Another stroke of luck, we got a tip-off to get on the tourist quota for the trains after accepting our fate of not getting to Varanasi for Diwali (biggest festival similar to our xmas). The last two tickets awaited and we managed to leave the day before the main event on the overnight train. The journey was an experience, imagine the rush before xmas day but people crammed into every bit of space on the train. There were people everywhere, we felt sorry for the Indian's who got the unlucky seat resting their head on the toilet door who were obviously disrupted every time it got used. Jo hardly got any sleep due to someone trying to join her on the same bed!
Varanasi is a hectic place anyway but for Diwali, it was absolute chaos. Strangely, both of us came here on a previous trip before we met and it was one of our favourite places then. This time round, everything was so much more intense, I lost count of the amount of times we were asked for a boat ride down the Ganges. We watched the ritual of puja, which is an offering to the river that takes place every day and then watched fireworks from our hotel rooftop. All over the city, people were setting off fireworks from their rooftops, it went on through the night.
Whilst booking our train from Delhi, we decided to book an onward train to Kolkata to save hassle in Varanasi. We didn't need to catch the train for 4 days but for some reason Jo was adamant that we left at 6pm from the time of booking. For this reason, Alex trusted her and accepted the train left at that time. On the way to the station, we pull out the ticket just before 5pm in the tuk-tuk and realise the train leaves in 5 minutes and we are stuck in a traffic jam! We arrive at the platform 20 minutes late and frantically ask people if our train has gone as it's not up on the board. Luckily for Jo, the train had come all the way from Amritsar and was running an hour late.
After visiting Delhi, Kolkata was a refreshing change for such a big city. Off the train, we took a ferry crossing across the river which was more like something you would do in New York. From a sea of black & yellow taxis, we hailed a cab that is the type of car that would escort royalty in the 60's, an ambassador. The buildings around Calcutta, as it was called, have a heavy influence from the British Raj era with some impressive architecture. There was also a Memorial for Queen Victoria that was a cross between the Taj Mahal and St Paul's with some interesting artwork inside and information on the history of Kolkata. The gardens were filled with Indian couple's canoodling with their lovers, no bench went unutilised.
We met Alex's friend, Debbie who has been working out here for almost a year who showed us Birla Mandir which is a Hindu temple and probably the grandest temple we have seen, it even had 3 chandeliers lighting the interior. The promise of prawns for the both us at Debbie’s favourite restaurant was pretty exciting due to our lack of seafood since July. Every dish was new to us and Bengali food didn’t disappoint, we already have plans to re-visit on our return to Kolkata for lots more amazing prawns and fish curry. After our trip round Sikkim, Assam and Meghalaya, we will be returning to Kolkata so we only spent a few days exploring.
The common practice if you don’t use taxis for locals is to get pulled on a hand drawn rickshaw. We have been on tuks and cycle rickshaws but never been pulled by a barefoot man! Trying to flag a cab was proving useless at the time we needed to catch our train to Siliguri so after 15 minutes we decided to give in to the requests from the men with hand drawn rickshaws. After insisting it’s too far to the station, the responses were they were strong men and they go there all the time. We didn’t know whether to feel bad for carrying us or feel good for giving them a well paying job, we tipped them quite a bit which they seemed to be chuffed with. It was one of the calmest journeys through a big city as we got pulled through the backstreets, there was no noisy sound of the two-stroke engine from the tuk and it we got to see some of the real neighbourhoods.
The overnight train to Siliguri was a formality and after a bit of breakfast we headed to a small town called Kurseong which is supposedly like a smaller Darjeeling. We had just entered Ghorkaland which was being protested by locals near the station the day after we arrived. We think the population is predominantly Ghurka and they want their own state, obviously called Ghorkaland. Darjeeling was the next dot on the map, we took afternoon tea in an old colonial hotel which was spiffing. You can already see the change in features as we encroach on the Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan border.
Will update you on our adventure towards the state of Sikkim soon.
Alex & Jo
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