Kolkata: Week 1

Mal's taking care of our picture uploading responsibilities today, so I thought I'd post a few of my impressions of India after a week here in Kolkata.

1. Arriving in India for the first time is not something the Canadian brain is equipped to handle well. Lots of people call India chaotic, but that's not a great characterization. It's more like three or four separate chaotic systems, stacked on top of each other and then shaken up. There is so much going on everywhere - streets, stores, gutters, alleys, sidewalks - that it's hard to process it all at once. The whole place is just wall-to-wall people doing stuff.

2. The traffic system here doesn't appear to have rules. There are no lanes, crossing the street is a lot like playing Frogger, and most car horns seem to have been purchased with the "always on" option engaged. You really need to re-calibrate your sense of personal space to walk down the street. In Canada, if a car passed you with 6 inches to spare, you'd say you almost got hit by a car. Here, if one passed you with 6 inches to spare, you'd wonder why the guy left you so much room. We are basically in a constant state of almost getting hit by a car.

3. Indian food is amazing. We got a cooking lesson from a Bengali woman who runs classes out of her apartment kitchen, and it was hands-down the most delicious meal we've had on the trip so far. That being said, there's also a street vendor around the corner from our hotel selling deep fried chicken, uh, parts, with a pile of beaks sitting next to the pot. So caveat emptor, I guess. Side note: you can eat very well in India for like $4 a day, beak-free.

That's it for now. We put some pictures up on the Facebook group, and a few should be posted here shortly.