Talk about sensory overload! One car ride in Calcutta is enough excitement to last the entire trip. I don't know if there are amusement parks here, but I doubt they'd be too popular. Bumper cars and roller coaster must seem tame in comparison. Whatever you think it is, up the craziness by 1000. The horn is used to interesting effect here. It's not actually anything rude and is in fact encouraged. It's used to say "hey I'm over here and I know you have no reason to expect me to be cutting you off by millimeters from the wrong side of the road with my headlights off so I thought I should let you know." Ok, now that that's out of the way... what have we been up to?
I spent the first afternoon in Calcutta just relaxing at Aileen & Rahul's lovely apartment - once again I got up so early for my flight that I was exhausted by 2pm. We gathered our energy again to hit the "clubs" in Calcutta with some friends of theirs. Clubs in this sense is more along the country club lines. Most people in Calcutta belong to at least one club. Aileen and I definitely stuck out and no one can say I never strayed from the tourist path!
Sunday morning Susan arrived from her hellish flight from Chicago (6 hours in the Delhi airport overnight anyone?) and we had already planned to ease her into this timezone with lunch at the "club" and a trip to the spa. While not exactly stressful, it wasn't the epitome of relaxation. I asked for a facial and a pedicure, which they happily announced could be done at the same time. Susan headed off for her massage and Aileen for a facial and manicure. As a man prepared my facial concoction a woman washed my hands. I thought it was a bit odd but what do I know about Indian spa techniques? After gauze had been placed over my eyes, the woman began to file my nails. Apparently, I was getting a pedicure on my hands. But at this point it was a little tough to do anything about it. She must have thought I was crazy to have a manicure, since there was literally nothing to file. Then once she finished she started setting up a pedicure bath so I thought maybe I was just getting both. Not so- they asked me to move to another chair so they could finish my facial while they brought in Susan for her facial and pedicure. Which they finished in about the same amount of time I finished my facial, which had started an hour earlier! Poor Aileen came in with her face burning from the reaction to her facial. But we had to all admit that our skin looked remarkedly better. So we left more attractive if not more relaxed, and that's what matters, right?
We rounded off the evening with a home cooked Indian meal (home cooked by their maid/cook of course), catching up around the dinner table and playing with little Xochi, Aileen and Rahul's 10 month old girl. It was great to see old friends again and to see Xochi, clearly the cutest infant on the planet. And no, I'm not remotely biased.
Monday was back to work for Aileen. Susan and I met her at the American Center shortly thereafter to see Gloria Steinem speak regarding the problem of human trafficking, specifically in India. There were other speakers as well, and it was fascinating to hear the problem discussed in an area where it is having such an effect. Afterwards Aileen, Susan and I hit Buzz, a Tibetan place for momos, the Tibetan equivalent of dumplings. We ordered 6 dishes of 6 momos each, for a grand total of 36, thinking we'd be able to try many of them and take the rest home. The man was shocked and kept saying, "You mean four?" Then Aileen wanted to order noodles and asked if there was any sauce on them. The waiter answered that it came with a gravy (Indians use this to mean sauce). When asked what kind of gravy, he answered "bland and tasteless!" with a smile on his face. I quickly said, "We'll take the garlic chili noodles instead." In the end we got our noodles but only 3 orders of momos - he had clearly restricted our momo intake. We finally asked for 2 more orders, with which he grudgingly complied.
I spent the first afternoon in Calcutta just relaxing at Aileen & Rahul's lovely apartment - once again I got up so early for my flight that I was exhausted by 2pm. We gathered our energy again to hit the "clubs" in Calcutta with some friends of theirs. Clubs in this sense is more along the country club lines. Most people in Calcutta belong to at least one club. Aileen and I definitely stuck out and no one can say I never strayed from the tourist path!
Sunday morning Susan arrived from her hellish flight from Chicago (6 hours in the Delhi airport overnight anyone?) and we had already planned to ease her into this timezone with lunch at the "club" and a trip to the spa. While not exactly stressful, it wasn't the epitome of relaxation. I asked for a facial and a pedicure, which they happily announced could be done at the same time. Susan headed off for her massage and Aileen for a facial and manicure. As a man prepared my facial concoction a woman washed my hands. I thought it was a bit odd but what do I know about Indian spa techniques? After gauze had been placed over my eyes, the woman began to file my nails. Apparently, I was getting a pedicure on my hands. But at this point it was a little tough to do anything about it. She must have thought I was crazy to have a manicure, since there was literally nothing to file. Then once she finished she started setting up a pedicure bath so I thought maybe I was just getting both. Not so- they asked me to move to another chair so they could finish my facial while they brought in Susan for her facial and pedicure. Which they finished in about the same amount of time I finished my facial, which had started an hour earlier! Poor Aileen came in with her face burning from the reaction to her facial. But we had to all admit that our skin looked remarkedly better. So we left more attractive if not more relaxed, and that's what matters, right?
We rounded off the evening with a home cooked Indian meal (home cooked by their maid/cook of course), catching up around the dinner table and playing with little Xochi, Aileen and Rahul's 10 month old girl. It was great to see old friends again and to see Xochi, clearly the cutest infant on the planet. And no, I'm not remotely biased.
Monday was back to work for Aileen. Susan and I met her at the American Center shortly thereafter to see Gloria Steinem speak regarding the problem of human trafficking, specifically in India. There were other speakers as well, and it was fascinating to hear the problem discussed in an area where it is having such an effect. Afterwards Aileen, Susan and I hit Buzz, a Tibetan place for momos, the Tibetan equivalent of dumplings. We ordered 6 dishes of 6 momos each, for a grand total of 36, thinking we'd be able to try many of them and take the rest home. The man was shocked and kept saying, "You mean four?" Then Aileen wanted to order noodles and asked if there was any sauce on them. The waiter answered that it came with a gravy (Indians use this to mean sauce). When asked what kind of gravy, he answered "bland and tasteless!" with a smile on his face. I quickly said, "We'll take the garlic chili noodles instead." In the end we got our noodles but only 3 orders of momos - he had clearly restricted our momo intake. We finally asked for 2 more orders, with which he grudgingly complied.
Susan and I rounded off the day with shopping at New Market, a crazy experience of chaos, even after my experience in Thailand. We were told we had to try pastries in the old Jewish deli, but somehow we managed to find the only two disgusting items there. Luckily it was a waste of only a dollar or so! Then we plopped down some cash for beautiful silver jewelry headed out before we could do any more damage. I wanted to buy a new pair of shoes as I only have sandals, which won't be quite appropriate in Tokyo in January where it will be below freezing. (My tennis shoes were buried in Cape Tribulation, Australia.) I had read in a guidebook that you could have shoes made and given my ridiculously wide foot, I thought this would be a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. However once the driver got us to the area where such shops supposedly are, he asked around and told us there was no such thing. He took us to another shoe shop area, but they only sold men's shoes and women's sandals. Oh well! Back to the apartment where we met up with Aileen and Rahul and went out for a yummy Chinese meal at Red Hot Chili Peppers (which of course started a music discussion - some of you will get that reference). Aileen gets very sick of Indian food and looks for any opportunity to branch out. A quick stop for 98% fat free gelato at Mama Mia's (I don't think so! one of them had Snickers in it!) where we were served by an Indian in a beret, then some paan for Rahul (a "digestive" sold from the world's tiniest shop - photo below) and home again for an early night for all of us!
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