We landed in Kolkata on Monday and shared a taxi with 2 Aussies from Queensland into Kolkata's central area. This was a one hour ride. These guys had been touring around Asia for the past 3 months. As they had no hotel reservation and it was late in the afternoon they booked into our hotel.

The view from the taxi was desperate, dark, depressing, wall to wall poverty lined our route into town. There are whole families living in makeshift shelters they call homes, a piece of plastic shelters them from the rain. Welcome to Kolkata!!

We settled into our hotel with an ensuite and air conditioning, although clean very small and basic, considered nice by Indian standards. Over the next few days we arranged getting sim cards for our IPhone, changed currency and looked around the streets. No rubbish bins so all rubbish is chucked onto the street, the poor rumage through the rubbish heaps retreaving whatever looks usable, this is their answer to recycling. By the way there is no welfare payments to the sick and destitute.

Bengali cuisine is considered the best in India and it was good, we tried to eat Bengali as much as possible as their idea of cooking western was hit and miss. You see a lot of chickens in the market place so you see many dishes using chicken and eggs.

One of the highlights of our trip so far was a one day cooking course in a private middle class home. Raj Joshi showed us how to cook several dished of which I had photos, I say had, as Leigh has managed to delete my entire roll of film of our time in Kolkata, so will have to relie on memory!! Joshi's kitchen was tiny probably 2.5 x 2.5 meters square (her fridge was in the lounge room). She had a lounge, dining, office room aprox 5 x 5. 4bedroom unit. She has her mother-in-law, teenage son and daughter living there. In true middle class standard she has a house keeper also. A lot of their cooking is done with mustard oil and they also use whole mustard seeds in their cooking.

The markets are everywhere merchants selling everything from Chi tea to live chickens. Many who are fortunate to have one of the low cost jobs, about Rs2000 Aus$50 per month. Jobs such as the security guard, lift operator, where we employ 1 they employ 4 to do the job. We ate our evening meals in good resaurants and had 2 or 3 attendants each time, and we paid equivalent to going to Sofia's with a couple of glasses of wine. There are the well to do Indians that can easily afford this. You won't find the rickshaw driver or the table attendant here. One night we went to the most expensive silver service restaurant; part of the Oboroi Hotel and paid aprox $50. We ended up here due to a day long strike where the only place you could find something to eat was the hotels. This was equivalent to western luxury - see photo. There is a big variation between the haves and the have nots. The have nots are either beggars; children & women or men using their bodies to pull rickshaws, some are bike peddled. If they have put enough money together, taxi drivers.

The architecture here was built during the English times so there are many once beautiful building in Kolkata unfortunately neglected and deteriorating, these would have been huge magnificent buildings in their time. One building which has been restored and the grounds maintained is the Victoria Memorial - luckily photo on my IPhone.

The 5 days was educational but I am pleased to be heading off to Nepal.

PS
the computer wiz has managed to recover most of the photos so will post as soon as we can resize.

Love to you all.