Kolkata was a wild and crazy place. It was hard to capture it in pictures. By the time I saw a photo, it was usually too late to take it. The whole town seemed to be in motion all the time. It seemed like there was always a million people trying to get to the same place as us. Kolkata also has its very wealthy people and very nice areas. Kolkata has a tremendous history which includes many remains of the British empire. We arrived at night and left the airport for our hotel at 11:00 pm. We were shocked to see hundreds or maybe thousands of people sleeping in the streets, mostly in rows like cordwood. People were also sleeping on the sidewalks, on cars, on fences, boxes and thousands were sleeping at the train station which was closed for the night. People ignored traffic and road signs, drove in any direction they wanted, and all honked their horns almost constantly. The air in Kolkata smells bad, acrid and unpleasant. Trash and garbage was everywhere. Animals went everywhere. People bathed and shaved and urinated in the gutters and streets without any hint of embarrassment. After all, there was no place else to do these things for these people. There was lots of smoke from cooking fires and incense. People sold food and goods everywhere, even to us at intersections while we were in our bus. We went to a mall in Kolkata and the security to get into the mall was as good or better than it is to get into a U.S. airport. They had X-ray machines, hand pat downs, metal detector wands, and searched every bag including my camera. We had the best meal of our entire trip in Kolkata at a Bengali restaurant called “Oh! Calcutta”. Our meal included mocha (banana flour) which was very spicy and very tasty, rice, coconut chicken curry, dal (lentils), shoestring potatoes, a fresh pea dish, boneless beckti fish cooked in a banana leaf with a tangy mustard-horseradish sauce that was absolutely excellent, plus vanilla ice crème and tea.

I’m just going to throw out a few photos to stress the variety of what we saw in Kolkata. The first photo was the Paresnath Temple, a Jain (religion) Temple. It was built in 1867 and stood out like a diamond in a garbage dump. It was in the middle of a very dodgy area but it was extremely flashy and clean. This temple had inlaid mirror pillars, fancy chandeliers, marble floors, and a gilded dome. It had other brightly colored buildings and a nice central garden area. The whole place just defied its surroundings.

The next photo is a roadblock that we ran into on our drive. The intersection got closed down by a protest march. Our guide said that they had protest marches every single day in Kolkata. This one was by the Communist Party. You can see them with their red flags in the back left of the intersection. Kolkata has lots of political unrest and I could see why. In fact, we were in Kolkata on both ends of our trip to Bhutan and the Communists were protesting both times.

The third photo was taken at the Indian Botanical Gardens. It is across the Hooghly River in Howrah, not in Kolkata. The gardens are massive with 273 acres of land and were first opened in 1786. The gardens aren’t what they once were, but they were still a nice place to visit. Darjeeling and Assam teas were developed here in these botanical gardens. Gardens include extensive numbers of plants with over 12,000 trees and bushes with many bamboos, citrus, jasmine, bougainvilleas, palms, water lilies, creepers, ferns, and orchids. The highlight for me of the gardens was what you see in the third photo. It’s The Great Banyan Tree which is over 250 years old and has some 2800 prop roots. The main trunk of this tree died in 1925. The whole tree looks to be the size and shape of a pro football stadium. Aerial roots keep dropping down and taking root and the tree just keeps on expanding. The Great Banyan covers something over 161,000 square feet of ground. I don’t think Vicky got but around half of it in the photo.