Kolkata: Welcome to West Bengal (and a Very Merry Durga Puja!)

The first thing that hits you is the humidity – we were sweating by the time we were in the taxi which was parked a few metres from the air-conditioned airport entrance. The sights and sounds hit you next; our taxi driver permanently had his hand on the horn and there were people screaming and swerving all over the road. On the way into Kolkata there is a chaotic mess of people, dogs, goats, cows, abandoned buildings, piles of garbage and general squalor lining the streets. The smells vary from dead things and fresh faeces, to delicious curries and the spiciest of spices. There are so many potholes in the road and so much abrupt braking and accelerating that it’s impossible to shut your eyes for a second, despite barely having slept at all in Kolkata airport the night before. All this before we have even made it to the guest house…

It’s taken a while just to get used to being in India. Luckily we have a month in Kolkata, volunteering for the Institute of Indian Mother & Child, by which time we should be well accustomed to the Indian way of life. Volunteering is also a rude reminder on how much we have forgotten about the world of medicine during our 10 months away from home, but more on that in blogs to come. The first few weeks are all about getting used to this completely different world. Thankfully we’ve got a top bunch of fellow volunteers at our side!

It's har to capture the essence of Kolkata in pictures. The sounds and smells and humidity contribute so much to the madness that are the streets of this city.

There are no rubbish bins in the streets, just mountains of rubbish in some areas. Even when you ask at a shop if they have a rubbish bin they gesture for you to throw it onto the street. Quite sad.

How traffic works in Kolkata:

> You MUST sound your horn when you drive. People don't use indicators or rear vision mirrors, so you gotta blow the horn if you don't want to be crushed by a truck.

> There are no lanes, in fact there are no road markings at all except for in the very city centre. This means you can drive anywhere you want, but try to keep vaguely left.

> Most one-way streets change direction at 1pm everyday. Carnage ensues.

The markets are as delicious as they are chaotic. You've gotta be careful not to buy the deadly fruits (the ones the flies are crawling all over), and not to get ripped off (if you're paying more than 10cents per samosa, you're being ripped off)

Yes, this lady is emptying a cow's stomach into the gutter. We were lucky enough to wander around old Chinatown during the Muslim festival Id-ul-Zuha, where they butcher cows in the streets and share the beef with everyone, among other festivities.

Felix contemplates the effects of 200 years of British colonisation in front of Victoria Memorial. It seems Kolkata was the city to benefit the most from colonisation, but also the city that suffered the most when the British left.

When you have no iPhone or xBox, you learn to make your own fun!

One of the clinics the Institute runs is in a tiny village called Dhaki, 70km south of Kolkata (the roads are so bad it takes 4 hours to get there). It’s just inland from the Bay of Bengal, near the mangroves and swamps that are the mouths of the Ganges River. Very green and swampy and beautiful!

We paid a bit extra for our 2 hour jeep ride so we didn't have to hang off the roof like these crazy folk.
(The jeep ride was followed by a ride on a few planks of wood attached to the back of a motorcycle.)

Even more than in the city, the kids in the villages around Kolkata think we are aliens. Most of them get really excited about these alien sightings, but some of them are just really confused, an some even get upset. We swear we didn't do anything to the kid on the right to make him cry...

For all the bad things the monsoon brings, it does make everything so, incredibly, GREEN!

Life in these villages may be challenging, but it's a heck of a lot better than life in the slums of Kolkata. Less overcrowding, more access to crops... And it's flippin' beautiful.

As a bonus, we’re lucky that October is festival month in Kolkata. There’s Gandhi’s Birthday (Happy Birthday Mahatma!), the Muslim festival Id-ul-Zuha, several other minor celebrations, and the biggest one of all: Durga Puja. This Hindu festival celebrates Durga, the 10-armed mother goddess who came down to earth and slayed the evil demon Mahishasuri, who could not be slain by any man (like that scene in Lord of the Rings where Eowyn kills the Witch King). During Durga Puja, Kolkata becomes beyond saturated with people. The roads become grid locked, the metro literally overflows, and the streets become filled with brightly clad festival-goers.

Literally thousands and thousands of pandals like this one pop up all over Kolkata for the duration of Durga Puja. People visit them to make offerings to Durga, dance, an get amongst the Puja action. On the last day everyone completely loses the plot and throws all the statues of Durga and her chilren in the Hooghly River, amidst a storm of chanting, facepainting and debauchery.

We da Maharaja and Maharani of da puja, yo.

Next time: A weekend of tea-tasting in Darjeeling!