Kolkata (Calcutta)

Arriving in Kolkata was a surprise. I had expected a loud, dirty, crazy city. But overall, it’s pretty clean & tame. Except for the traffic. Having been traveling in SE Asia for 5 years now, Tadashi and I have had a lot of experience crossing the un-regulated streets of Asia. In SE Asia, you wait for a break in traffic, then beginning slowly across. You keep a steady pace, and the traffic gauges you speed and veers either in front of you, or behind you. The cars, trucks and motor bikes will come really, really close, but they won’t hit you. The worst thing you can do in SE Asia is to stop or run. Changing speed, stopping or running can cause you to be hit.

But in India, if you DON’T stop or run, you will be hit. So crossing the street here is an entirely different game. We often find ourselves running back to the sidewalk along with the locals.

We stayed in the working-class Swiss Park neighborhood in Southern Kolkata, at Bodhi Tree Guest House. I would recommend the upstairs rooms to anyone. The rooms downstairs seem like they would be loud, as the staff is down there, as well as the kitchen and restaurant.

Relaxing at Bodhi Tree (by Tadashi Tsuchida)

The neighborhood was really clean, with very little trash on the streets (it even looked like they had regular street sweeping). The really nice thing about this neighborhood is that it has a metro station, so we could get to the main part of town in 15 minutes, and for about 6 rupees! We did a lot of walking around our hotel’s neighborhood, especially on the first day, and we only saw 2 other tourists. So we were in the “real” Calcutta.

On our first day, we walked around the neighborhood for about 3 hours. I wore my salwar kameez and got a lot of stares from locals – especially women and girls. I don’t know if it was because I was one of the only foreigners in the neighborhood, or if I was the only one dressed like a local. Either way, I always made a point to say either “Hello” or “Namaste”. The women tended to just stare even harder, while the girls would get a huge kick out of it, and respond with a big smile, a little wave and often a small hello.

I love Indian sweets, and was on the lookout for a busy sweet shop during our walk. We finally found one, and had some yummy sweets to go. We got a little extra out of the deal.

We see STD signs all over India. I finally figured out what it means: it mean international calling. If I look a little awkward in the picture, it’s not because of the STD; it’s because of the creepy man standing just outside the frame. This guy “found” us at the bakery and followed us for about half an hour. we’d stop to cross the street, and see him behind us. We stopped to take a photo, and there he was, about 50 feet away, pretending to look at a stall. He was with us for a long time, and not very good at being discreet. He eventually gave up after Tadashi and I stopped to talk for about 15 minutes. I was relieved because that guy was creepy.

Later on our walk, I bought some fruit from a nice girl so that Tadashi could ask to take her picture. She kindly obliged, and we said hello every time we saw her after that.

Fruit Vendor (by Tadashi Tsuchida)

A little later, we passed an old blind woman sitting on the side walk with her hand out. I gave her a banana, and the boys walking behind me were shocked. They were going on about, “Did you see that?! She gave her a banana!” I tried to listen more to find out why this was so shocking, but they crossed the street. I certainly hope that I wasn’t out of line doing that.

On our second day, we took the metro to the tourist area to try and arrange some bus tickets. The metro is a lot like BART, but a LOT cheaper, and without A/C. We rode for about 20 minutes, and it only cost 8 rupees each. Interestingly, there were police at the turnstiles making sure everyone went through a metal detector and had their bags visually checked. They also made Tadashi take the battery out of his camera before they would let us in.

The main tourist area of Kolkata is at Sutter and Park Streets. This area is loud, dirty, poor, and full of touts. Indeed, on our walk through the neighborhood, we were harassed by a woman holding a young child. She first asked for money, and we shook our heads and walked passed her. She followed us, but we continued to ignore her. She proceeded to grab my arm, and after I still didn’t respond, she started hitting me (albeit gently) with the empty baby bottle. Finally I turned to her and said rather sternly, “No means no, and it’s going to stay no, so leave us alone.” She finally gave up.

While I don’t usually give beggars change, I especially don’t like to give beggars money in tourist areas. I’ve read that some of these people don’t even try to get jobs because they can make $100 a day begging.

After that walk, we were really glad that we decided to not stay in that area.

On the third day, we decided to go sari shopping. I liked my friend Dawn’s idea of using saris for curtains, so we were really going curtain shopping. Our hotel recommended a great silk sari shop, with really nice, patient sales people, and good fixed prices. We wound up buying five beautiful saris, two of which are covered with hand embroidery. Since each sari is 6 yards, they gave us a duffel bag to put them in, which made it really easy to ship them home. The post office was interesting: no boxes required! They just took my bag to and sewed it up in muslin; I just wrote the address with a Sharpie. let’s hope U.S. Customs doesn’t try to open it. I'm really curious to see if it comes home in the muslin or in a box, because I can’t imagine that customs would re-sew that sucker.

Tadashi also got a haircut and beard trim that day.

The coolest part of this barber was that he set up shop under a tree. The “wall” where he hung his mirror was a tree trunk, and the barber chair was on the tree's roots. You can’t beat ambiance like that – and for only 50 cents!