I (heart) Calcutta

After a tumultuous couple of days once our Darjeeling leg was cancelled, Danika and I wound up with one whole day to spend in Calcutta. To make matters worse, our train was late getting into Howrah station by 4 hours. Our initially pleasant impression of the Indian Railway has since faded to disappointment, much like our impression of air travel and bus travel-- but that's a cynical road I don't want to venture onto right now. We fortunately had a private taxi to take us around Calcutta, so we could make the most of our day. Where Delhi is challenging to navigate because of it's great area, Calcutta has the most incredible traffic you have ever seen. And considering things in Bangalore and Delhi are bad, just try to imagine what could be worse than bad?! We began our adventure at the highly recommended Victoria Memorial. It's a beautiful marble building surrounded by manicured gardens and canals. The memorial was built as a tribute to Queen Victoria who was the first Empress of British India. Besides the giant marble statues and standard floral gardens often found at these memorials, the Victoria memorial also housed an impressive collection of oil paintings depicting the days when the British East India Trading Company were in charge. There is an adjacent gallery that maps the timeline of Calcutta from the days of the British East India Company to the present day. It was probably the most informative thing i've read while travelling up north. The gallery explained in great detail the legacy of Calcutta, the stigmas that the rest of the world has about them and the various reasons for it's notorious poverty. Among all the cities I visited up north, Calcutta was my favourite. Maybe it had to do with all the old yellow cabs driving around, circa New York City in the 1970's (no autos anywhere!) but whatever it was, it had a certain je ne c'est quoi about it.
After the Victoria Memorial we visited the Marble Palace, which is an old abandoned mansion with beautiful marble structures among it's garden and zoo. Like a lot of places recommended it the Lonely Planet, you expect that as a tourist some information will be offered to you about what you are seeing, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
We drove by BBD Bagh, aka Dalhousie Square which was the headquarters of the British East India Administration. There is a lot of colonial architecture in Calcutta, especially in this area, you can always sense Calcutta's British past in this way.
For lunch we stopped off on Park St. for the legendary Kathi Rolls, which is simply a paratha with egg, chicken, onions and some chilli sauce. It's divine, and the paper napkin they wrap it in turns transluscent instantly, which is always an indicator of GOOD street food! We also had a lemon tart at the famous Flury's bakery, which has been around for over 40 years.
Among our other stops was St.Paul's Cathedral, NOT even close to as impressive as our Notre Dame, and Motherhouse, the final resting place of Mother Theresa. Considering how famous she was, her tomb is a humble white marble stone, covered with flowers. And the sisters of the Mission of Charity are very warm and welcoming, any one of them is pleased to sit down and talk to you about the life of Mother and the work they do at the mission. They take volunteers into their missions on a daily basis even. If you are ever visiting Calcutta, you can drop in for a day and help them in their orphanage or infirmary homes, they welcome all helping hands.

Our last stop in Calcutta was an authentic Hakka Chinese dinner at the Tangra district of Calcutta. It's where the original Hakka Chinese population in India immigrated to. My father's family once lived here, and we were lucky to have one of his friends in the Hakka community bring us here for a true Hakka meal. The area was once full of leather tanneries, and since the tannery business hasn't been doing well over the past few years, many of the tanneries have been converted into huge Chinese restuarants. We had the BEST Hakka Chinese meal, the food was so much better than the stuff you get in Toronto, or in the Indian/Chinese restaurants in Bangalore. It's sort of hard to describe, but it still has that basic character of spicy Chinese food, but more authentic because we had it in Calcutta!

Our flight from Calcutta back to Bangalore was delayed by 4 hours (thus the comment above), but the prospect of not having to take another train in this country made the hours fly by!