Hello from Calcutta

Kim and I arrived today into Calcutta. Not that it's called that anymore, it is now called Kolkata which keeps the english pronounciation more correct.

It took the cab driver over an hour to get to our hotel 22kms away. The cab was prepaid, so the message here is that there is alot of traffic to deal with.

There are cows occasionally on the side of the road. So there are sacred cows here.

The air is really polluted. Tastes a bit like Cairo in that sense. Because we both had to get up early this morning for the plane we are both wearing glasses instead of contact lenses - which I think might be a good thing because otherwise it would probably be stinging our eyes.

We have seen some poverty here, but not like you might imagine - if you are like me you might imagined that Calcutta meant crowds of beggars desparate and dieing. But we haven't seen that. There are some beggars on the street and also some just poor people sleeping or keeping to themselves on the street. One boy followed me around and started touching my pocket that held my camera. I ended up slapping his hand away - It was more reactive than I would have wanted to be.

We have also seen Indian yuppies or Indian yuppies in training (puppies?). We were just in a coffee shop drinking iced lattes and iced tea and there was an excited table of Indians argueing/working together on what sounded like a group business school project.

I didn't notice this at the time, but they were all speaking English. But I did notice at the time that when speaking English, they have the same Indian accent Indian people have at home. I suppose that the accent is portable is obvious, but from that I felt a connection to the Indians who live here and the Indians I know at home.

I don't think we will spend much time in Calcutta (Kolcata). Maybe we will try and find tigers outside of the town somewhere.