Trip-Day two - time travel

As we ventured out into the streets of Calcutta we started doubting if we travelled from Bangalore on an Airplane or was it a time machine ? (!) ... The roads , the buildings and the buses , trams and cabs seemed to suggest that we seemed to travelled back some 15- 20 years ... The city of Calcutta seemed to be what i remember of cities of late 80s ... Though we had an idea that this city is totally diferent from other cities of India and that it does retain the old world feel , adjusting to the city took some time. The city is called the cultural capital of India and has the legacy of Raj ( being the former captial city fo the country) . So we decided to check out the Victoria memorial and the museum first. The Chandni chowk metro station was pretty near to our hotel , so we decided to travel by the metro . Though we dint really like the cabs , buses and the congested roads , the metro changed our impression about the transport facilities in Kolkata. It really is a cheap, fast and effective means of transportation and i guess is one of the best in the country. The underground metro stations had maps indicating stations covered and train timings and was really hassle free travel for us.


We visited the Victorai memorial which was built as memorial for Queen Victoria who the empress of India in early decades of last century. It is made of white marble and is pretty well maintained and though it was a British Building at first glimpse it reminded me of Taj Mahal. Like Taj , this was also surrounded by sprawling gardens on all sides . Inside this there is a musuem which has a huge display of potraits/photographs from British era till Indian independence. The building is surrounded by gardens and a couple of big pools. After a couple of hours we trooped out to have a look at modern Calcutta.


Then we had our first glimpse of a tram ! The tram is a really unique mode of transport and tram lines run along the major roads and how all these vehicles on road , pedestrains and trams manage to co exist on same road is something really amazing !


After we came out, we cut across the Maidan which is supposed to be largest urban park in Kolkata , the Eden Gardens , Victoria Memorial , the turf club and polo club are located on its fringes. We then strolled through busy streets of kolkata for an hour after lunch. Then decided to check out the Kalighat , it is believed that kolkata derieves its name from it. Kalighat is where the famous Kali temple is located. But our timing was very bad , by the time we reached the temple had closed. But what was shocking was how the whole place was maintained , the place is full of touts out to squeeze money. Less said about it the better, this is one place to AVOID for casual tourists ie who are'nt really religiously inclined. Place is full of beggars and other assorted pujaris and their helpers out to snatch money under some pretext or other . The worst part is that all of of them are together in this and they have a unique model by you are forced to pay all of them. When you enter you are asked to leave your footwear in a shop ( there was no footwear stand outside temple) and hence you ahve to buy something from the shopkeeper and need to tip the guy who suggested the shop to you and so on ... The experience of visiting a temple is totally spoiled when you come across such elements . The temple visit turned out to be a really bad experience and we decided not to visit any temples in this part of the country.

We returned back to our hotel and in the evening visited the Howrah bridge ( Rabindra setu) and took a boat ride across Hoogly river.
Later in the evening we checked out of the hotel and moved to Sialdah station to catch the train to Siliguri. The journey was supposed to take 12 hrs. Another major problem we faced was lack of Restaurants at Railway station and surprsingly no one was selling food stuff.