Day One – Arrival and Adjusting

It was first the musty old book fragrance that met us as soon as we left the plane. Then a pungent cigarette texture was added. When we left the airport, the oppressive heat and high humidity enveloped us like a tight fitting glove, only seeming to tighten its hold as the day progressed. We arrived at the Lytton Hotel before 10am and arranged to meet as a group once more at 1pm after room assignments were established. Atisha arrived sometime thereafter (she went to India a bit before us to visit her family in Jaipur) and I went with her to get a SIM card for my cell phone. What was until then a relatively simple affair turned into a complex merry-go-round of identification verification and activation for service. Atisha, ever so patient, explained later that the shop owner wanted to feel self-important as to having a foreigner on his doorstep and thus made the process a lot more complicated.

After meeting as a group with Papi, our guide for the day, we went on a walking tour towards the Park Street Cemetery (The East India Trading Company Mausoleums). Coupled with the heat and 30 hours of travel, what made the walk all the more tiring was the incessant honking of street traffic – everywhere from the tiniest scooter to taxi on the most unimportant side street to the major arteries of the city. In fact, the street traffic seemed to be a chaotic mess – there were discernible patterns and a vague sense of order – but even on the streets that had lights (and that's very few indeed) pedestrians and vehicles alike fought each other for right of way. There was this one crossing near a flyover (a raised “highway”) that had a recurring message on a loudspeaker asking people not to cross the street but after a minute of this and a helpless? Traffic police officer attempting to direct traffic, the message stopped for 5 seconds and then started up again. Frustrated, people ignored the message and tried crossing anyway.

Arriving at the Cemetery, we had half an hour to explore the site. The site wasn't significantly large by any means, but the structures built on top of it were. The majority of men who worked for the East India Trading Company died in their twenties, succumbing to malaria, typhoid and a host of other terrible diseases that would accompany workers in the tropics.
It was decided soon after this that because everyone was so tired, we would cut the day short. So we all went to this rooftop restaurant to drink beer and eat food. We then had the evening to ourselves, but, not before being told that we would need to meet at 6:20am in the hotel lobby to go on a walking tour that starts at 7am (i.e, the tour doesn't start until we get to the location at 7am). Sorry if I don't quite remember where that location is. I suppose you can look at the itinerary – since we didn't make it everywhere today anyway. I hope to have more provocative pictures soon; Jonathon has been generously taking photos especially for the blog. Everyone also has their own digital camera; some even brought their D-SLRs, so at the end of the trip we're going to have copious amounts of photos that hopefully will, for the lack of a better phrase, paint the picture of Kolkata very well.