern Park Hotel. It's rammed in there, full of Indians, including women, drinking beers, cocktails and whiskey wih something approaching wild abandon, relatively speaking. There's a couple of tourists in here too, but not many. According to The Edge, a local music magazine, this is a famous rock venue. We have a couple of beers and wait for the band. We think they're called Hip Pocket, and there's seems to be some considerable expectation in the air. They eventally come on and trudge through a limp version of With A Little Help From My Friends. It doesn't get much better, so we pay our extortionate bill (Rs. 480 for 3 beers) and leave.
UPDATE: The band are indeed called Hip Pocket. They are a local institution, the Calcutta Telegraph have called them 'Calcutta's swinging sensation', and here is a piece about Someplace Else from the same paper.
Next day: Day 90, Kolkata [Saturday 1st March 2008]
Previous day: Day 88, Hyderabad [Thursday 28th February 2008]