To Kolkata

 Breakfast is served on the train.

 The platforms are always busy.

 Liz, Will and Nico ahead of me.

 People hanging about and waiting.

 UBER is present here, and the cars have UBER written on their back windows.

 More of the crazy, busy street scenes of urban India.

 Street water where this man washed his dishes, his face, drank and spit a bunch of times.

 Outside barbershop.

 One of a fleet of old yellow taxis.

Traffic congestion trying to get to the hotel.

Tuesday, April 10^th.

We were up really early this morning, 4:50, to get to the train station to catch a train. As I was packing up, I could not remember where I had put my debit card. I had removed it from my wallet and carried it around during the afternoon looking for an ATM that was working. I racked my brain and searched the room. No avail. Then we took all our luggage and loaded into two tuk tuks and headed off to the station. Finding the train and getting on were easy and we have a nice air-conditioned coach. I looked through my backpack and found my ATM card in a spare little cork wallet. I have no recollection of putting there, but I was immensely relieved.

The train journey was very easy as we sped past miles and miles of farms, fields and rice paddies. We crossed several wide rivers that were pretty dry at the moment, as the monsoon season is still a couple of months away. We rode past many little rural villages and people working in the fields. After visiting all the villages we did, it is easy to imagine their lives and what goes on there. I spent most of the time catching up on my typing so that I could update the blog on arrival.

When we got to Kolkata, we took two taxis to the Niharika Hotel. The taxi that Nico and I were in got separated from the Will’s taxi and got lost. He asked us what hotel, we didn’t know where it was. He had to stop several times to ask directions for other drivers. He drove very aggressively and it was a wonder we didn’t hit something. The traffic was really bad and we got caught in a few jams. The driver turned his taxi off every time until the traffic began to move again and then all horns blaring we set off for a few metres before repeating the process. Eventually we found the hotel. 

We had a couple of hours of free time in our rooms before we met up at 7:00 for dinner. We went to an upscale restaurant called Peter Cat which is recommended in Lonely Planet. It was our goodbye dinner to Liz who is returning to England. The food was okay and we had a good time. Then our driver took us back to the hotel for bed.