Kolkata ( Calcutta ) | INDIA

We flew to Kolkata planning on staying 3 nights, no accommodation booked in advance.

Basically, we arrived at the airport (2am) and spoke to a couple of backpackers on the same flight as us to see where they were staying - Just to have a rough idea.

And so we also found out that Sudder Street was apparently a well known area. Well and that's where we ended up.

*Not having a hotel booked can come in handy when you land at 2am. It does sound weird, but we found out that one of the guys in the same flight as us had a booking and his hotel was closed when he arrived, which means he could not get in, had to find another hotel to spend the night and lost his money for that night.

So we jumped on a cab and asked him to drop us off in the middle of this Sudder Street which was the main touristic part of the city (apparently).

At 2am everything is closed, most of the accommodations as well, so we thought this would be our best shot.

But it was fine, it just felt like we were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and our taxi driver was the creepiest ever, a bit funny too tho. He was definitely trying to scare us a bit haha looking through the mirror and making scary faces with eyes wide open and laughing. 

The bathroom of the hole-tel (EW)

Anyways we managed to get a hole of a room in a random place, filthy and there wasn't even a mattress on the bed, it was just a piece of wood covered with a sheet. Yes, this was the worst place I have ever stayed in my life! haha But it is all about the experience right? And also it was just for a couple of hours, in the morning we would find somewhere a bit more decent.

Coolest thing ever, being woken up with the call to prayer in the first morning, amazed me and also made me realize that I was in a completely different place. So we got dressed and left that precarious place to find something that we could at least have a mattress.

Taxi - (And yes, Flip Flops I know, I know lol)

First step outside, the biggest shock! So interesting, pretty and awful at the same time.
Calcutta is a cool city, but also very poor, crowded, noisy, dirty and with a lot of culture. The taxis are the cutest and the guys pulling water out of the ground to shower on the street with an old style pump were pretty fun to watch and the many little kids begging on the streets with also newborn babies on the streets was devastating.

The water pump

The pollution is incredibly high. I was shocked when I was blowing my nose and black stuff was coming out of it! It happened all the 3 days we stayed in this city. Pretty gross, I know.

Below you can find some of the things we did in 3 days there and also watch our short video in Kolkata here.

Victoria Memorial, City tour by tuktuk, Howrah Bridge, The Mother House - Madre Teresa of Calcutta, Belur Math Temple, Crossed the river from Belur Math Ferry Service temple all the way to Dakshineswar Kali Temple.

We ate a lot of street food during the day(20 cents big plate of lunch) and went to some restaurants at night (budget ones).

And slept somewhere which had some warm water and a mattress about $20aud per night (not so cheap I guess).

Boating towards the airport

 Dakshineswar Kali Temple

Morning Chai and Biscuit

Eventually we made it to the airport and found out our flight to Varanasi was cancelled, luckily we found a very friendly Indian passenger of the same flight who spoke English very well and needed to get to Varanasi no matter what so we decided to follow him. 

The worst road trip of my life and the most unpleasant experience 

The plan was to catch the next flight to this city called Patna, which is located half way to Varanasi and from there catch a train to Varanasi. Sounded like the perfect solution instead of waiting until the next day to catch another flight. 

We arrived in Patna, the train station was packed and we ended up missing the train so we would have to wait for 6h for the next train to Varanasi. But this guy was determined to get to Varanasi on that night.

Patna Train station - Where we would have to wait 6h for the next train..nope.

It was 8pm and he found a guy with an old Jeep willing to take us all the way to Varanasi, we didn’t quite like the idea at first but then looking at the map it was about 250km drive so it would take us max 3h to get there, and also it would be split by 4 people the total amount. Cool (Or not). I would never recommend doing this to anyone.

We didn’t know the conditions of the road and the weather. The roads were nearly impossible to drive on. There were potholes everywhere literally, we could not drive faster than 30k/h and the fog was the worst I have ever seen in my whole life! We couldn’t see 5 meters in front of us. The trucks coming opposite way from us were extremely close to hitting us ALL THE TIME as there was only 1 lane each way. It was always so close as neither could see each other because of the darkness and the fog and were at the same time trying to avoid the potholes on the road. The most precarious conditions ever.

It was the scariest trip of my life. So, what was supposed to take about 3h (250km), it took us 10 HOURS, yes TEN hours inside of a shaky car, freezing cold, not comfortable at all with 3 people at the back and the ‘friendly’ Indian guy trying to touch my legs while my boyfriend was exhausted sleeping. COOL. And how could I react to that shit?! I couldn't!! I seriously couldn't do anything but try to dodge his bloody hand because we were stuck in a car in the middle of nowhere with 3 locals and so I didn't want to make it worse than it already was.

Fog and the terrifying road trip - The only photo

A detail, we could not often stop the car to ‘use the toilet’ because we found out after 3hs that we were in the most dangerous road of India at that time. There was a bomb blasts killing many people a couple of weeks back, so it was like a war zone we were driving through, as they called 'the red corridor'.

It was like horror movie and I thought that would be the last day of my life and I did actually think that, I was ready to give up.

Lesson learned, to be more patient and do not take every single opportunity before thinking it through a little bit. It ended up taking much longer, being more expensive, more uncomfortable and heaps more dangerous in many ways.

Anyways, I could not believe we made it to Varanasi in one piece, I felt so relieved! It was 6am when we finally arrived at our destination which felt like a wonderful reward after going through all of that surreal trip. 

Luckily, we had someone already waiting for us as we had found an awesome Airbnb to stay pretty close to the Ganges River, I believe one of the only places we actually booked 1 day in advance (and I am very glad we did this time).