Visit to the old city of Calcutta

The three hour flight from Port Blair reached at Kolkata at 10 AM. As soon as I stepped out of the airport, I could feel the humidity and heat of the late summers of Kolkata. And for the first time in my life I saw something..... I saw yellow ambassador cabs. Oh.. I never expected these here. I was planning on using cab services like Ola or Uber but I thought that the experience of traveling in an ambassador taxi would be different.

So, we got in the cab and to be honest, it was a different experience altogether. The driver dropped us at the hotel. I remember my roommate telling me that the transport was really cheap. I had a look at the public buses and soon got the reason. The buses here look as though they were from 19th century and looking at the condition of these buses, I would never get into one of those even if it was free. Our hotel was a pretty decent 3 star hotel with enough amenities. We checked in at the hotel and hired a cab for sightseeing.

We began our sightseeing at around 11 AM and our first spot was Mother's Wax Museum.This wax museum was my first ever visit to a wax museum and it was worth the money. It housed over a hundred different wax statues which looked appealingly real.This wax museum is a must visit for the photo enthusiasts who are traveling to Kolkata as this was a lifetime experience for me.

We stopped by a restaurant for lunch. We had traditional Bengali cousine which consisted of a bangla fish curry and and fish fry. One peculiar thing I noticed was that they gave potato which was whole boiled as a side dish and there curd was denser than usual.

Our next spot was the Eco Park. This park was humongous in area. It was like a perfect spot for people who wish for an evening walk or for kids to play. We also rode two-seater bicycles for rent. It was a very well maintained park with a lake and other historic symbols to add to its beauty. It also had a mini version of the seven wonders of the world which looked stunning in the background of the park. After about half an hour in the park.It started to rain heavily. The storm was so strong that it had uprooted many tress and the furniture at the cafeterias were blown down.

It rained for about an hour after which we got back in the car to move towards old Kolkata. As we move towards old Kolkata, we saw the Biswa Bangla also known as the Kolkata gate which was a wonderful architectural design. Slowly , I notice the roads getting narrow and more people in the streets. The peeling paint on crumbling colonial architecture showed that the city was really old. The hand-drawn rikshaws, tremendous amount of stray dogs, loud horns and lots of homeless people (even by Indian standards). The poverty on show is particularly noticeable, with many either destitute or living in unbelievable squalor. It seemed like the poorest and dirtiest city in India. I could see tram rails on the roads too.

No trip to Kolkata is complete without a visit to the city’s epitome of colonial heritage: the Victoria Memorial, an architectural marvel built in Queen Victoria’s name. The incredible museum inside is also another epitome of Indian history. Victoria Memorial is a must visit to anyone who visits Kolkata.

After visiting the Victoria memorial, our next spot was the Mother House, the resting place of St Teresa of Calcutta,

lovingly known as Mother Teresa. A small adjacent museum room displays Teresa’s worn sandals and battered enamel dinner bowl. Located upstairs is the room where she worked and slept from 1953 to 1997, preserved in all its simplicity. We payed homage to Mother Teresa and participated in the hymn prayer service offered there.

We got back in our cab to see the Howrah Bridge. It was indeed an engineering beauty of a fully suspended steel bridge connecting Howrah and Kolkata. The entire structure was riveted and the lights added to its aesthetics. The traffic in the narrow roads of Kolkata is over ten times worse than that of Bangalore. People here are so lazy that they take long chai-sutta breaks and close their shops early.

We reached back at the hotel at around 9 at night. Yet another experience at one of the oldest city of early Indian colonization was done and this experience will definitely a different one.