British Colonial Center of Kolkata

Travel Day 890 – Kolkata, INDIA

Today we managed to get out of the house a little bit earlier and our main goal of the day was to see a bit of the colonial center of Kolkata…

Colonial St. Andrew’s Church in Kolkata

Well, actually when we sat down in the morning to make a to-do list for the next couple of days, it became quite obvious that we needed to have many different goals for the day. While one goal was certainly to enjoy a stroll through all the British colonial buildings and see the crumbling architecture, another goal was to make some inquiries at the General Post Office and the Railway Booking Office for tourists…

It was actually funny that we had to find a special location for tourists to book a train ticket, but once we reached it, we managed to narrow down our onward travels and Puri became our desired destination. The post office inquiries proved successful as well, at least in that sense that we got all the necessary information. But for some strange reason ground shipping was supposed to be equally as expensive as shipping of a parcel by air which made no logical sense to the casual observer…

Anyway, the stroll was really nice and I personally was excited like a little kid to be running around and taking photos of all the great buildings from a time when Kolkata must have been a really grand colonial place. Today all the beautiful historic buildings were in all states of decay or collapse, but at least some of them could still be considered as well-aged. Fixing them up and preserving them became one of my architectural dreams while we were walking around…

British Colonial Building in Kolkata, India

Overall it seemed quite difficult to understand why someone would let all the great buildings rot away instead of investing into a minimum of maintenance. Somebody must have been the owner and one would think that this somebody should have in interest in keeping the building structure alive. But the way it looked to me in many cases, the buildings seemed to be left alone until they partially collapsed and then they were torn down and replaced with the biggest architectural sin one could possibly create  out of concrete and steel. To me this attitude towards those grand buildings was really strange…

Anyway, in the late afternoon we then went to see the Kalighat Temple and yet another concert underneath the big Birla Mandir Temple. This time around the concert was in the theme of Sarod and Sitar, which meant that we could enjoy everything from solo performances to an entire orchestra of instruments. This was definitely a great ending of a nice day in Kolkata… : )