Ok so I’m back…..as promised to finish off my Calcutta expedition, (am currently about a week behind so this might be a long one, sorry;-)

So where was I …..I had just survived my first Calcutta scamming, and was reasonable unscathed when I asked a man how far Chowringhee road was…he very kindly pointed to the traffic lights ahead and said I had to turn right and I would be there. mmmm…Sounded easy enough. When entering the given road I discovered that no, I wasn’t in Chowringhee road.
So I asked someone else…..”oh just turn left at the end of this road”
Me: “How far? ”
Man: “Only three minutes!”

I won’t bore you with the details….but lets just say an hour later I was still walking and still getting “just up the road directions” You might be wondering why I wasn’t using my guidebook map at this point….a fair question….and the reason is simple: Lonely planet maps SUCK!

Sweating profusely in the boiling midday heat I eventually stopped to ask a group of businessmen who were standing outside their building having a smoke. (Did I mention that I am over a month smoke-free.?;-) Anyway they mostly spoke English and burst out laughing when I showed them where I wanted to be.
“you are miles away from there…you can’t walk it… it’s over 8km…you need to get a cab”
So mildly fuming I hailed myself a cab. As I jumped in I asked him if he knew where the street was, he nodded…then drove a bit, stopped and wanted to have a look at my map. No, he was pretty clueless and had absolutely NO idea were one of the main touristy streets in Calcutta was. He then proceeded to drive around for a bit, at which point I thought bugger this I’m getting out! His fair was RS22 but I only had RS500 on me and he had absolutely no change on him. And so we sat there in a stalemate both of us saying: “no change!” Now what annoyed me is that most of the time when people don’t have change (and its easily 60% of the time) they go out of their way to try and find it. He did nothing of the sort…in fact, he seemed to think that I should just give him the RS500 and call it quits! Over my dead body! By this time my temper was pretty fueled…and I am ashamed to admit I did something I am not particularly proud of, I just got out the cab and walked away with him still shouting at me.
(Of course, Neurotic angel was having a field day.)
Angel: That’s absolutely disgusting Gayle, how could you possibly cheat that man out of his money! You know karma is going to get you for that!
Luckily for me ‘Fuming Anger’ seems to have superiority over Neurotic angel and simply told her to: “Shut it, I’m not in the mood.!”

After asking two more cabbies who also didn’t have a clue where my street was I asked another man, on the verge of tears……and he said: Oh it’s just at the end of this road.
Me: How long?
Man: About 3 minutes!

I was out of cab options so had no other choice but to simply walk……almost 2 hours after the first 3-minute comment I crawled exhausted into my room.
As lovely as Calcutta was I didn’t have the energy for another day like that. I didn’t feel like a worldly traveller I felt like a complete failure. Lonely Planet is always so full of all these “interesting” “quirky” little things to do, with simple instructions like: “Just jump onto the no. 8 tram…or take a bus from the down station.” I couldn’t even find a way home so how the hell I was going to find the bus station was beyond me. Defeated and miserable, I dragged myself out to get something to eat. I went to go and see if I could organise a car for the following day but the going price seemed to be RS 1300 and there was no way I could afford that on my budget. So was just walking around feeling rather hopeless when as if by magic I met a lovely Indian man called Vicki.

I think what I immediately liked about him was his “lack of interest” in me. He was just chilled, relaxed and not clambering to take me on his bike. We had a chai ( on the street – I m getting braver) and we’re talking about my day when he said he would walk me home and then help me plan my next day. So we spent the next 20 minutes drawing all over my “useless” lonely planet map and planning how I was going to get to places and how much I should “actually” be paying for taxis!! Needless to say, I felt massively relieved and we agreed to meet up the next night for dinner!

The next morning I felt determined as ever! I could do this! I set out to get my first cab to the flower market. Vicki has said it was less than 2km and that I should only pay no more than RS30 to get there (going rate is RS10 per km)…… RS100 later I was there! ( I forgave myself…due to the fact that taximan was a stubborn individual who kept insisting it was 8km!! I just wanted to get there!)
We pulled up and he motioned down a road…but I didn’t see any flower market!

AHA!
I wasn’t falling for that again! I told him I wasn’t getting out till I saw the flower market. He reluctantly drove forward about 100 minutes and there it was! ( Not even the road he had pointed at all!)

Jubilant I jumped out…I had actually made it to my first port of call. I was sooo proud!! The flower market was run down but beautiful! (I think the photo’s say it all) Next stop: Howler train station….looked at “useless” map, got my bearings and asked man: “Just across the road and over the bridge.”
I Continued to ask people and 15 minutes later I was back where I started…at the flower market.

Frustration and terror beginning to filter in…I set off in the opposite direction….don’t ask me why? (You see in all honesty maps are brilliant if you actually know what street you are in…..but most of the time its impossible to find street names.) I eventually found some policeman and was relieved to find that I was on the main road heading towards the train station…yeheee! All I had to do was walk straight for about 2km! I could do that!:-) Halfway there it started raining so I hailed a cab. Now in the guide, it says that you mustn’t get into a cab unless they have the meter running. Cabbie man absolutely refused to put the metre on and wanted R50 to go 1km? No bloody ways so continued to walk in the rain. ( Noted to self: Buy an umbrella!!) 20 minutes later I walked into the train station with the biggest smile on my face, confident in the knowledge that I am not a complete idiot and I can get myself from A to B. Happily requested a ticket to a religious centre called Belur Math. The very kindly Indian man smiled at me sweetly and said: “You have the wrong station, you want Howler station….. it’s across the bridge on the other side of the flower market.”
Looked in desperation at my “useless ” map only to discover that yes it was. I think my face said it all because in that instant it suddenly HIT me…..I am truly and COMPLETELY directionless and I can’t read bloody maps!!!! It’s not the Lonely planet map that is useless. It’s ME!!!!
Sweet station man seemed to find this all quite funny and said: “Come we put you on bus“
Two minutes later he had flagged down a bus for me and I was on my way to Howler station for a mere RS 8. With my mood suddenly buoyant again I had an Epiphany! Just maybe if I accepted my ‘directionless’ flaw and stopped worrying about the destination the whole time then I could simply start “enjoying” the journey… (How deep is that? Mmmmmm haven’t I read that somewhere before….like 100 times?:-)

And so continued the rest of my day……I managed to somehow get myself to all but one of my planned places in a very Haphazard and roundabout way. (I had to go back to howler station 3 times for different destinations, which probably could have been avoided but I didn’t care.) I was travelling BY MYSELF on public transport!!! I figured out that in India you don’t need to have any sense of direction. All you need is a bus station and a map. (hell you don’t even need the bus station….a road with buses will do!)
It’s like this: You go up to someone who looks like they might be able to speak English. (again it doesn’t matter if they don’t cause the plan still works) You point on the map and within 3 minutes you will be surrounded by at least 10 Indian men. They all start shouting at each other and pointing in various directions till an agreement is found and one of them will shout: “Come follow” and will then take you right to your bus….even if they have to stop traffic to do so! It’s brilliant! I manage to do a whole days sightseeing spending less than RS60! (Excluding My R100 for the taxi of course!)

I hadn’t planned of course not to use any taxi’s but I soon discovered that all the taxi’s I stopped absolutely refused to use the metre and then quoted me a price at least 3 times more than it should have been. I later found out from another traveller that they always do that and I “should ” have had the transport police’s number on my phone and threatened to call them, he did this and it worked every time. Alas, this I did not know ( I blame my guide) ……so buses it was for the whole day.

( One of the places that I visited was the Botanical Gardens which was absolutely beautiful. It had the most incredible Giant Amazon Lily pads in the water that was all over a metre wide.

There was also a very famous tree called the Banyan tree that is over 250 years old. The tree occupies a 140-metre area and basically looks like hundreds of trees in a forest….every single tree, however, is part of one central trunk that rotted away in the 1920’s. It’s incredible to see, as the branches all have massive roots growing down into the ground.

That evening I met Vicky for dinner, and he looked really sweet with a trendy little bowler hat on. Before we went to dinner he took me for a walk through the night market which was amazing. The place was absolutely heaving with people. It was here while we were walking that I probably saw one of most disturbing thing I have seen in India so a far…a man with no legs or arms was lying on the ground face down, eyes closed chanting (but sounded more like groaning). Next to him was a plate for money. A couple of metres on there was another one…also lying face down….(obviously positioning themselves well to add the horror of what you were seeing and to elicit more money from gullible tourists- like me) And at the end of the road was a table with a little toddler, about 3 years old lying sleeping also with no arms and legs. As far as shock value goes- it was up there on an 8.2 scale, and it literally stopped me in my tracks.
Needless to say, those of you who have watched slumdogs millionaire will know this…..
Many children in India are victims of India’s so-called ‘beggar mafia’ —
” Criminals so violent and amoral that they will cut the arms and legs off their victims simply to maximise the children’s earning from sympathetic passers-by”
Vicky said they will pay poor parents for their children and I also read that they go so far as to steal babies from the hospitals.
So basically these children are used for props and hardly get any of the money that is paid to them. A valuable lesson I learned that night was not to give money, and to only give food as you just never know who you are giving it too.

The next day I spent with Vicky and he took me to the last couple of places on my list. We spent the first hour riding around trying to find……wait for it: A rubbish heap. We couldn’t stop laughing at the fact that only in India would a rubbish heap be listed in the guide as a ‘sight to see’
And that is was… it was just incredible….it was so huge it looked like a mountain and the smell around it was atrocious. Guide says: “This heap (due for eventual removal) support a community of destitute scavengers who scape together a miserable existence living in a tent and box shacks on the neighbouring pavements.”

After that, we went to the Mother Teresa Mother House and watched a film about her life which was pretty amazing.

That night I caught a non-stop sleeper coach to Delhi…which was fantastic. It was kind of like a flight on tracks with them bringing refreshments and all your meals.
I ended up talking to a really sweet man from Calcutta that lives in Delhi, mostly about South African politics. ( Noted to myself….mmmm….about 1 minute into the conversation that unlike my politically minded brother, I myself was clueless about SA politics and that it should probably be illegal for me to even open my mouth on the topic;-) Never the less than made a mental vow to listen more to Lloyd when he sprouts intelligent political stuff!;-)

Anna Spanner…I just found out that mum has been posting you my blog ( don’t I have a sweet mother!) ….so glad you are hearing all my news and looking forward to seeing you at Christmas time. Hope you are well Yayaai Paai, love you lots!