Five Cities In Three Countries Over 16 Days, Part 1: Kolkata, India
Our travel schedule for 2024 is a little hectic to say the least; we had already been on two trips to Bali and I had also traveled back to Melbourne, Australia, getaways that I didn’t write about, plus Anna had been on several others too before our latest journey had begun. This most recent trip would have us spending three nights in Kolkata, India for the AIOC 2024 conference, followed by six nights in Vientiane, Laos to do some volunteer work (and Anna would be traveling out to another Laotian city for the second night too), capped off by a week-long holiday traveling across Japan, visiting Tokyo, Hakodate, and Sapporo. So where else to begin but at the beginning.
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Once Anna had finished work and the dogs had been collected we grabbed our luggage and made our way to the airport, bound for India. This would be my first time visiting the country in nine years after we lived briefly in Pondicherry, but it would be my first time spent in a major Indian city since we were in Mumbai at the end of 2011 and if our flight was anything to go by, Kolkata was going to be just as chaotic as I had imagined.
We boarded our flight, but there were a few delays before we could depart, one of which must’ve been the air-conditioning onboard. It was getting a little warm and uncomfortable inside and some took it upon themselves to let everybody know, including a man who went on an extremely loud, melodramatic rant. “Fix it, we are suffering!” he yelled at one point before threatening a flight attendant, an action that was met with a very stern warning. Other people got up and just walked aimlessly around the plane, some going over to chat to their friends and family in different areas while the attendants made futile attempts to get them back to their seats and put their seatbelts on, but before too long we were in the air with a cool breeze coming in through the vents. This, however, didn’t put an end to the mayhem onboard; the guy sitting next to Anna continually grabbed onto the top of her chair in order to turn around to speak to the people behind him, constantly bumping her or jolting the seat while she was eating or sleeping to the point that she just fiercely told him outright to stop. Meanwhile, across from me there was a family that kept passing around a baby through several rows, the father often getting up to walk around to chat to friends, but mostly just watching who went in and out of the toilet in front of him, at one point getting up after a woman had exited, pushing the door open for a look around inside before sitting back down again.
After five hours in the air and a man trying to get up for a leak as the plane was landing, we were soon in Kolkata:
Kolkata, (also known as Calcutta, which was the official name until 2001) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, 80 km (50 mi) west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary financial and commercial centre of eastern and northeastern India. Kolkata is the seventh most populous city of India with an estimated city proper population of 4.5 million (0.45 crore). It is the centre of the Kolkata Metropolitan Region, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world with a population of over 15 million (1.5 crore) residents. Kolkata is the de facto cultural capital of India and historically and culturally significant city in the historic region of Bengal. It is the second largest Bengali-speaking city in the world. It has the highest number of Nobel laureates among all cities in India.
Once out of the airport we met one of Anna’s colleagues who happens to be of Indian descent and he kept telling us tales of the madness of life in India on the tumultuous journey to our hotel, one that had us running a slalom through unmarked temporary fences placed horizontally at staggered intervals on each side of the road in an effort to slow the nighttime traffic and through the din of incessant honking and drivers blindly cutting us off, because if you don’t check to see if there is a car in the next lane, it seems you can merge and it’s the responsibility of the driver of the car that could potentially be there to avoid being hit.
After fending off death for the best part of 45 minutes we were at our home for the next three nights, a room on the 52nd floor of the incredible ITC Royal Bengal, and it would be more than an understatement to say that this place was a little decadent. The building was too big to get a decent photo from the outside without needing to stand on a nearby freeway, but here is one from an advertisement in the lobby, as well as a few others of the lobby itself and our room:
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Today Anna only had to go to the conference venue to register and then we were free for the rest of the day, but first there was a more pressing matter at hand; while we were checking in I saw a sign advertising a fantastic-looking restaurant in the hotel so we had to make a booking for that night, which turned out to be relatively hassle-free.
Now that dinner was sorted it was time once again to hit the hellish road and get to the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre for Anna to register for her conference, but when our taxi arrived to pick us up it wasn’t like the countless other standard white Suzukis on the road, our ride was so small that even Anna struggled to get inside, but after performing a little human origami we made it work. Despite only being about 10 km (6.2 mi) to the convention centre it still took us close to 40 minutes to get there and if you’ve ever questioned the ambience of being on the road in an Indian city, here’s a small sample:
That’s not us stuck in gridlock or someone not realising the lights had changed, we were moving when I recorded that and that’s how it sounds the entire journey as you pass endless unique sights and situations, no matter where or when.
When we eventually arrived we initially figured we had been dropped off in the wrong place, just roadside on a narrow dirt path alongside a couple of small food stalls and with several men leering at Anna. However, when we asked a person with a conference lanyard he directed us to what appeared to be a location that was still under construction with building equipment and garbage strewn around the place, but once we walked around to the other side of the building, the organisers had pulled out all the stops. We stepped onto the red carpet and entered the centre, but I didn’t go into the overcrowded registration and stall areas, instead opting to look around outside before finding the base of a column to sit on as I waited.
Our taxi, some of the not-so-busy roadside scenery, and a bit of the convention centre:
When everything for the conference was sorted we decided to have a look around some different areas of the city, but we had to be smart and book a Premium Uber for our ride this time. Sure, it would still be dirty, dented, and potentially unroadworthy, but at least we’d fit. In fact, our companion from the airport had told us that if a taxi here doesn’t have a dent in it, it probably doesn’t have an engine. Anyway, our ride soon arrived and once in we didn’t have to worry about the seatbelts leaving the expected greyish-black grime-smear across our clothes, because they didn’t actually work.
Thus far I’ve probably painted Kolkata in a pretty negative light, especially with the main image I’ve used, but it’s not all like that, there are some really nice areas and the city was a lot cleaner as a whole than what we had expected. When we were in Mumbai back in 2011 I recall it being not only extremely dirty, but also incredibly awful smelling, the pungent stench of sewerage at every turn, so we just expected all big cities here to be like that before coming here. Maybe Mumbai has cleaned up a little too, but despite what we had heard in the past, there wasn’t much rubbish in the streets of Kolkata and only a few small areas we walked through smelled. In fact even Mother Theresa herself has been criticised for exaggerating the conditions here for her own benefit:
“No doubt there was poverty in Calcutta, but it was never a city of lepers and beggars, as Mother Teresa presented it. She was responsible for creating a negative image of this city. As a Calcuttan I feel totally disgusted by it.”
— Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, former Mayor of Kolkata, 2005-2010
That’s not to say there aren’t the dirty areas with homeless people pooping in the streets or children begging for change, and we always felt a bit grimy each time we returned to the hotel, but that’s to be expected when you’re constantly sweating in a dusty city.
Anyway, we took our “premium” Uber to what was meant to be our first stop for the day, the Victoria Memorial Hall, but there was one small problem; we didn’t have any cash on us and a lot of places, particularly tourist attractions, don’t accept credit cards so we’d just have to snap some photos from a distance and try our luck the following day. As we were leaving a child approached Anna and begged for change, but when she said no he told her to “F_ck off”. Well, she couldn’t give him change even if she wanted to, but he’s definitely not getting it now.
We continued to walk around the streets through the mayhem, passing posters on poles advertising “massages” with satisfaction guaranteed on our way through the Academy of Fine Arts, taking in some sculptures along the way, but Anna was starting to feel a little bit uneasy about the number of men blatantly looking her up and down, despite being relatively covered up. My only conclusion was maybe not to wear her bag with the strap going across her body and changing this seemed to alleviate the problem a little.
By now I’ve brought up the traffic quite a fair bit and it’s even an issue when you’re on foot, because if we wanted to cross the road we had to adopt the same attitude as the drivers and blindly step out into the traffic under the guise that we didn’t see any cars and just hope they saw us first.
Here are some scenes from the first leg of our stroll around town:
You’ve heard the horns and seen the images, now witness what fairly light traffic in Kolkata is like when the lights are red and there’s a ‘No honking’ sign at the intersection:
It was now pushing 3:00pm and we were starting to get a little bit peckish so we decided to have a look at our options. Obviously Anna’s first thought was Indian sweets so she Googled a nearby store with an enormous selection, but then also remembered how much she likes momos, a type of Nepalese dumpling that are also popular in northern parts of India, leading her to finding a place for them called The Blue Poppy – Thakali. We had a couple of different types as well as some small pastries and they hit the spot perfectly so we could continue wandering around the Park Street Area for another hour or two including stopping at the Nature Study Park for a walk by the lake while taking in the beautiful scenery, then on past a building full of cars that got increasingly dustier before we battled the traffic once more in a dented Suzuki back to the hotel in time for dinner.
A bit more from that afternoon:
Once we were back at the hotel we showered, got changed, and went to the completely empty bar that offered wine by the can on the top floor and waited for our friend for a few drinks before dinner at ITC Royal Bengal’s fine dining establishment, Avartana, a restaurant that:
Exemplifies an exclusive blend of traditional & progressive renditions of Southern Indian cuisine, which is rooted to the gravitas of the unique tastes, aromas & flavours of southern Indian spices.
This place had four different menu sets and they all sounded great, there was plenty of seafood available too, but I opted for one entitled “Anika”, which had a mix of everything, while Anna chose “Jiaa”, one with fewer courses. Our friend is pescatarian so he chose to customise his while ordering a bottle, not a can, of wine that he was already complaining about before it had even arrived. He hates the quality of Indian wine and kept telling Anna not to get her hopes up so maybe they should’ve just had a beer like I did, that way you generally know what you’re getting.
I love Indian food, but I have to be careful, because I am extremely allergic to anything cooked in coconut oil or milk, a strange problem to have considering I can eat an entire coconut and drink its water without an issue. We had checked with the server that the momos in curry we had eaten earlier were fine and I was still okay. Our dinner was really good, our companion raving about the place to anyone who would listen afterward, but only time would tell how I’d fare later on, and once we were done eating we settled back into the hotel bar for a few nightcaps.
A quick view of the bar, Anna’s and my menus, plus each of my dishes:
Friday, March 15, 2024
Well, I guess it was destiny. Despite only eating the asparagus the previous night, not the sauce, it had still gone right through me, but I always bring tablets with me for situations like this and after a while the problem had subsided.
Anna had done her presentation at the conference that morning, we now had some cash in our wallets from the hotel ATM, and the plan was to visit all of the places that we were unable to the previous day so we went downstairs and, being completely oblivious to the fact that he was using sign language, Anna tried to get a deaf-mute bellboy to order our cab. After being directed to a person gifted with the power of speech we were soon in another exceptionally dirty taxi, this one so bad that the fabric on the roof was matted with crud and the driver was keeping cigarettes, medication, and pens in the space where the stereo was supposed to be. We ventured out again into the incessant honking and near collisions, at one point passing another taxi that had a passenger in the rear carrying a steel beam that was almost the length of the car’s interior, and due to my stomach being rather empty we decided to find something to eat. Briyani was a good option, because rice with potatoes and chicken wasn’t going to cause any issues so we looked up a place for it and found Shiraz Golden Restaurant, however, we weren’t quite as hungry after passing a squalid butcher shop with lamb carcasses surrounded by flies hanging out in the heat and dust. Once inside the restaurant we saw what other people were eating and realised the portions were enormous, one plate was more than enough for us to share, yet a group of men soon came in, had a plate each and then went on to order other dishes. They were big guys, but I have no idea how they weren’t morbidly obese if that’s how they eat lunch!
The day thus far:
After lunch our first stop was the nearby South Park Street Cemetery:
South Park Street Cemetery, formerly known as the ‘Great Christian Burial Ground’, was one of the earliest non-church cemeteries in the world. The cemetery houses numerous graves and monuments belonging to British soldiers, administrators, and their families. It is also the final resting place of several prominent personalities, including Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and Sir William Jones. It is located on Mother Teresa Sarani (also known as Park Street), Central Kolkata, India.
The burial ground, along with a new road leading to it, known as the Burial Ground Road, was built in 1767. The cemetery and the road were later renamed Park Street after a private deer park established by Sir Elijah Impey. By the year 1785, the cemetery had been extended on the northern side of Park Street. Even though a marble plaque at the cemetery gate reads “South Park Street, Opened:1767, Closed:1790”, the burials continued in the 1830s, until a vast new cemetery was opened to the east of the Lower Circular Road.
It was definitely an interesting place to explore and one thing that immediately stands out is how low human life expectance was back then, as we only encountered a handful of tombs where the person had live to be 60 or older. Another thing that stood out was that it seems the letters ‘S’ and ‘F’ were almost interchangeable, particularly when lowercase as can be seen in some of the pictures. The architecture of some of the tombs was really nice too, but as seems to be the case with a lot of historical sites, some dicks had graffitied and vandalised several areas of the cemetery:
Once we were done with the cemetery we went back to the Victoria Memorial Hall to have the proper look around that we couldn’t do the day before:
The Victoria Memorial is a large marble monument dedicated to Queen Victoria, the Empress of India (1876-1901) facing the Queens Way on the Maidan in Central Kolkata. It was built between 1906 and 1921 by the British Raj.
It is the largest monument to a monarch anywhere in the world. It stands at 64 acres of gardens and is now a museum under the control of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. Possessing prominent features of the Indo-Saracenic architecture, it has evolved into one of the most popular attractions in the city.
Getting in wasn’t a smooth process as there are certain entry times for both the grounds and the museum and people in these parts aren’t particularly big fans of waiting or queueing so when it came to lining up to purchase tickets I had to simultaneously try to block people from jostling in front of me while others were trying to bypass the whole procedure by just reaching around me on all sides in an effort to shove money at the cashier, pushing me closer to the booth in the process.
Once inside the grounds the gardens and the building were both stunning so we walked around the entire hall, passing a traditional kids performance around the back and soon it was time to attempt to enter the museum inside, enduring a similar situation as at the ticket booth just to get through the door. There were some nice paintings and other pieces inside, but it was just far too crowded and noisy to enjoy so I quickly snapped a couple of pictures of the beautiful ceiling and then we bailed, but a similar occurrence to the previous day happened. A boy that would’ve been about eight years old was begging for some change at the gates. He didn’t seem to speak English, he was just rubbing his stomach while holding his hand out and he wouldn’t leave me alone, but when I said no he called me a motherf__ker! The only conclusion I can come to is that these pesky little kids must get called that or told to f_ck off so often that they think it’s a term of endearment. Giving them money to get rid of them is a bad option too, because then even more come over. We encountered another one while spending the rest of the afternoon looking at some of the shops in a really nice part of town nearby, this time a little girl who wanted my bottle of water. When I told her”no” she just tried to rip it out of my hand so that’s when I said to her what the other kids had told us to do. She went and hid behind a pole, but I could still see her giving me a dirty look and it seemed like she was just waiting for me to turn my back so she could steal something. When we walked past her again I gave her the last of my water so she would leave us alone and she just turned around, poured it out, and kept the bottle.
Anna had a conference dinner to attend that night and she said it would mainly be her networking so I decided to do my own thing. Bars and pubs outside of big hotels aren’t really a thing in Indian cities, however, I managed to find a microbrewery called The Grid that was open late and about a 20-minute walk away, but a lot of the area around our hotel wasn’t particularly walkable so I’d need to brave the traffic again for the short journey. I attempted to get an Uber, but the app kept automatically trying to have me collected from the hotel next to us, which wasn’t all that close given the size of ours. Even when I physically relocated the pin to where I was standing it just kept adjusting itself back to the other hotel. While I was waiting Anna called to say that her and a couple of friends had left the dinner early before the food had come out and were going somewhere else to eat shawarma by themselves, but I was determined to try this brewery. I kept booking and cancelling Ubers for about half an hour, at one point considering walking there, but then I just decided to book one and go over to the next hotel if I had to and fortunately the driver called me to confirm where I was going so I was able to tell him the correct pickup point as well.
I definitely needed a drink after having been driven in Kolkata on a Friday evening, but the pub was nowhere to be found. I ended up walking down an alley along the side of a huge industrial building and after passing three or four different company headquarters I figured I was in the wrong location. A nearby security guard must have come to the conclusion that the only reason a white guy would be walking around this area was because he was looking for The Grid so he pointed me to a hard-to-locate door around the back, told me to go upstairs and I’d be there. The place wasn’t too bad, they had advertised that they were showing sports, but instead just had promotional videos on the screens, but that wasn’t an issue so I ordered a drink and a pizza while the table next to me smoked a shisha. The real problem came at 10:00pm when all of a sudden the music changed and they started playing industrial trance music at about a thousand decibels and turned on some flashing coloured lights, despite the place having no dance floor. The strange thing was that it seemed like nobody else had even noticed, they just continued their conversations despite not even being able to hear yourself think. In fact it got to the point that the vibrations were making my table move slightly across the floor, but I didn’t feel like sitting by myself in a miserable, empty hotel bar so I decided to try to change the soundtrack to something I liked by way of my noise-cancelling AirPods and they were kind of effective to some extent. Anna soon tried calling me, but she couldn’t hear a word I was saying and was confused as to why I would be in a place that sounded like that, instead texting me to let me know they had finished dinner so I left the rave-brewery and went back to meet up with the three of them in the sterile bar back where we were staying.
The memorial from different angles, inside the museum with a closeup of the ceiling, Anna and company in their shawarma bibs, and later inside the microbrewery, but before the noise kicked in:
Saturday, March 16, 2024
We would be leaving India later in the night for Laos so we started off the day with the hotel’s enormous international lunch buffet, me being particularly careful to avoid dishes containing coconut milk while watching rows of white Suzukis out the window and then we went back up to our room to plan what to do with the rest of the day. We were looking at options, one possibility being finding somewhere to watch the Chicago Bulls play a game that was inexplicably having an Indian Heritage Night so it could have a fun atmosphere. It was definitely an odd choice of promotion for my favourite basketball team to have though, because besides the fact that we have seen absolutely nothing to do with the sport since we had been there, there are also no Indians in the NBA. In fact, there has only ever been one NBA player of Indian descent, Sim Bhullar, but he was born in Canada and only appeared in three games, scoring a grand total of two points. It was kind of pointless though, because not only would it have been on in the morning, we weren’t even sure if the game was that day, as the advertisement (below) gave two different dates, one of them being the following day, which would be an even stranger promotion, because it would be St. Patrick’s Day and that’s a huge event in Chicago.
As we ticked off more options for what to do that day we began to question if we could even be bothered with the heat, the traffic, the noise, the hoards of people, and the men constantly perving at Anna, and after seeing that there was a very dark smear running down the top of my hat from when my head had rubbed against the dirty roofs of cars each time we hit a bump the answer was a resounding “no”. Instead we stayed in the room and binge-watched Griselda on our TV that would randomly change volume and sometimes mute and unmute itself until it was time to go to the bar upstairs for some final drinks with Anna’s colleagues while taking in the polluted sunset before going to the airport:
When we’re in large Indian cities the chaos and disorder are always a fun alternative to the blandness and sterility of Singapore, but it definitely gets old quickly so we weren’t too disappointed when it was time to move on to our next stop on this whirlwind tour. Vientiane, Laos would be a peaceful, relaxing city, but there wouldn’t be a whole lot of time for kicking back as you’ll soon find out.
Very interesting.
Thank you, it was a great trip