Kolkata- mama.

After almost 2 days of traveling, we landed in Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, on Sunday morning.

We stepped outside and were met with air and noise pollution like I'd never seen. We also got our first taste of Bengali life- everything takes longer. Mostly because there is never a fixed price in India, especially when white people are involved.

After a harrowing cab ride (Calcutta driving is like nowhere else- anything goes), we made it to our new home, the Sremon Guest House, a small hotel with the nicest staff and best kitchen in all of Calcutta.

Because anything goes in Indian driving, you use your horn to let the other car, bike or rickshaw know you're close or passing. So it was insanely loud. Add on that it was a national holiday (Republic Day), so there were actually loudspeakers mounted in the street playing music, and I was completely overwhelmed. I had only slept about 5 hours on the whole trip, so my only defense was to find the closest bed and crash for a while.

Lucky I did, because I woke up while everyone else was sleeping. And I got to accompany John and Kingkini's Aunt Manisha on a walk, an auto rickshaw ride, and a metro ride to the New Market to buy some clothes.

The next day, Kingkini's uncle, Shumit, took us around the city. Everywhere was awesome food that we were too nervous to eat. Soon the "Second to Last Day" plan was formed. (Stay tuned.)

It's worth noting that I'm going to great pains to only put up a small fraction of the pictures I took.

Yet none of them seem to do India any justice.

Our first stop was Belur Math, a Ramakrishna temple. We couldn't take pictures inside the grounds (I got this from the website). There we got our first taste of celebrity. As Culcutta isn't a touristy city, we didn't runinto a lot of other white people. So we were a pretty big attraction.

Especially among young girls. People were always taking our pictures and wanting to talk to us. As many people had learned English, they wanted to talk to native speakers and were always interested to hear how we spoke.

This is what normal traffic looks like.

Next up was the Kolkata Botanical Garden, home of the world's largest Banyan tree. That's part of it right there. The whole tree took up over 4 acres.

Banyan trees are pretty incredible because roots grow down from the branches to support the tree, so it just keeps getting bigger.

In fact, the trunk of this tree rotted out long ago.

We also say a double coconut tree, the world's largest seed. Boy, do I love a record breaker.

I don't know if these lily pads set any records, but they sure were big.