We had a great feast of Bengali food on our last day in Cal.  While in West Bengal we ate a lot of fish, chicken and mutton which was a nice change from some of the other states that are primarily veg.

The meal started with small portions of two bitter veg dishes.  The first course is considered to be both a palate-cleanser and of great medicinal value.  After that we enjoyed cholar daal, mango chutney, and Aloo dum (Spicy potatoes – Bengali style) all pictured below.

The meal was served on banana leaves and we ate with our hands with the aid of some soft luchi puri (breads on the right side of the pic below). Traditionally you should only use your right hand to eat which makes tearing bread with one hand somewhat of a challenge.  Once mastered you look like a natural.

We realized we had a flat tire just before getting on the New Howrah Bridge, but the way traffic moves in Cal you don’t really have a choice to pull over into an emergency lane and fix it.  The eight-lane bridge carries a steady flow of approximately 80,000 vehicles, and possibly more than 1,000,000 pedestrians and thousands of cattle every day.  So we drove over the bridge with the flat to an onramp with much less traffic for our driver to put on the spare.

While he worked to put the spare we had a great opportunity to take photos of the bridge and play in traffic.  Basically anything to ignore the huge gash in spare which the driver seemed unconcerned with.  Thankfully, it carried us to where we needed to go; the car had AC so not much else really mattered.

The pride and joy of Kolkata is a holdover from when Cal was the winter capital of British rule.  There’s a museum inside, but other than that there’s not much history to the Victorial Memorial.  Fun fact from wikipedia: British government money was not used in its construction at all. Rather, the British Indian states, along with the people who wanted some favors from the British government, were the main contributors towards the cost of building the Victoria Memorial Hall

The grounds were very well-kept, but the heat and humidity had zapped our energy levels by this point.  A sprinkler caught us as we were walking around the grounds causing some insult as well which is why you can see I have a bit of a grumpy ‘tude.

Our trip to the Sunderbans was incredibly hot, humid and there wasn’t much to do or people to talk to.  However, the events in the evening were some of the most memorable of the trip so far.

The first night we enjoyed a musical performance by local villagers.  Local is somewhat misleading though since they had to walk an hour and a half each way.  Here’s a video of one of their dances and they were kind enough to pose with us afterward.  Check out the dude in black with horns on his head below.

The second night we walked into a village much closer and got to see a typical evening of events: men playing carrom board, women collecting water, and even preparations for a wedding to take place later that night.  At the end of that night the sun set, bathing the landscape in exotic shades of blue and purple.

There are deep well hand pumps everywhere in India: from the largest metros to rural villages.  In Kolkata there are hand wells every couple of blocks and along the national highways one appears about every mile.  People use these to wash everything from themselves to dishes and fill water pots and plastic bottles to be their home water supply for the entire day.

It was shocking to see how limited and uncommon plumbing is–even in cities–and amazing to observe the process people go through 2-3 times daily for something we take completely for granted.  To think that there is still a large percentage of people who don’t have access to hand pumps is even harder to accept, but something we hope to raise money to improve.

Below is a small selection of photos of people using hand pumps (including Kunal giving one a tug) and carrying water.  Having been here a month now I have to say that these are all incredibly common sights to see all over India, but I was really happy we captured them and I hope you enjoy.

No tigers, but lots of other wildlife.  Spotted deer were the most fun to watch as they stood on their hind legs to reach the mangrove branches.

The months to see the legendary man-eating Royal Bengal Tigers of the Sunderbans are November to February. Knowing this, we still thought it was worth a trip to the Sunderbans to check out the lush mangrove forests and see a few other animals running free in the vast delta on the Bay of Bengal. While we never observed any tigers, we were granted an extremely intimate experience with the guides and local villagers in the off-season.

We stayed at Sunderbans Tiger Camp and had the treat of going on our expeditions into the delta with legendary guide, Niranjan Raptan (pictured above).  One of the activities post a day of boating expeditions was a walk to a nearby rural village.  In the picture above Niranjan, Cory and I stand with a woman who had a tiger attack her home.  Tiger attacks on villages is more rare than attacks on honey collectors and forest cutters who work on the many islands of the delta, but they are clearly a very real threat to the people who live here.  To provide some safety, the people secure their islands with synthetic nets placed all around the borders of the island.  A woman in the picture below is making one such net.

There is some speculation on why the tigers here are the only ones in the world to have a taste for human meats.  Some say it’s the salinity in the water they drink, but a more logical explanation is that tigers in other areas who went after man were killed, causing the tigers to learn/evolve an apprehension to man-munching.  Oh and these cats can swim really well and far distances!

Calcutta, Kolkata, or as we now call it, “Cal” gave us a completely different splash of India. I say splash because leaving the air conditioned airport you are immediately covered in wetness from the 95% humidity you experience in June.

We spent four nights with Kunal’s family in Cal with a trip to the Sunderbans breaking up the stay. The capital city of West Bengal has remained largely unchanged since independence in 1947 due largely to Communist party rule. Fun fact from Wikipedia: West Bengal had been ruled by the Left Front [an alliance led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M)] for the past 34 years, making it the world’s longest-running democratically elected communist government.

Leadership changed this year in West Bengal and new development can be seen all over, but these upgrades cause traffic jams and temporary madness from congestion frustration. The masses of the classic yellow Indian-built cabs, called Ambassadors–as seen in this video–add to the congestion, but their charm makes up for it.