April 29 Kolkata Subway

We decided to try the Kolkata subway system known as the best in the country. It was clean and cool and extremely cheap (about .25 per ride). The cars were full of people but the system worked well. Our first stop was the Sitambara Jain Temple. It was an oasis in the middle of Kolkata. Beautiful spacious grounds, a pool, well maintained, and a lovely glass ceiling in the main temple. There were few worshippers, but lots of polite security guards to guide us through the procedures. The biggest problem was burning our feet on the pavement since we took our shoes off too early. Photography was not allowed inside the temple.

The second temple was a total contrast. This was the Kali temple, I should have guessed there would be trouble when personnel were posted at every corner to guide us to the temple. It was a total con job with a leech guide who said he was free because he worked for the temple. He took me from post to post buying flowers, blessing flowers and then insisted on a major contribution to feed the poor. At this stage I bailed and he trailed me way out into the street insisting I pay him. I didn't and Joan and I left.

The third place was the Nakhoda Mosque. Again we had an escort, and he took us through a locked door so we could wander the second and third floors of the Mosque. Later we were allowed to wander in the courtyard but not the ground floor of the mosque. Kolkata is suffering from a major heat wave and when I looked in the main entrance theplace was full of people sleeping on the cool floor.

April 28 Fly to Kolkata(Calcutta)

I had booked the return flight from Sikkim to Calcutta with 2 days leeway before our flight home. Sure enough I got a text message the day before our flight that the bad weather (fog) meant the flight could not fly into Pakyong and the flight was moved to another airport 200km away. That was actually good news since that airport was closer to Darjeeling than Pakyong. I saved 500 rupees. All went well and we were back in Kolkata by 1 pm. The heat is still a killer. I engaged a taxi driver to take us to a temple for 6 pm, wait 40 min and bring us home. I had the guide book with a picture and he called a pow-wow with his friends at the taxi stand to sort the directions and set the price. Off we went and we were in the most decrepit taxi ever. It had 4 doors only3 of which opened. The clutch was gone so we shuddered when starting. He stopped to add water to the rad twice. We were going along in the fast lane of a dual highway when we went past a radar gun. It felt like 120 because of the rattling but we were only doing 47kph. We were glad to get home in one piece.

April 27th Walk to Bhutia Busty Monastery

I tried navigating with google maps to walk to the monastery but it didn't work. I couldn't find the paths because even being off by 5 meters meant I was on the wrong road. I gave up on Google and started asking people at every intersection which way. That worked much better. The monastery is only accessible by foot and it was a 3 km walk from the hotel. It was a very foggy day with the clouds rolling in and out all day long. We were passed by a Hindu funeral lead by two people with a conch shell and a drum. It was eerie hearing them coming in the fog, but not being able to see them. The conch shell gave off an incredibly loud and piercing sound. The monastery was quiet and empty. A guard let us in and said we could take pictures. The outside was well painted but the inside was dark and somewhat plain, We spoke to the cook and he said there was only 13 students at the monastery. We took pictures and then started back. It had been downhill all the way coming. Now it was uphill for 2 km. We stopped a lot for pictures and purchases at the family stores. In the late afternoon I wandered through the bazaar taking pictures.  There will be no pictures due to bad internet.