Kolkata - historical literary city

The trip to Kolkata came as a quick plan which we went after the Bhutan tour of six days. I always wanted to visit this capital city of West Bengal, the once beautiful and literary city and still holding its place among other cities. Many of the literary and arts works from people from this place have triggered me to list it in my tour destinations. 

We reached Kolkata from Bagdodgra by afternoon. The flight was on time and we had arranged a taxi for our sightseeing for one day. He took us to our prebooked homestay. We refreshed ourselves, took some rest and set out to see the city. 

This was a tour, throughout which, we were inside the car. On our way, we saw both formal and informal settlements, vendors, vehicles congesting the narrow roads and in the midst of all these, we managed to take snaps of the places. The car took the parallel road to the Hooghly river and we were able to see the hanging or suspended Howrah bridge with its unique structural engineering. The bank of the river was the leisure place for the people around the place. We crossed the railway station building and also covered the whole of old Calcutta with its rustic and antique buildings of the British style. I was amazed to see inhabitants in this old place, where some of the buildings are on the verge of fall. On the way, my son fell asleep and rest of the sightseeing was left to me to complete. In the new Calcutta area, we saw the modern high-rise buildings lit up in the night, vehicle congestion and restaurants, all lit up and glowing. 'Tram' was the highlight of the day's tour. We had never seen that, other than in books and photos. 

We wanted to try dishes of Kolkata and got ourselves katla, rohu, prawns with coconut preparations, tender coconut- milk icecream and rice for dinner.

Next day, the only full day in the city, we first went to Dakshineswara Kali temple. It is a very calm temple with the kali deity inside with ten siva lingas. In addition, there is Vivekananda and Sarada 'matt'. Part of the Hooghly river flows on one side of the temple. It was crowded but, well managed crowd with no confusion. The hot sun, heats up the stone floor of the temple and makes it difficult for the people to move from one deity to the other. The interesting observation and a simple technique they have used to overcome this is, with the white reflecting paint, which is drawn as a path connecting the prayer areas. These painted floor areas, lines the crowd in queue, as well as reduces the trauma of heat on the feet. After the prayers, in the exit area is a waterlog and flowing water to wash our feet, to cool down and reduce heat burns.

After a serene and divine morning, we had breakfast, came back to our stay place, changed our clothes to wear for the rest of our day. Victoria museum, was our next destination and it took almost three hours to tour the place. Paintings, arms and ammunitions, statues, carvings, instruments, were placed in glassed cubicles and the crowd was moderate. We glanced through the showcased objects, clicked photographs inside the museum. The premises was the most beautiful with a pond with seating arrangement around it, large trees ,statues and garden. Spending some time there, relaxed us and we moved to our next destination.

The places of visits were not preplanned. So, whatever we saw on the side of the road and whichever place we visited were considered as special and part of the city's tourist destination. There were more than one museum to visit but we restricted ourselves to only one. We had bought a regular bengali lunch consisting of rice, brinjal, fish and extra egg from near our place of stay. 

We reached Ecopark, but the place was closed for the public, being a holiday. We circled the outside of the park, on the road in taxi and clicked few photos. It is a place, preserving the biodiversity including lake, grass, trees, and models of globally famous monuments. On the outside of the park premises, we found a place to eat and had a different kind of experience of having lunch in a picnic mode. There were crows and pigeons around asking for their share of food and we moved from the place without much littering. 

We took a tour of the city with view of old buildings combined with new ones and reached back to the home stay for a sleep. Celebrations for the younger son's birthday was in waiting and we dined at KFC downstairs the home stay, according to his wish.

Next day, was our journey back to Trivandrum and we took rest and prepared ourselves for a hassle free journey. The final day was a long travel filed day, with flight stop over at Bangalore and reached Trivandrum in the evening.

The combined tour of Bhutan and Kolkata, gave us mixed memories and some time of rest helped us recall our experiences of the trip.