Choo choo

Ho ho ho! Today we hop on the Howrah-New Delhi Express (Train 2323) at 6:45pm and arrive in Delhi tomorrow at 5:15pm (if all goes as planned, which is unlikely). As you can imagine, we're bursting at the seams with excitement about spending 22 hours on a train. Hopefully it isn't too bad.

Kolkata has been an interesting place. We've eaten some tasty food and visited the Victoria Memorial, but it seems that the thing that stands out most in my memory is the man laying on the street with his diseased arm, gaping open at the elbow, in our faces. It was frightening and stomach-churning, but the worst part was that nobody was doing anything about it. That and we had no idea what to do about it. It was terrible.

Moving on, we're planning on visiting the botanical gardens today, as well as Dalhousie square and some sort of black hole memorial. Hopefully today is a bit brighter than yesterday was.

Kolkata Konundrum

After witnessing a man getting knocked out by a cold, hard fisted Indian, we hopped on a rickshaw from Bodhgaya to Gaya Junction where we would catch our train at 11:15pm. That is, if it wasn't running on Indian Railways. We arrived around 10pm on an exciting rickshaw drag race we had against other rowdy Canadians. Unfortunately, all that excitement was lost rapidly as we realized we would have to wait around until 3:15am before our train would show up. Well, at least it -did- show up. Apparently there was a collision between two trains, but we saw nothing of it in the morning newspaper. If it did actually happen, I sure hope everyone is all right.

Anyway, we arrived in Kolkata at 11 where we proceeded to ferry and taxi over to Sudder St, where most budget hotels are. We were accompanied by a full-fledged Italian man named Andreas who recommended a great pizzeria that we will be joining him for dinner at tonight. Boy am I excited.

Anyway, back to Sudder St. As we began looking for a hotel, we were confronted by an Indian man seeking commission by leading us to hotels. Now this is nothing out of the ordinary, except this man was furious. Almost dangerous. We said he wanted to go alone, and he started to yell and make a big scene. He even went so far as to tell Andreas that he should leave India immediately before muttering something about Israelis and pointing his hand in the shape of a gun at Andreas' head. It was startling to say the least.

As we began to walk-- and he followed us because he would get commission so long as he entered with us-- a man informed us that the commission-hungry Indian had lost more than a few marbles due to extensive use of cocaine and 'smack'. Well that did little to comfort us, since he was hot on our trail and didn't seem to be giving up. Luckily, we spotted a grocery store (it's always exciting to see one) and we entered, hoping he would be gone by the time we left. Sure enough, he was.

Whew!

So we're here now and we've enjoyed a delicious breakfast. It's strange to think that next Wednesday we will be walking upon Canadian soil-- well I suppose snow would be a better word, wouldn't it?

We hope all is well in the motherland and we'll see you all soon. Maybe too soon ;>

Buddha Baby

We arrived safely in Bodhgaya at 5am this morning. Our train from Varanasi was 4 hours late, so we didn't have to pay for a guest house last night! This dusty village is crawling with monks and around every corner there is a unique and immaculate Buddhist temple and some Tibetan refugees selling colourful goods on the road.

We plan to spend 2 nights here before heading to Kolkata. We are very excited to be finishing our trip soon and returning home to you!