Travel Day 893 – Kolkata, INDIA
After the quite day yesterday while trying to find a decent place to stay, today we decided to take it easy and so we had a slow start of the day…
Ganga and Howrah Bridge in Kolkata
First we had some nice chai and egg-toast on the street and then we slowly made our way to the railway booking office for tourists to postpone our ticket out of Kolkata. There was just too much to do and see in the city and we didn’t feel ready to leave quite yet. Luckily it was not a big deal to change the ticket to another day…
Well, changing the ticket wasn’t a big deal, but as we arrived at the booking office we realized that we had been in fact quite lucky last time when we bought the ticket. This time the office was packed with people and we received a waiting number suggesting that about 40 other people would be served ahead of us. So we made the best out of the situation and got some nice lunch from one of the many street vendors, really nice khichuri with little side dishes…
Once we changed our ticket to a train that unfortunately left and arrived at a much more inconvenient time than the initial one, we then went off to see more of the city. The immediate area north of the booking office seemed like a good destination and we made our way though the little and extremely busy alleyways until we finally reached Howrah Bridge, the Ganga and the local flower market…
The market was unfortunately not as busy as it had been when I visited two years ago and early in the morning, but it was still nice to walk around and to go down to the Ganga. Especially Howrah Bridge, one of the busiest bridges in the world and the ghats were a great sight. What was also great to watch for a while were all the local people using the ghats and minding their business…
Great Ganga Ghat in Kolkata, India
The rest of the day was then reserved for a visit of an old friend of mine in the Tollygunge area in the south of Kolkata. Not only were he and his wife kind enough to invite us over for dinner, but he also took us for a local Tabla concert. Anindo Chatterjee was supposed to play a solo, but unfortunately he never showed up and we could only listen to a replacement player…
Still the Tabla concert was nice and the home cooked punjabi dish with fresh paratha was even better and it made this another great day in Kolkata… : )
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