Calcutta (Kolkata) is mammoth city in eastern India. To say the streets are crowded is a gross understatement. The streets are a confusion of buses, rickshaws (still powered by men on foot), business people on mobile phones, old Ambassador taxi's and over 60,000 people sleeping curbside. Five minutes on the streets of Calcutta is enough sensory overload to last weeks. But this is mainly in the downtown area, on the outskirts we took a cooking course and saw the softer side of the city. Our instructor has an Masters of Arts in Comparative Literature and teaches cooking classes occasionally for fun. Going from the slums to the upper middle class burbs gave us an interesting perspective. Back in central Calcutta, we took a day to work with homeless people; Kori with children and Brent with the dying. Nathan and I did this in 2000 and the experience was no less heartbreaking than before. After washing clothes and serving meals I spent an hour holding down a 30 year old man with an infection on his ankle that decimated nearly all of his flesh to the bone. His achilles tendon and fibula were fully exposed and he weighed no more than 65lbs. Very humbling.
From Calcutta we trained 42 hours to south India, we'll post these pictures soon...
Photo's of Calcutta....
Mother Teresa's grave
9 out of 10 cars in Calcutta are 1950's British Ambassadors, pretty cool until you are showered in exhaust as they have no catalytic converters..
Man bathing on the street
Cooking course with Rajashi (cooking paneer)
View from the window of our luxurious hotel..
Kori sleeping on train from Calcutta to Chennai
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