Our arrival at Kolkata airport was a much less stressful affair.

All our luggage (except the two missing pieces) arrived with us fairly on time around 9am in Kolkata airport. It took us a while to report the missing luggage but seemingly they are close behind us and will be delivered soon.

With some wobbly airport trolleys we made our way out of the airport ready to be collected to go to the school. A short while of waiting due to the fact that the people meeting us thought we were coming into the international arrivals rather than domestic arrivals. Soon remedied and the most ornate coach appeared. Purple voile curtains, red sparkly panels and outsized gold roof bosses around the lights.

The first thing you really notice is the noise, car horns, bus horns, tuktuk horns, moped horns etc you get the picture, all blaring out - apparently it’s the law to use them all the time! The next thing you notice is the random way in which people just walk in the road - even main dual carriageways - without a care for the traffic, but clearly this causes more tooting of the horns.

Try as we might to stay awake most of sunk into most padded coach seats I have ever sat on and nodded off for the 2+ hours across the city. I woke as we got closer to the school and the staff began pointing out some sites of interest local to the school - the last bit of the journey was quite reminiscent of the tight lanes that coaches have to manoeuvre around in parts of Somerset, although the sights, sounds and smells couldn’t be more different - with the possible exception of the cows!

We we arrived at the Mathieson Music School we were greeted by Anup Biswas, director of the school, all the teachers and some very excited children. We were whisked off into the Music room for a performance song, some introductions and traditional Bengali welcome ceremony which involved incense, flower garlands and a type of anointing on our foreheads.

The teachers in the school has very kindly given up their rooms to accommodate us all whilst we are here so our girls are sharing one room, the lads another and Dan has a curtained off space in the corridor. I’m embarrassed to say that I have been given the headmasters room all to myself