It was in 2010 when I visited this historic city for the first time. Now, after 4 years, again the next visit. This visit was as part of an official meeting related with ICPC. Boarding from Coimbatore, it was around 36 hours of journey in a "super fast" train - Mangalore Santragachi Express. Though the time it arrived at Coimbatore was sharp as per the schedule, it was sharply delayed when it reached Kolkata. And imagine, this train is without a pantry car! How disastrous it would be to travel for so long without a pantry car in the train. Each and every station, I had to climb down to find something to eat. But thanks to the Indian Railways at least for taking order for the lunch and dinner, prior to reaching the next station. The interesting fact noticed in the journey was that the AC coach stops at some point in every station where there is no shop to get food easily. It is required to walk at least a short distance to get something. And needless to say, toilets were near to horrible. While I was in 2AC, I had to depend on the toilets in 3AC coach for a "seamless download of junk" :).
Santragachi station is not good for any new comer to Kolkata. It is so crowded, badly crowded. You need not walk, but will get pushed away by the crowd. No cabs in the station and you have to depend on the buses to reach any place in the city. Thanks for my hosts who came to pick me up knowing all these facts. If you want to experience and enjoy the most polluted, populated, dirty city in India, Kolkata would be the best.
To Dakshineswar:
It was a great experience for me to walk from the ISI campus where I stayed, to Dakshineswar. My Nokia Lumia 720 helped to reach there with "Here" maps. It was around 2.3 km. I was amazed to see how the people live, how the small hotels for the rishaw walas and lorry drivers are run. I couldn't believe my eyes - the owner of the hotel was carrying a bucket (empty plastic jar used to supply paints) of water from a corporation pipe which is in a canal of waste! He carried it to the hotel and poured in the bucket used to wash hands and mouth after taking the food. This is really amazing! And as I was watching, I could see one of the drivers taking that water to wash his hands! Somewhere I messed up without following the direction given by Lumia and had to depend on Cycle Rikshaw to reach the temple. I was attracted by one of the boys to keep the chappal inside a shop and immediately the shop owner gave some water to wash my hands! I wondered what the story is but shortly realized that he wanted me to by something to be offered in the temple and it was costing some hundreds of rupees. I asked the price to keep the chappal but it was thrown away because he told it is not their job to keep the chappals! Strange outside such a famous temple. Everything has become a business now and people know how to fool the devotees. After the Darshan visited 6 shrines installed with Shiva Linga. There were 6 boards placed in front of these shrines stating "Mobile phones / cameras not allowed". But there were hardly anyone who did not use the mobile phone as well as the camera. There is no information about the shrine but only these useless boards. After that, the shops near the Ganges sell most of the eatables - Pani Puri, Mixture, Ice Cream, Coffee, Tea, etc. I returned by typical private bus with conductor and driver without any uniform. Here, the auto-rikshaws are allowed to ply only in a predefined route and not as per the request by the passengers.
Tea is served in clay cups which is quite tasty to drink.
Rain in ISI Kolkata Campus
It was a nice experience to be in the ISI campus. Nice green campus with a good, reasonable guest house. The people are friendly and served good food. To move from the guest house campus to the main academic campus, there was a tunnel (underpass). It was to avoid walking through the main road. In fact, just above the underpass, there is a road with busy traffic and shops.
In another day I will leave the city, in the same train (hope the coach changes!).
