Kolkata

Day 2 in Kolkata and we went for continental breakfast to Lavazza. We spoke to some of the street people (there ar beggars everywhere), and again met a guy that we spoke to yesterday. His name was Vernon Clifton. He spoke very good English, and explained that his father was Scottish, and his mother was Burmese. He spoke English, Burmese, Hindustani, and Bengali. He introduced us to his "son", a guy who was about 39 they thought, because Vernon had taken him in to look after him when he was a kid because he had lost his parents and was wandering the streets naked. He said that he had wanted to put Samil into school, but it hadn't worked out. They make their money now by hanging around a busy intersection incase a car breaks down and they help push it out of the way. Samil had the tip of one of his fingers jammed between a car door and something else a couple of days earlier. It didn't look very good and he explained that he couldn't afford to get anything like Betadine to treat it. I had a partly used tube that we gave him. We also gave him 10 Rs for something to eat.

We got back to the hotel by about 11 am and got our bags organised to put into storage at the hotel for the day. We had to be checked out of our room by midday, but our train doesn't leave for NJP until 8:55 pm, and we didn't want to have to lugg them all over the city. Again we caught 2 taxis to New Market, which was really only within about 15 minutes walk, but we didn't know that until we got there. Bridget didn't think we were at the right place, but realised later that she had entered from a different direction. As we got out of the taxi we had people coming up and telling us that they were working for the market and they said that they didn't want any money but continued to walk with us and tell us about the different sections. We continued to go where we wanted and soon found ourselves in the animal area. This was really a large butchery, where there was live poultry, and carcasses of goats and beef. The beef section seemed to run by the muslims. Paula had a look at some scarves, bought one and some thongs for Daniel. We walked out of the market for a bit to look around at the stall outside. There are about five levels of stalls at the market with around 5000 stalls. Paula and I had separated from Bridget, Daniel and Andrew, and when we met up again, we decided to go for lunch. Again, Paula and I went to a different place to the others. We were offered 4 small serves of Quaker Oats as a taste test. There was Strawberry and apple, saffron and grape, lemony vegetable and capsicum, and masala. They asked us to say which was our favourite - I definitely preferred the sweet ones, with the saffron and grape being the best. Then they all wanted to see a movie, but I decided to go for a walk instead. I headed away from the market, around a couple of corners and I was at Sudder Street. This is apparently a focus for backpackers and attracts the touts and drug pushers. I didn't have any problems. After continuing a few blocks I realised that I was near our hotel, so I headed to Park Street where I met Vernon again. I asked him which way it was to the Maidan, and how long it might take to walk to the river. He pointed min the right direction and suggested that it might take about 30 minutes or more. I headed fo rthe river and left him with 20 Rs. After about half an hour I was walking past a few games of cricket. There were quite a few clubs around the area of Eden Gardens which is where they play International cricket. India will be playing England in a five day test in a couple of days. I walked around the ground and headed towards the river. There seemed to be lots of buses heading in this direction, allof them squashed full with people leaving the city as the day headed towards sunset. I found the River Hugli which must be about a kilometer, or wider at this point. There were quite a few ships at anchor in the middle of the river, and smaller boats moving accross and along the river. The sun was slowly moving to meet the horizon, so I waited and took some photos as the sun came down over the Vidyasagar Setu. I then walked along the river, past some ghats, where people walk down the steps to bathe in the river, and on to an area where there were buses of all shapes and sizes. I had stumbled across the bus terminal, where the local and long distance buses departed. There were people everywhere and buses being stacked with all sorts of goods, sometimes almost half the height of the bus again on the roof. There musn't any overpasses, or low hanging power lines to contend with. I have no idea how you would find the right bus. Some had a sleeper level above the seats. By this time I had to start to get back to meet the others at the hotel. We were meeting there at 6 pm to have something to eat, get our bags and catch a taxi to Sealdah Railway Station. We managed to get  a taxi dirver who would take all five of us and our bags. As we pulled in to the station, we could see people going everywhere. Inside the station there seemed to be even more people. It was about 7 pm and it was like rush hour. I had pre-purchased our tickets, so I went to the ticket counter to check the booking. We were directed to platform 9B. We headed to what we thought was the correct platform and took our bags to an area where we could find space to sit and wait. It was then that I checked the ticket and realised that the train we were waiting for was at 10:55, and not 8:55, so we had an extra 2 hours to wait. Bridget got out her computer and set it up to watch a movie that she had purchased that was partly filmed in Darjeeling. It wasn't long before there were a couple of shoe shine kids watching as well. I went for a walk around the station watching the crowds and the rats, and found the platform we were supposed to be on.