Dear friends,

Josh and I are having a whale of a time in India but have been unfortunately stranded in Kolkata for an extra night after we tried to navigate the extremely bizarre/complex Indian Railway online booking system.  We are beginning to understand why the creaking bureaucratic machine that is the Indian government has gone out of its way to try tourist quotas for train tickets!

We have loved being in Kolkata: we got to witness a Sikh celebration for the birthday of the Tenth Guru which was particularly fantastic as we met a great guy who’d just come back from Camp America and was keen to share his English, and information about the ceremony, with us.  We’ve arranged that if we are ever back in the city we’ll have a haggling competition and see who gets the best prices!

We also got to see a mouldering old neoclassical house called the Marble Palace.  It looks just like the mansion in the Disney movie of Beauty and the Beast when Belle arrives when it’s all crumbling.  All of the paintings, ornaments and old furniture were simply rotting away in the once ornate rooms and there are massive lion statues in the gardens which have been overgrown or are covered over by the waste from the slum housing that now borders the house.  It was very atmospheric as you can imagine - definitely the perfect setting for a horror movie!

The one thing marring Kolkata, apart from some rather insistent beggars, has been the pollution.  The whole city is coated in a filmy smog which ended up burning the backs of our throats by the end of each night.  Sadly, our “hotels” (one of which seemed to be a long term lodging house for Bangladeshi families visiting for mysterious medical reasons) have not had hot water so we have been attempting to get rid of all the dirt by bucket washing in cold water!  It’s very bracing and makes me extremely grateful that I’m going to be coming back to a bubble bath! Tonight we are heading to Siliguri which is a travellers outpost on the way to Darjeeling.

It will take about 12 or 13 hours and we were unable/unwilling to get sleeper tickets which are for little beds to lie down in so we’re going to risk it with reclining chairs.  Josh is definitely not very keen so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it won’t be too painful.  Once in Darjeeling we’re going to relax and enjoy the beautiful views - apparently we’re in sight of the world’s third largest peak, Kangchenjunga.