Kolkata Diaries - Day 7 (Guest Blog)

Its a week into the trip for our volunteer, and an excursion outside Kolkata for Steve - Read more ;)

'We took the train 100 miles to Shantiniketan - a small town off the beaten track where people travel to seek inner peace and have a rest from the flipping madness of Kolkota.

As we drove through the streets of Kolkota to Howrah station we saw people showering in the streets before the daily grind starts. Howrah station used to be known as the busiest train station in the world. It’s lost that title now but it’s still phenomenally full on - 5 million people pass through it every day!!

I couldn’t resist but pay a local man to carry his possessions on my head (when in India) it weighed a ton and I very nearly lost my balance and toppled into the train tracks.

Two and a half hours later we arrived in - and I’ve been practicing the spelling - Shantiniketan.

As we got off the train the real Indian experience that I have been craving since I arrived - started to kick in. It is 44 degrees (107 Fahrenheit) humidity is 60 percent. I am drenched just standing still. The smell, the sounds the sights of rickshaws mingling around local buses; buses with people on the roof clinging onto dear life - hit me like a brick. I literally didn’t know what to look at first.

We arrived at our guest house - a remote house in a beautiful location. It’s basic, it had no Air Con and the small team made us our first home made Indian dinner (lentils, egg plant, Vegetables accompanied by the most amount of rice I’ve ever seen!

There are cows, goats, hairy pigs and chickens everywhere! Unfortunately for me there are also hundreds of creepy looking bugs (I’ve always hated them) so far I’ve had a near miss from two hornets a huge flying beetle and flying cockroaches that seem to love coming through my window and crashing head first into the front door. If I survive the night I’ll be back on tomorrow for day 8 xx'